Terrace Mountain is a very nice scramble from the Terrace Creek Valley, which requires a long hike just to access. If you are super duper fast you might be able to do it in one very long day.
I recommend camping in the valley and pursuing some of the other objectives in the area as well, like Mount Saskatchewan. The trail head for the approach is at the Big Bend in the Icefields Parkway just South of the Icefields Center. The approach is described on the photo page for our previous days. The ascent up Terrace Mountain from Terrace Creek is difficult for 2 short sections as 2 cliff bands must be passed on the way to the col between Terrace Mountain and an unnamed mountain to the South of it, which I will refer to as South Terrace Mountain. You can ascend from the Castleguard Meadows which is a longer approach. On this route you can completely avoid hands on scrambling, as the ascent from that side is merely a long hike
It snowed until noon on us this day. Randy and I didn't bother getting out of the tent until 1pm. It looked pretty hopeless throughout the morning, but to our surprise a patch of blue sky passed over us and the sun briefly came out to warm us up. This was enough encouragement for me to want to attempt Terrace Mountain. Randy was more interested in seeing the Castleguard Meadows, so I headed out to Terrace Mountain alone around 2pm. In less than an hour the clouds rolled back in and I was immersed in fog again. This made it difficult to find my proposed ascent route. I noticed that I forgot to bring my ordinary glasses, which meant that I had to use my sun glasses for the entire ascent, since it would take too long to go back and get them. I ended up too high on the slopes of Terrace Mountain and was part way up a ridge that I didn't think was a good ascent route. After checking out the scrambling on the bottom of it, I decided to head back down and stick to my original plan. I ended up crossing a glacier that was pretty sizable. It even had crevasses in the snow covered section.
Soon after passing the glacier I reached the slopes that I was looking for. It started to rain on me so I had to put on my rain gear for awhile. After it stopped I began ascending the slope to the col. The lower slope turned out to be a glacier mostly covered in rock. I made it up to some cliff bands. The upper most cliff band was very imposing. When I finally reached it, I was able to find a difficult scramble route through it that involved climbing up some large steps. Once above the cliff band I was just below a large glacier coming down from South Terrace Mountain. I was able to traverse beneath it to the slopes leading to the col between the 2 mountains. I slogged up broken shale to another smaller cliff band that I scrambled through. I would say that this cliff band was difficult to scramble through as well. Once at the col I had to go around a huge cornice to see the upper ridge of Terrace Mountain. At this point I was hoping to at least prove that the route would work before heading back down since the weather was still pretty crappy.
On my way up the ridge of South Terrace Mountain I noticed that weather was starting to improve so I went for the summit. There was some moderate scrambling before I got to a nice ridge that led me to the top of the unnamed mountain. I reached the summit at 6:30pm which was exactly my turn around time. There was no cairn on the summit, so I made one. The clouds covered the summit while I was up there. On the way down the weather continued getting better and I got a great view of Terrace Mountain.
Once back at the col, I decided that I would rather hike back in the dark for 2 hours or so and make it to the summit than come all the way back here another time when the weather might be even worse. So I went for it. The ascent up Terrace Mountain from the col is strictly a hike. The first slope is steep and tiring but once on the summit ridge you get an awesome view. The weather had mostly cleared up with some clouds lingering below in the valley that added to the scenic beauty. I couldn't find a summit register. But it did have a decent summit cairn. It was definitely worth the 2 hours of hiking in the dark that I had to endure on the way back.
Once back at the col, I decided to descend the other side into the Castleguard Meadows since it looked much easier. The descent into Castleguard Meadows turned out to be just a hike, which would make Terrace Mountain an easy scramble if you ascended that way. There was one cliff band that I passed through on the way down, but you can easily find a hiking route through it. I passed some nice lakes during my descent to the meadows. Unfortunately the fog didn't allow me to take any great photos of the lakes. I have some okay photos of them. I didn't descend any more after reaching the lakes so that I could contour around Terrace Mountain to get through a col to return to the Terrace Creek Valley where we were camped. Since I had to wear my sunglasses, it looked much darker than it really was. The scree wasn't that bad and I able to make it to the col by the time it got completely dark. I didn't realize that I was at the col until I came to a snowfield that was suspiciously big. I hiked around it to find out that it was actually the glacier at the col. Glad I decided not to hike across it. I found Randy's footprints on the edge of the snow leading into the Terrace Creek Valley, which was encouraging.
I tried to contour high along the upper valley to our campsite, but small drop offs made this difficult. I had to head down the valley a bit to go around them. When I reached the moraines with yellow coloured scree I figured that I must be on the other side of the valley near our tent. Unfortunately, I wasn't that close after all and the fog made it difficult to make out landmarks. When I looked at the snow on the steep slopes nearby I wasn't able to recognize anything. I thought about checking my photos from the summit to try and identify the snow on the steeper slopes. Fortunately, Randy's headlamp saved me from being lost for the next few hours and I was able to get back to camp easily by heading towards the light from his headlamp. It was definitely an interesting day
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