Goat Mountain via the northeast face, peak 1, 2, 3 (Peak 4 being the summit). We ended the trip with summiting Yamnuska from the Yam/Goat col. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but my feet were hating me by the time we got back to the parking lot.

A note of caution: I wouldn't go anywhere near the NE face with another group already climbing or descending. The whole face is loose. Even being careful, we caused a lot of rockfall. Using ropes on rappel will inadvertently send large amounts of the crumby face to the trail below. We disturbed a rather large flake that was barely attached to the upper slab, sending it crashing down with a pile of debris picked up along the way. Wear a helmet and mind your ropes.

Northeast Face - We ascended the 5.3 gulley mentioned in trip reports from Bill Kerr and Steven Song. While parties have pitched out sections of this, we scrambled all the way to the ridge. Despite how loose everything is, we found solid holds the whole way. Honestly, I didn't see much that I'd trust for protection anyway. As mentioned in other trip reports, trending climbers left after the gulley gets you to a slab. We we chose to climb directly to the rap rings once we saw them. It was raining, so a few moves felt trickier than they probably are when dry. The knife edge ridge you top out on is a really cool feature! It's narrow with a steep slabby drop on either side.

Peak 1 - The obvious trail leads to an option to scramble a laid back chimney, or go around and switchback up loose steps. We chose the chimney up, and steps down. Some more scrambling brings you to the peak. There is a trail map that shows a bypass around the peak. I think this is the "loose and steep gulley" mentioned in So Nakagawa's report going South to North. We scoped it out on the return and decided the ridge route to be best in both directions.

Peak 2 - We walked and scrambled along the ridge, then down climbed towards a long gulley on the north side of the ridge line. It's super exposed on the south side. Like 200m exposed! There's a very distinct (yet narrow) ledge that traverses across the top of the gulley. We crossed that and up and over the other side. The trail from there was intermittent as we scrambled up and over a number of smaller peaks along the ridge. Like the NE face, these sections are loose, but the under the crumby surface are plentiful. It's easy to get into a flow state moving over this terrain. Communication with your partners is key to not taking them out with accidental rockfall.

Peak 3 - Shortly after leaving Peak 2 you cross an exposed low spot in the ridge. It's a short couple steps, and wide enough, but you definitely don't want to screw up down climbing to this section. Beyond that, more ridge lines and more scrambling. Up and down, up and down. Some spots we went right up and over, some we skirted around. It started raining again, so we waited out the rainclouds on a low part of the ridge. No real cover, but the best spot we could find if there was lightning. Eventually we arrived at the "bolted" slab. One bolt down low, one bolt 2/3 the way up, and rap rings at the top. I anticipated being able to place additional gear, but there was not much to work with. I used one small cam about 1/3 the way up in the obvious crack. This wouldn't have been overly concerning if it hadn't just rained, people do this unroped. But, it had rained, and there were a few spots that had my heart pumping. After that, the peak is a short distance.

Peak 4 (Goat Mountain Summit) - Some easier hiking and scrambling to the summit block. There's a couple noticeable options to gain the summit. We notice a cairn on the south side, so opted to go that way. We scrambled a diagonal ledge up, having to crawl for parts because of the overhang. A few short scramble sections from there brought us to the summit! We met another group that had ascended from the south. They were going back the way they came, as were we. We'll tackle the rest of the traverse another time!

Return - We mainly took the same route on the way back. we made a few deviations to bypass highpoints or awkward down climbs. Our intent was to bypass Peak 1 after noticing a very distinct trail that looked to do exactly that. We followed the trail to an exposed gulley that looked worse than the exposed scrambling above. We decided to scramble back up to our original track. This was a bit sketchy, but worked out in the end. We rappelled the NE face starting at the rap rings just below the knife edge slab feature. This is about 15m. We then traversed north to a healthy looking tree. We rapped a full 30m from there. This landed us on a slight bench. From there we down climbed the same section we up climbed above the 5.3 gulley. We traversed north again, bringing us to the top of that gulley where a we found a somewhat healthy looking tree with tat. The tat was good and had a ring. We rapped a full 30m from there, which left only a short section of down climbing to get back to the trail at the bottom of the scree slope.

We didn't have to, but we hiked up the west ridge of Yamnuska, and descended the east ridge. Taking full advantage of having no kids for the day!