Mount Sir Donald
British Columbia, Canada
July 13, 2026
Mount Sir Donald is listed as one of the 50 classic climbs of North America. Because we were headed to Canada again, I put it on the list of climbs that I would like to do and Laura agreed. After spending a few days in the Bugaboos, we headed to Lake Louise to camp with Hazel to wait until the next good weather window.
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| Canoeing with Hazel on Moraine Lake |
About 5 days later, we made the decision to head back over to Rogers Pass for an attempt at Mount Sir Donald. We weren’t sure what the bear situation was over there. We had seen information on-line about aggressive grizzlies in the area and recommendations to travel in larger groups. We made a feeble attempt at recruiting a few more people to join us, but with no success, we just bought some bear spray.
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| Laura and Justin at Takakkaw Falls |
On the drive over, we stopped at the impressive Takakkaw Falls and had a nice dinner in Golden and arrived at the Illecillewaet Campground about 6:45. We didn’t have a campground reservation and didn't know where to camp so we asked the ranger working there and she said she had one holdback spot available and that she was getting ready to leave for the evening, so we could have it. We happily took the space, set up our tent, and went to bed for the evening.
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| Mount Sir Donald in predawn light on our approach hike |
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| This area is very scenic with waterfalls everywhere |
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View of Mount Sir Donald from the west
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We were up and out early the next day as we knew this would be a long one. The hike up the Sir Donald Trail is very straightforward although steep and long. We were worried about bears, so we talked and made noise yelling "Hey Bear" almost constantly. We laughed about it and it made the time go by quickly, and the miles too. When we reached the lower camp, we noticed that it was full of snow and the passage to the upper bivy at the col between Uto and Sir Donald was blocked by snow.
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| Tracks of critters around the lower bivy site |
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| Discussing route options |
We chose our route as best as we could and slowly made our way up to the base of where the actual climbing starts on the northwest ridge of Mount Sir Donald.
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| At the col between Uto and Sir Donald ready to climb |
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| Justin starting up the NW ridge |
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| Fun climbing on Mount Sir Donald |
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| More climbing |
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| Plenty of exposure |
We had planned to simulclimb the entire route and we were able to do so with just a single rack of cans in a handful of pitches. Heading up the ridge it seemed like the summit never got any closer as the false summits just continued.
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| False summits |
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| More false summits |
After eight hours, we finally reached the summit. I thought we moved really well and steady and was happy with our ascent time. We spent a few minutes hanging out and relaxing. At one point, we let off a yelp to celebrate and unexpectedly heard a return yelp from some other climbers in the area. We never saw anybody else the entire day, but we did hear them!
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| Laura on the summit of Mount Sir Donald |
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Justin on the summit of Mount Sir Donald
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We wrote our names in the summit register
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The summit is airy but has amazing views of the Canadian Rockies
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The descent was long and arduous. There were many repels with our 60 m rope, but we did find all of the anchors according to the Parks Canada description. All the way down the west face we descended with lots of downclimbing between rappels.
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Some of the rappels required traversing to get to the next anchor as you try to stay near the NW ridge rather than descend the west face directly
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Justin rappelling on Mount Sir Donald
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At one point, it appeared we were done with the rappels and the rest was easier down scrambling. We took off our harnesses and loaded our backpacks. We were finally down the west face, or so we thought, when we ran into another anchor. Given our options of steep snow with no crampons or more rappels, we chose to rappel two more times before finally putting our stuff back into our backpacks.
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