The " Cursed " Wedge(!)

I had been planning to go back to The Wedge for over 2 weeks in order to reach the summit until I eventually was able to do that on Mon. but the result was a failure again! I woke up in the morning and look out the window and to my surprise it looked cloudy! I had checked the damn forecast in the previous 5 days, 3 times a day at least(!) and it always said sunny. What the hell just happened? I dropped The Lady at work and headed west on Trans-Canada Highway. Then I turned the radio on to see what they say: Wildfires on northwestern state of the US. I was kind of doubtful weather I should go or not and that led to waste of a lot of time. I finally reached the parking lot of Wedge Pond at about 10:40 and started the hike at around 10:50. There was nobody on the trail and it looked different from the two previous hikes. A thick cloud of smokes had covered the entire area which made the hike not very enjoyable as no view was available although I had seen everything previously. 

This small herd of Goat looked like a family to me, was grazing around

It took me 2 hours, give or take, to reach above the three-line and where the trail peters out. From here I had the direction, or better to say the illustrated direction sent to me by Matt Hobbs, based on a request that I had sent him through e-mail. I was fine and determined to go all the way to the summit. I had no water because I wanted to be as light as possible and had the least difficulty to get to the scrambling part. While taking my break, I noticed something was moving from here to there very rapidly. I had not seen a Pika and that was it. It was obvious that the little cute rodent had been greeted and fed by humans before. That's why it was wandering around me. I saw another one too but that one didn't bother. It was not as friendly as a Chipmunk that I had seen in Bourgeau Lake or Ptarmigan Tunnel but was as cute or even cutter. A Pika basically looks a little like a Mouse but is different. It has no long tail but has a furry body and round ears. Unfortunately my camera had a problem in my Floe Lake hike and had not been sent back from its repair in Ontario. For that reason I was not able to take any good photo of the small animal. 

I spent 15 minutes chasing the damn Pika to be able to get a good shot of it and although I was able to do that. it's not worth posting here due to the size of the Pika compare to the surrounding rocks. After that I headed up and followed the route that Hobbs had described in his e-mail. It was a very good scramble and I really enjoyed that. Snow patches were seen here and there but they were not a threat to the scramble. I was able to find the first and second cairns that Soistheman has shown in his map but didn't find the third one. After passing the two cairns and going up the described gully. I kind

There is this stream in The Wedge mountain. The trail crosses it after about half an hour of the hike. This is where I cooled off on the way back to the parking lot. I drank from it and I'm fine!

of headed to the southwest part of the mountain with the hope that I could skip the false summit and get to the real summit through the ridge that Hobbs had described in his message. I was wrong. Just a few meters to the ridge the scramble became very exposed and I lost all of my confidence and headed back down! Climbing down was not bad. Just a few meters before I reach the scrambling-start point I saw a Marmot laying on the rocks and then a small heed of Goat and then I thought to myself that these all animal probably knew that I did not have my good camera on! 

At that time I looked at my watched and realized that it was around 15:00. I had to pick up The Lady from work so I double timed it but it made me tired very soon and my knees started to hurt. Besides I was too hut and sweaty and my throat was parched. I tried to undress above the waste but that didn't help. So I only reduced my speed until I reached the stream in the mountain and was able to cool off a bit by drinking a bit of water and washing my face, neck and headscarf. It didn't take me much to reach the parking lot. I guess I was there at around 16:15 and I still had time to reach The Lady on time but I was not aware of the disaster on eastbound Trans-Canada Highway after Morley! As soon as I left Highway 40 and turned toward east I heard on the radio a fatal crashed had caused the highway to be closed on its eastbound. I have explained a little bit what happened in the yesterday's post. Now do I still want to go to The Wedge to reach it's summit? Maybe. But if I go, I will probably go next year when it's neither damn foggy and and smoky neither hot and burning!

(Photo, top: I captured this Marmot on the way back from the scrambling part with my small sony camera. There's not much can be seen but better than nothing!)