Attempting Mount Edwards: Climbing in Glacier Park
- charlesjromeo
- Oct 5
- 5 min read
“Look they stuffed another mountain in over there,” was a common refrain in the years I spent exploring the Glacier National Park backcountry with my buddy Huk. In the 1990s, Huk lived in Whitefish about an hour outside of Glacier, and he was in the park as much as possible during every short summer season; I visited for at least a few weeks each summer.
We hiked many of the trails in the park: lots of day hikes and multiday backpacking trips, with many aspirational peak bags; some of our peak bagging attempts were successful, but many ended in failure. The peaks in the park are steep and crumbly. As many sheer faces as the park contains, one never hears of famous climbers working their way up walls there.
Peaks in the park do get climbed, but it’s often sketchy. I remember one backpacking trip in the North Fork Cut Bank Creek drainage in the southern part of the park. We set up camp at Morning Glory Lake and planned a ‘double bag’ of Mc Clintock Peak and Mount Morgan for the next day. It was Huk, Guester and me. We day hiked up toward our objectives: upon closer inspection it was clear that Mc Clintock wouldn’t go, too steep, but Morgan looked doable. We worked our way up a face of loose steep scree. A cap rock defined the peak. One exposed move would put us on top, but there were no good holds and loose rock was everywhere. Nothing felt safe; we bailed.
Other climbs were more successful. Bearhat Mountain, that Huk and I did one late summer morning, is a good memory. A few class 4 moves near the bottom, then a steep staircase of rock ledges that held together as we climbed. Huk got a few dozen peaks to go; I only got eight.
Terry and I are still making annual pilgrimages to Glacier. These days I’m out by myself, trail running mostly. I’ve run up the Sperry Creek drainage toward or past Sperry Chalet once in each of the past four years. For the first two years my goal was to ascend Comeau Pass and reach Sperry Glacier. I thought I saw all there was of its quickly diminishing remnants from the top of the pass the first year, but after I descended, I learned that an
extra half mile of trekking across glacially scrapped barren rock would bring me to the core of the remaining glacier. I added that journey to my second trip; on that trip, I noticed that there were folks climbing Mount Edwards. The west side of Edwards is sheer and (I’m guessing) crumbly, but it was clear that the section of the east face above Comeau Pass would go. It was too late for me to get up there that day, but I promised myself that I’d be back.
The weather was perfect for long days of running in the mountains those first two years. Last year, the weather was cold and wet and the clouds hung low in the sky. Mount Edwards wasn’t going to happen. It’s a 20-mile out and back run with 6,000 feet of climbing. I chose the Mount Brown turnoff from the Sperry Creek trail and made my third climb to the lookout: only 10 miles and 4,000 feet of climbing were involved—a link to that story is below.
The weather forecast was fabulous for our five days in Glacier this year—it held for the first four days, but deteriorated on my planned day for climbing Edwards. I started up anyway. The first raindrops fell as I passed Sperry Chalet, about 6.5 miles up the trail. I kept going, but my discomfort with being out there was increasing: it was getting chillier as I climbed and I wasn’t dressed for wet weather. With all my experience, I still make mistakes. In this case, when I saw the forecast before leaving Bozeman I opted to pack light, leaving my raingear, hat, and zip-offs behind,
all things that I should have had on or with me. That I was alone also weighed on me. The typically busy Glacier backcountry was empty today, and I had forgotten my Garmin InReach satellite phone. These thoughts were swirling in my mind as I continued up. More raindrops fell. I figured I wouldn’t make Edwards, but I don’t yield easily. I had less than a mile and 1,000 feet of climbing to go to reach Comeau Pass; I’d at least make it there before turning back.
I continued up, fretting but determined until standing in my way were four mountain goats: two mom-kid pairs. One mom was just off the trail and I couldn’t get by her safely. I was on a steep section of trail: tight switchbacks between two rockfaces. I yielded. The goats were the proximate cause, but the weather and my poor planning were bigger factors. I made the right choice, about a mile back down the trail it started to rain in earnest.
I had two miles to go to reach the trailhead when I came to the side-trail to Fish Lake. I had never gone there before. It was only a mile to the lake, and I decided that I needed the diversion. It was a good choice. The Sperry Creek drainage burnt in 2017. Two-to-six-foot pine trees that show that the forest is quickly recovering abound. But it is still a long run through lots of blackened standing sticks. The Fish Lake trail runs perpendicularly to the Sperry Creek drainage: the forest there didn’t burn. The run is through beautiful cedar, hemlock and black cottonwood forest. The trail isn’t heavily traveled so I got to run on a bed of pine needles.
I heard a noise that I mistook for frogs as I approached the lake: It’s too late in the season for a large birthing of frogs. I ran to the lakeshore. There were no frogs, it was a steady rain that I couldn’t feel in this richly layered forest. I took a few pictures, scanned the shoreline for moose while enjoying the magical dryness in this wet forest and started back.
Hopefully I’ll get another shot at Mount Edwards next summer. Right about when I made my goat induced bail I noticed Lincoln Peak behind Sperry Chalet. It’s a shorter trek than Edwards and it too looks climbable. It sits above Gunsight Pass which has a trail over it, and I'm guessing the peak is a regular climb for Chalet guests. Assuming my aging carapace holds up for a few more years and with a little luck with the weather, I could increase my total number of Glacier Park peaks climbed to 10.
In Glacier there are sharp peaks everywhere you turn. In some areas it really does seem like extra peaks have been stuffed in: as though someone, a god probably, decided to bejewel the Crown of the Continent by placing a few extra peaks in here and there. It’s really just side ridges, foothills maybe, that in other mountain ranges would be rounded and smaller than the peaks they extend from. Here, though, there is only extravagance. Jagged ridges upon jagged ridges; sharp peaks atop sheer walls that extend beyond where it makes sense given our frames of reference. That’s why we keep going back!
My Mount Brown story is one of my best from last year. If you enjoyed what you just read, click on the link:
Two pictures from my run to Upper Grinnel Lake:
Good story. Takes me back.
Glad the goats got in your way and you headed back! Love the photos!