Roche Miette, Jasper National Park, AB
©2005 Duleepa Wijayawardhana
Album Notes
In September 2004, my friends and work mates Kevin, Shareef and I attempted to reach the summit of Roche Miette in Jasper National Park. As recounted here the attempt was wholly unsuccessful. So in June 2005 I arranged another attempt. Most of the crew that went camping for folks from work and the attrition rate was high. 14 or so came camping, about 9 thought of going on the hike/scramble, 6 made it to the trail head, 4 made it onto the final summit attempt and only 2 of us managed to summit.
The Roche Miette scramble is qualified as a "moderate with difficult sections" in Kane's "Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies". I think Kane did in fact hit the spot on this scramble. The views were amazing, the final summit push up the side of Roche Miette was slightly frightening, but exhilirating with steep scree slopes, some bouldering, some foot work and balancing. Reaching the summit is undeniably a thrilling feat.
The forecast called for rain on the Saturday and by some miracle we had blue skies all the way to the summit and whilst there. The clouds moved in during our descent but nothing that really impeded us. By the next morning with 12 hours of torrential rains, snow had settled on the mountain. We couldn't have been luckier. We also met up with other Alpine Club folks, Van Konrad (from the Opal Ridge hike) and Wayne Vibert and Jim Barrow (from the Mt. Temple ascent).
Matt Goldman and I summitted our second mountain together (first was Mt. Storm in 2003) and for once he did not claim "Never Again" after this one. So, the first summit of 2005 at about 2:26pm June 11, 2005.
