🏔️ Mount Beatty (+ Bump & Razor Flakes) | Manky Rock, Bad Ideas, and a Day You’d Either Love or Hate скачать в хорошем качестве

🏔️ Mount Beatty (+ Bump & Razor Flakes) | Manky Rock, Bad Ideas, and a Day You’d Either Love or Hate

🥾🚴‍♂️🧭🪨⚠️🌞🌌😏 Mount Beatty has a reputation, and it has absolutely earned it. Every piece of beta about this peak seems to agree on one thing: the terrain is loose, steep, exposed, and deeply unpleasant for anyone who prefers solid rock. Naturally, this made it irresistible. This solo outing links Beatty Bump, Mount Beatty, and Razor Flakes into a long, complex day featuring biking, hiking, glacier travel, and an impressive variety of surfaces that actively try to eject you downslope. The day begins pleasantly enough with a bike ride from Interlakes toward Forks—bumpy, scenic, and just rough enough to remind you that you’re not on a rail trail. After stashing the bike, the hike up the Maude–Lawson Trail is excellent: well-built, forested, and full of morning calm. Moose sightings, birds, running water… all the signs point to a reasonable day. This optimism does not last. Leaving the main trail later than strictly necessary (a recurring theme), the route trends west toward the Beatty basin and immediately encounters concrete-hard moraines—that special Rockies surface where slipping is both easy and deeply unacceptable. Thankfully, this misery is brief, and travel improves beside the shrinking Beatty Glacier, where loose rubble gives way to easier movement toward the Beatty / Bump col. Beatty Bump goes first. Despite rumors of “easy” terrain, it delivers moderate scrambling, glacier crossings, and a surprising amount of complexity for a warm-up peak. Views open dramatically across the Haig Icefield and Upper Kananaskis Lake, and any lingering doubts about the seriousness of the day are put to rest by the sight of Beatty’s east face—a wall of dirt, rubble, and steepness that looks exactly as bad as advertised. The ascent of Mount Beatty is the crux of the day, both mentally and physically. There is no obvious route—just a collection of steep, hardpack dirt ramps, loose embedded rocks, and short ledge systems that require constant evaluation. Every line looks terrible until you’re halfway up it, at which point you commit because reversing would be worse. The SE ridge finally offers marginal relief, delivering exposed but manageable scrambling to a summit that feels earned through persistence rather than elegance. Descending Beatty proves no easier than ascending it. Traversing the east face toward the Razor Flakes col involves careful route-finding through cliff bands, surprise dead ends, and one memorable crack descent that rewards flexibility and a sense of humor. Eventually, sanity returns at the col—briefly. Razor Flakes provides the final test. Despite optimistic guidebook claims of second-class terrain, the reality involves steep traverses, goat-assisted ledges, and a sharp skyline ridge that finally eases near the top. The summit is broad, scenic, and mercifully straightforward—an unexpected gift after hours of tension. The descent off Razor Flakes via steep SE slopes looks friendly from above and then reveals itself as brutally steep grass and scree, demanding full attention until the valley floor finally arrives. From there, the long walk back to the bike and a fast ride out provide time to reflect on why days like this are both exhausting and deeply satisfying. 📷 Trip snapshots 📅 August 14, 2025 🕒 ~12 hours round-trip 📏 33.5 km total distance ⛰️ ~1,700 m elevation gain 🧗‍♂️ Scrambling SC7- / Class 3–4 🚴‍♂️ Bike + hike + glacier + poor surface quality 📓 What this journey captures Why some peaks are climbed despite the beta How steep dirt deserves its own difficulty scale The mental fatigue of complex route-finding When “easy” guidebook ratings quietly lie Why obscure, manky peaks still pull us in Mount Beatty is not a classic, and it never will be. It’s loose, frustrating, and objectively unpleasant in places—but for those drawn to complicated terrain and obscure objectives, it delivers exactly what it promises. A hard-earned summit day that makes perfect sense… to a very specific audience. 📌 Route details, conditions, terrain notes, and questionable decisions are drawn directly from the original trip report at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EX_....