Eon Mountain - Sep 3-4 2020. 3310m. Climbed Eon Mountain yesterday, a striking peak that gets overshadowed by the nearby famous Mt Assiniboine, and doesn't see much ascents because of that (plus the fact that it is a hair under 11,000ft). The bivy location at the headwaters of Eon Creek is fantastic, lots of soft ground, some trees, and a couple of streams nearby. It's reachable in 3 hours or less from the car, you'll gain just over 800m. The hike up Eon creek is easy enough, with a bit of easy/moderate scrambling higher up to skirt some cliffs. We parked at the Assiniboine Lake pull out because of my low clearance car, but you could park even closer/higher with an SUV or truck.

The climb from the bivy site starts with an easy but annoying shale bash for almost 200m until you skirt the SW ridge. You then traverse out onto the SW face crossing the gully, staying right of the main couloir until you gain the grey band at 2850m. It is mentioned in Rockies South that there are no difficulties here, but we did end up on some 4th or low 5th climbing on good rock which appeared the be the best way. It was easy enough to climb up but required inward facing down climbing for a long time with no rock horns to sling for a rappel. It wasn't a big deal, but not "no difficulties". Above the grey band the rock quality takes a turn for the worse, and it's a true Rockies chosspile now. Gaining the red band was no problem, and above that it's mostly a grovel to the summit ridge. If you head climbers right above the red band the terrain is more blocky and that is recommended. I placed a ton of cairns but I doubt most of those will survive the winter.

Once you reach the summit block it says to gain it on the far left (W) side, but we found a little notch and ledge combo some 10m to the right that went just fine and was a bit less exposed (still low 5th). Once you're on the summit ridge, it's quite exposed in places with very untrustworthy rock. I ended up doing 2 belays for my partner. It is no surprise - the accident that occurred up here to Dr. Stone on the first ascent, stuff is very unstable and unpredictable up there. We had a large rock block fall while scrambling that almost took one of us with it to the glacier below, scary stuff. Be very cautious up here, please! The summit is spacious and has incredible views, especially over to Mt Assiniboine with its glaciers below. I wish I took more photos but the wind made our summit stay shorter than we wanted. I did not find a summit register up here despite spending a few minutes looking all over. We did 2 rappels on return, 1 high up on the summit block and 1 to get off of it. A 30m rope was sufficient.

The downclimb from here was tedious and slow with a lot of loose rock to deal with, even on the "good rock". My partner hurt her knee so that didn't help either. The down scrambling was mostly not too hard (standard moderate and difficult scrambling, a lot of it) until the grey band where it was a cautious exposed downclimb, I would have preferred to rappel this but alas. Thankfully it gets easier as you get lower, and the scrambling speeds up significantly once you're below about 2800m. We were 11hours from bivy to bivy, I suspect the injured knee added at least an hour to our descent. Thankfully we were alone on the peak, otherwise we might have killed folks from rockfall! Gloves would have been nice, my finger tips are all cut up from the sharp rock.

The hike back down to the car from the bivy was pretty easy, a bit of scrambling in spots down the cliff bands near the creek, we made it to the car in under 2 hours. The rating in Rockies South is 4th class, but should just say low 5th (is that entire book sandbagged or what?). I do recommend bringing a rope, the downclimbing on the summit block is not very trustworthy. Overall it was quite a nice climb with a lot of hands on, felt similar to Mt Assiniboine which makes a lot of sense! We did not use crampons or axes, despite hauling them all the way up. There are places to fill up your water about halfway up, something to take note of. ~15km return, ~1950m gain in about 16hrs RT. Cheers.