Loop Ridge is an unnamed ridge in David Thompson Country. The trip starts with an ascent of Mount Ernest Ross and finishes with a descent of Two O'Clock Ridge. The loop can be done the other way around but Two O'Clock Ridge is much easier to descend than Mount Ernest Ross. This is a very fun traverse for very fit scramblers and gives you a chance to bag 4 main peaks as well as many other smaller peaks. This ridge involves a great deal of distance(more than 20km horizontal and 2000m elevation gain) and should take a full day to traverse. It took us 11½ hours to complete at a steady pace. Start early to get all the elevation gain out of the way before it gets hot and also to ensure you have enough time to complete the traverse. Because the ridge forms a natural loop I decided to name it Loop Ridge. Horseshoe Ridge is another possible name for this ridge.
From the pull off for Mount Ernest Ross first ascend Mount Ernest Ross. Follow the ridge extending North of Mount Ernest Ross to the next unnamed peak which is higher than Mount Ernest Ross. I named it Bridge Creek Peak after the nearby creek. From Bridge Creek Peak scramble down from the peak to join the ridge heading West from Bridge Creek Peak. There is some moderate scrambling if you choose to scramble down around the North side of Bridge Creek Peak. Otherwise you will need to descend the way you came then sidehill around Bridge Creek Peak to reach the ridge. Head West along the ridge over some smaller peaks to the bigger peaks on the Western end, which are Two O'Clock Ridge on the South and an unnamed peak on the right, which I have named Landslide Lake Peak after the nearby lake. If you chose to ascend Landslide Lake Peak it is pretty straight forward with lots of boulder hopping. Come back down from Landslide Lake Peak and proceed to the summit of Two O'Clock Ridge. Because it can be extremely windy you might not be able to ascend to the summit of Two O'Clock Ridge directly and have to sidehill around to the South slopes of the peak. The direct way up to the summit may involve more tricky scrambling, but I cannot say for sure as strong winds forced us to sidehill to the South slopes. Once at the summit descend down Two O'Clock Ridge to Two O'Clock Creek Campground. Two O'Clock Ridge is the ridge with minor summits on it that leads all the way to Two O'Clock Creek campground. Once at the campground hike about 15 minutes down the highway to the trailhead for Mount Ernest Ross to retrieve your vehicle.
Constantin and I had plans for ascending something in David Thompson for this weekend but we had never decided on an objective until we arrived. There certainly is a lot to choose from around here for ambitious scramblers. I had a long ridge traverse on my list that I had told Constantin about which appealed to him so off we went. I had already been up the two endpoints of this traverse, which are Mount Ernest Ross and Two O'Clock Ridge. We ascended Mount Ernest Ross pretty quickly. The scrambling was pretty easy up this peak. We scrambled down to the col between the twin summits of Mount Ernest Ross and skipped the second peak as we both had already ascended it. We followed the ridge North of Mount Ernest Ross to a peak that I named Bridge Creek Peak after the nearby creek. The ridge walking is pretty straight forward with outstanding views. It was incredibly windy up there which made it difficult to keep my balance.
We ascended up the South slope of Bridge Creek Peak. It consisted of scree with some easy rock. The true summit of Bridge Creek Peak was difficult to determine, since the whole summit ridge looked roughly the same height. We summited the West side of it since it was in the direction we wanted to go anyway. To reach the ridge extending West of Bridge Peak, we descended the North West face through a scree gap in the rock. Some moderate scrambling was required to to get over some small rock ribs. We did find a trail that led to the ridge though. We followed the ridge West going over small peaks along the way. This was mostly hiking with some easy scrambling in a few places. There was some very cool red and yellow rock layers in a few places. At one point the rocks were smooth and round which indicates that maybe they were once in a river bed.
The next big peak I named Landslide Lake Peak, since it is the peak bordering the East side of Landslide Lake. Constantin didn't follow me up this peak since he wanted to conserve energy for the remainder of the traverse. This peak was pretty straight forward, consisting of easy scrambling on big boulders with strong winds. The next peak on the ridge is the summit of Two O'Clock Ridge. Because of the incredibly strong winds we decided to traverse to the South slopes of the peak to be out of the wind. It would have been quite hazardous to scramble up the North face of the peak in those winds. We met two travelers while traversing to the Southern slopes that were camped in a nearby valley. I never expected to see anyone here, but I was happy to talk to them. Indeed, I had run into another group once before in this area on an ascent. The sidehilling required to reach the South slope of the peak was very tiring and a bit painful for my feet, but at least we didn't have the wind blowing us down anymore. We could have skipped the summit and sidehilled some more to reach Two O'Clock Ridge, but opted to bag the summit instead. The scrambling up to the summit was easy with a bunch of big boulders to contend with.
After freezing on the summit we headed down Two O'Clock Ridge. There were very nice views of Landslide Lake from the summit. There had been weather to the West threatening us for awhile but it never amounted to anything, thankfully. The traverse down Two O'Clock Ridge is all hiking, which is nice to have at the end of a long day of scrambling.
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