I climbed Sorcerer Mountain Aug 19th with Madeleine Martin-Preney and a group of GMC guests from a remote camp based at Sorcerer Pass. We ascended the NW ridge which is quite loose on the upper 1/3rd of the mountain with poor quality quartzite. We attempted to descend the NE ridge but we were turned around on the glacier at 2860m due to a massive crevasse. The snow bridge that had been used by previous parties had almost collapsed with the hot weather in the past week and a hanging snow chunk that had been a solid bridge looked like it could be dislodged by a snowball. We were forced to re-ascend to the NE ridge as there did not appear to be any other way around this enormous crevasse. The loss of this snow bridge is significant, as it will take a good winter snowpack to (hopefully) reform this bridge.

In general we experienced excellent travel on the glaciers and rock ridges throughout the week of Aug 13-20th. However, another party attempted Mt Argentine Aug 17th and found the summit bergshrund to be impassible and melted out ice sheets caused significant rockfall hazard on this mountain.

Kirsten Knechtel