Maligne Lake Trip -- Mt Paul

(Left) Tracey ascending the south scree gully, Monkhead Mountain behind.


Our annual Malinge Lake Trip started off with an ominous wind on Tuesday afternoon. Although the sun was bright, the head wind was not all that welcome.
We reached Fisherman's Bay earlier than we had ever been, and enjoyed a magnificent full moon.

Wednesday we were off to an early start, the weather was cloudy, but did not start to rain until we reached Spirit Island. Luckily the wind was behind us so we made it to Coronet Creek Camp fairly early... noon? We set up camp in the ever increasing precipitation and when it stopped went out for a little fishing. Our friend Craig lent me his wet line and fly rod, finally I caught my first Maligne fish, although under a pound (as you may know you shouldn't expect much from me in the way of fishing).

Thursday we set off to climb Mt Paul. This mountain has captured our desires over the last four years, and finally we were to climb it. As we set out the clouds were high, and so were our spirits. We started to climb around 9 am, via the south gully. Virtually, a massive scree slopes with broad benches to break them up, contained by high limestone walls on either side. I was amazed by the recumbant folds in the bed rock, and the random large boulders scattered throughout the slope. We reached the saddle that showed on the map to reach the peak of Mt Paul at 1pm... this is where it went terribly wrong, the clouds rolled in. From either side of the pass the clouds obscured everything above and below us. We decided to wait the clouds out... what was to be 15 minutes, turned into 3.5 hours! Finally we decided to make a move to the summit as the clouds lifted slightly. What we found as a 35 m cliff not seen on the map! -- ugh! We descened a bit to try another gully that Tracey had seen earlier... this one was promissing! (although a bit of a scramble). This was exactly when the clouds decided to roll back in, started to rain, and Yoho stopped... basically saying he'd had enough -- some border collie! Anyhow, we turned back with only 70m to go to the summit... if it had been a clear day the dog would have been pushed up there if necessary! As it stands, we still have not climbed Mt Paul. Of course once we went half way down the mountain the sky began to clear... err! We did get a few brief views, but will have to try for the summit again next year.

Friday we woke (with a bit of a hang over too) at 6 am, just as we started out it began to rain. Actually it rained (poured at times) and the wind blew against us the entire way back to Home Day... due to extreme determination we made it back in 5 hours... not bad for 22 km into a head wind and rain.
A note to people on tour boats: when the weather is this sh!tty no one from a canoe wants to wave back at you, or hear what you have to say, especially when it's 'nice day eh?'. All we want to do is to tell you, 'hey jack ass, piss off'.