Elevation Gain: 2,042m
Distance: 35km
Total Time: 2 days
Date: August 13th to 15th
Peak 2177 is an unnamed peak along the ridge line from Mount Nogwon into the Charlotte Alplands. It doesn’t offer much interest other than it’s there and is along the way to Peak 2448 the most prominent peak on the eastern end the Nogwon-McClinchy ridge system. Andrea and I had arrived from a traverse via Mount Nogwon the night before and were now going to spend the day going up to these two peaks and then checking out the nearby lakes. The whole range is expansive and the scale deceiving. From our camp site everything looked to be a short ways off, but in reality long stretches of terrain separated us from most objectives.
In the previous day the weather had been quite gloomy and given a muted appeal to the whole area. Now we had woken up to a glorious sunny day and the whole place had sort of come to life. Vibrant greens, highly contrasted ridge lines and beautiful turqoise blue lakes filled the landscape. It was shaping up to be an amazing day and so we made a quick breakfast and started up to the ridge line directly above our camp.
The first order of business was hiking up to Peak 2177 which proved to be a short 30 minute affair from our site. From the top we saw a long drop down into the valley and then a tame eastern ridgeline up to Peak 2448. So, off we went, meandering down the ridge and into the basin below Peak 2448. We zig zagged along numerous lakes and reached the east ridge without any issues.
From there we scrambled up to the summit where another massive cairn, a seeming characteristic of the area, awaited us. We relaxed for a long time making a hot lunch at the top and enjoying the views of Bussel Peak, Mani Peak, Monarch Mountain and of course the Waddington area to the south. Long plateaus and broad ridgelines dominate the area and it seems there’s endless traverse possibilities. Perhaps even better ski touring opportunities as well!
After lunch we wandered down the west slopes up false summit and down old glacial moraine and slabs to reach a superb blue lake on the north side. From afar the lake looked a good size but in person we realized the real scale of it all. A few hundred meters down the lake a waterfall cascaded over a vertical face directly into the lake. The views were surreal to say the least! We spent some time swimming and soaking up the sun before retreating back to our camp site.
On the following day we packed up and hiked out, sticking to a low contour line around the ridge system and avoiding any serious elevation gain in the process. I definitely recommend checking this area out if the weather is good. There are a lot of traverse opportunities and endless lakes to check out. I’ll likely come back in the winter some time to try this place out on skis.
