On July 13th, we headed south to the blissfully smoke-free Castle area to visit Mount Miles & Krowicki Peak. After a 5km bike approach and a hike up to Middle Kootenay Pass, we lost aboot 300m elevation following the extremely overgrown Middlepass Creek trail. Alders have covered much of this trail and so this became a signficant bushwhack where we could only see a short distance in front of our faces.
Eventually we reached the ascent gully and enjoyed scrambling the smooth rock on the way up to Mt Miles. After summitting, we paused at the col waiting for storm clouds to pass before doing a long side slope around to the SW ascent slope of Krowicki Peak. Another grind up followed by some hands-on scrambling led us to the Krowicki summit. We decided to drop directly east down a different drainage rather than endure more side-sloping to get back around the original drainage. These peaks don't much traffic other than mountain goats so it was cool to visit them, however this trip requires a high tolerance for alder-bashing and side-sloping!