Alpine Soft: "Crown" and "South Tower" of Mt. Willingdon

Beautiful weather and dry conditions continued into late August and Raff and I debated and considered several options for another multi day trip. Turns out we ended up with Plan B and headed to Devon Lakes to scramble up a “new” 11,000 foot+ summit, the south outlier of Mt. Willingdon, "Crown", and its southern neighbour, “South Tower” of Willingdon. Hot n dry, but smokey, early start at from Mosquito Creek , up into the high country on the north branch of the creek and over the infamous Quartzite Col .

Crown (l) and South Tower (r) from Devon Lakes bivy.

We had no trouble finding the proper col and easily descended steep loose scree into the Siffleur River Valley. I day tripped Mt. Willingdon back in 2010, just less than 16 hours, car to car. Trip report on my Summitpost pages since this was in the pre blog days. Taking it easy and enjoying the summer weather, we reached Devon Lakes in about 7 hours. Set up very near the shore of lower Devon Lake and had time to enjoy some whiskey on the beach and soak our feet in the clear water.

Enroute to Quartizite Col, beautiful potential camp site with water and lots of cool bouldering problems. Man I camp here for days.

View to Quartizite Col, low spot, right of central bump, darker grey scree.

From Quartizite Col, view to Willingdon, Crown and South Tower across the Suffiluer River Valley and Clearwater Pass.

Late summer colours in the valley.

View to Willingdon from Devon Lakes.

View to Crown and South Tower from Devon Lakes.

Sipping whiskey at Devon Lake.

Camp with Willingdon and Crown summits.

Smokey sunset on camp and lake. Tent visible far right.

Beautiful summer evening and a relaxing bivy, up about 5am on August 30, ready for an easy ascent, but intended on hiking back to the truck and home, so a long day ahead. When the sun came up, it was very, very smokey. We did an easy scree plod up to the Willingdon/Crown col, cool alpine glacier tarn at the col, was actually quite large. Easy plod to the summit of Crown. Interesting, Raff’s GPS typically reads about 10 metres above the official elevation, his GPS read up to 3367 metres (11,047 feet), so Raff thought for sure over 11,000 feet. Easy hike to the summit of South Tower, below 11,000. Smoke cleared a bit as we headed down.

Scree slog to the Willingdon/Crown col.

Cool glacial tarn at col, on the way up.

Raff nearing summit of Crown.

OSWB and Raff on the summit of 11,000+ foot "Crown".

Enroute to South Tower from Crown, Willingdon in the background.

Approaching smokey summit of South Tower.

Back to our bivy, just under 6 hours from bivy to the two summits and back to camp. Quick coffee and lunch break and we loaded up for the hike out. Beautiful and hot summer day on the hike, enjoyable trek across to Quartizite Col, then back to the truck. Great couple of days out with an old friend.