North America, Canada, Interior Ranges, "Paradox Peak," Farnham Group

Publication Year: 1975.

“Paradox Peak,” Farnham Group. On July 25 John Jeglum, Doug Martin and I left Toby Creek road near its junction with Jumbo Creek at about 4500 feet for 9810-foot “Paradox Peak,” the southernmost of the Farnham group. For 3½ hours we followed a fantastic mining road up the south-southwest side of the peak to a high basin just below timberline at 7200 feet. The next morning in four hours we hiked up talus and snow to a series of snow chutes which led to the steep upper snowfield and at 9500 feet to the southwest ridge itself. The remaining half-mile of the irregular summit rock ridge required two hours of scrambling. The only difficulty was a short vertical fourth-class pitch down onto the steep west side of a large cornice just before the last notch below the summit. We rebuilt a small pile of rocks on the summit into a larger cairn for our second-ascent record. (We later learned that one of a pair of geologists had been killed on either “Paradox” or “Paramount” back in the 50s.) We retraced our steps to camp in three hours.

Curt Wagner