Trev and I both had Sunday free after cragging in Murrin on Saturday, and had been trying to find a good dayhike.
We had seen a TR from @AntonG climbing the Sphinx in a long day, which resonated with our recent discussions about wanting to climb Guard Mountain in Garibaldi Park. We figured we’d try and add Deception as well, as those are the last two we need on the Sphinx Glacier horseshoe. (Castle Towers, Phyllis’ Engine, Carr, Bookworms, and Sphinx we had all climbed already.) Guard had been on our todo list since we had made our first trip to Gentian Pass and beyond.
We woke up at 0200h and set off for Rubble Creek, pulling in at about 0330h. We set up off the trail with our boots lashed to our packs, opting to wear the comfy trailrunners as long as possible. This turned out to be quite a while, as we did not swap to Mountain Boots until right before Garibaldi Lake after I ate it multiple times on the icy rolls by Lesser Garibaldi Lake.
By 0530h we were marching across a foggy Garibaldi Lake, looking up at Guard standing proud under the full moon. This was my first crossing of G Lake and the 5km crossing was very foreshortened.
It was past dawn by the time we reached the far side, where we passed the Burton Hut and picked our way through few-day-old avy debris and started the march towards the bowl between Guard and Deception. We generally had good melt freeze conferring fast travel, but did wallow slightly in the rising sidehill on the east flanks of Guard. As we neared the SE ridge’s terminus, we spotted a group of hikers headed down from Deception! This was a pleasant surprise, as we figured it would mean we would get some tracks for Deception, assuming all went well on Guard.
We plodded up the reasonably steep SE slope of Guard until I found a small bench where we could transition to crampons and get at least one axe out each to start. From here, there were a few options to gain the ridge, but we opted to take a broad gully on climbers right, eventually funneling us through a short scramble and onto the ridge.
Some easy walking deposited us infront of the blocky summit massif, where we got out a second tool. I pulled a few easy moves up the first roll and then found myself staring at 3 mountain goats on the summit ridge with my jaw open. They also seemed pretty surprised and after a moments staring contest, they took off over the summit. The ridge narrowed down to an arete, and we took a bypass on steep snow on the left, then hooked up a class 3 chimney and found ourselves on the summit - or did we? There was a second summit that looked slightly taller on the other side of a notch.
Wanting to be safe that we tagged the true summit, we downclimbed some steep exposed snow and gained a cool snow arete that we traversed on the West side until we were under the actual final summit block. The views peering over the snow arete of Sphinx, Deception, et al were phenomenal. The final block went easily by attacking the arete directly and doing a mantle over a block on the knife edge.
Unfortunately, the goat tracks led off of this summit - we had startled them off. They evidently downclimbed steeper snow then I will ever be able to.
This was a fun ~class 4 scramble, and while the summits are quite close in height, I am about 90% sure that this one is actually lower, meaning that this peak can probably be attained without this crux. I’ll let the reader be the judge based on the attached photo from the second summit.
With this peak in the bag, we backtracked, plunged down to the Guard - Deception col, and then followed the welcome bootpack up to the Deception summit “cirque”.
Again we were greeted by two very similar in height pinnacles, and although the bootpack only went up the right spire, we also went up the left one just to be sure. Views from Deception were even better than Guard, and although we wanted to linger, we opted not to; partly due to the long deproach ahead of us, and partly because the hot sun was starting to cook the steep slopes we had ascended.
We plunged down to the Burton Hut as fast as we could, and then turned the brains off and marched out.
These two peaks were absolutely lovely and a great way to finish off the Sphinx Glacier peaks. Highly recommend, conditions are primo right now, and there is a bootpack to both summits!
Stats were ~36km / 2100m / 11hr