Mount Geikie, North Face

Canada, Canadian Rockies, Ramparts
Climb Year: 1979. Publication Year: 1981.

This route was mentioned but not described in A.A.J. 1980. Dean Hannibal and I did a new route on the north face of Geikie in late August 1979. We followed the prominent buttress in the center of the face and then directly up a shallow buttress in the center of the bowl in the top half of the face to end about 100 meters west of the summit. The total time up was about three days with a late start on the first and an early finish on the fourth. The lower buttress had many pitches from F7 to F9 with a total of 15 to 20 points of aid. The rock was better than the usual Canadian kind and the buttress was sheltered from rockfall. We stayed slightly left of the crest until we reached the top of the red rockbands. In the lower-angled upper bowl the rock was looser with sections of gravel overlying slabs where the ice had melted due to a very dry season. This was generally F5 with sections of mixed ground and hard, short steps. The final two steep pitches were on unavoidable water-ice in the usual storm. We descended what was probably also a new route, down the south ridge.

George H. Lowe, III