Mount Woolley is one of those mountains that everyone wants to climb. Not because it is particularly difficult or worth a lot in terms of bragging rights but because it provides a 5 star view to some of the coolest mountains in the rockies. Mount Alberta right next door is known as the hardest mountain to climb in the rockies as well as being the 6th highest. Nearby is The North Face of North Twin another notoriously difficult climb. Also visible from the summit is Mount Columbia the 2nd highest mountain in the rockies.

The normal ascent route up Mount Woolley is non technical but does require some glacier travel. Essentially the steep part is scrambling and everything else is traversing. There is one short very exposed snow ridge that must be crossed on Woolley's summit ridge which I have a picture of in this photo page. Diadem Peak another 11000 foot summit is easy reached from the same ascent route via some straight forward scrambling I am told. Both peaks are often summitted together in one trip. The most dangerous part of the whole trek is a crossing of the Sunwapta River which can be very dangerous in high periods of runoff. Thus Mount Woolley is normally ascended in late August when the river levels are lower.

I signed up for this trip with the Grant Macewan Mountain Club led by John Binns. We hiked in to base camp on Saturday and woke up early Sunday for the ascent and then headed all the way back out the same day. The river crossing on the way in was straight forward. The water level was knee high and very cold. The approach trail up Woolley Creek provided an awesome view of the Woolley Creek falls. The rest of the approach consisted of boulders and various sized rocks as we passed through moraines. The base camp was an excellent spot with rock walls prebuilt so that our tents would not blow away. On Saturday we arrived around 3pm and spent the rest of the day relaxing and socializing before heading to sleep early for our ascent day. We met one party coming down from Woolley that day that reported the views as being cloudy at the top.

At 4 am we started our ascent of Mount Woolley. The glacier between Woolley and Diadem was straight forward and not particularly steep. No obvious crevasses crossed our way at any time. The snow gully was steep but not to bad. We shed our ropes for the ascent of the snow gully and kicked steps up it. After leaving the snow gully we scrambled along the left slopes of Diadem Peak to reach the Woolley-Diadem col. The scrambling was moderate to advanced in my opinion. If one was interested in summitting Diadem without ropes it could be done by avoiding the glacier travel at the bottom and crossing the snow slope to reach the scramble route up to the col. From there the remaining rock on Diadem should be straight forward to scramble up. From the col however there is unavoidable glacier travel to reach Mount Woolley's summit ridge. The remaining ridge walk up Mount Woolley is pretty straight forward except for one short and very exposed snow ridge. When we reached the summit ridge we were disappointed to find that most of our view was blocked by clouds. We could see the bottom half of Mount Alberta which was still very impressive. The summit itself was completely fogged over when we arrived. We caught partial glimpses of the North Face of North Twin but nothing photo worthy. On descent we decided not to climb Diadem Peak as many people were bagged from climbing Woolley and we had a long day ahead of us still as we were heading all the way out. We descended the way we came without trouble. The rest of the day was pretty straight forward except for the river crossing which by the time we reached the river had become a fair amount more dangerous than on our way in. We linked arms to cross in a few places and fortunately had no one fall in on our way out. The water level was almost waist deep in one section we crossed. I found this trip very enjoyable and I was able to obtain a lot of great photos that I hope to use to plan future trips

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