Mount Assiniboine and Lunette | 11000ers of the Canadian Rockies

Mount Assiniboine & Lunette
3618m, 11870ft | 3400m, 11155ft
August 10 2025

Also widely known as the Matterhorn of the Canadian Rockies, Mount Assiniboine is one of the most well known mountains in all of Canada, and for good reason! From Lake Magog it rises dramatically above everything else in the area similar to Mount Robson, and with sharp relief on either side the view is very much reminiscent of the Matterhorn. During a good weather window in the summer Assiniboine often sees numerous ascents per day up the north ridge and despite the 5.3-5.4 grade is one of if not the most climbed 11000er in the Canadian Rockies. Lunette Peak on the other hand is a nuisance sub peak objective that shouldn't even be on the list in my opinion but if Bill Crobett says it counts then I guess we've gotta do it!

Assiniboine has two standard routes, the north ridge and the SW face, although the north ridge gets much more traffic and is highly preferable compared to the choss covered SW face. The SW face is considered by some as the scramble route up Assiniboine but this is most definitely not the case. The route up this face to reach Lunette Peak is more reasonable and could perhaps be classified as a climber's scramble with significant routefinding challenge, but the section to reach the summit of Assiniboine from Lunette is highly technical and often warrants rappels when descending back down. Generally those that end up on the SW face are those pushing to complete the 11000ers list and gunning for Lunette Peak, and while many treat it as it's own objective it can be linked with Assiniboine in a larger push.

After a week and a half since Mount Fryatt without any 11000ers checked off I was itching to get back out in the alpine and with a window in the forecast it didn't take much convincing to get Andrew LeBlanc, Simon Gauthier, and Liam Pardington on board for Assiniboine! Andrew and I had teamed up on North Vic before, and Simon and I on Temple as well as knowing each other through biathlon but it was Liam and my first outing together and we eagerly set up plans for our trip as the set summit push day got closer! The closest you can get to Assiniboine by vehicle is to drive out the Cross River and Mitchell River forest service roads north of the Nipika Mountain Resort and with all of us carpooling in Andrew's trusty RAV4 we made short work of the approach and arrived at the BC lot for Assiniboine in the early evening with plenty of time to get situated for the night and for the stoke to rise for the epic day to come!

links: STRAVA | GAIA
elapsed time: 18hrs
DIFFICULTY: mountaineering - 5th class, glacier travel, sometimes multiday

First view of the snowcapped Mount Assiniboine!

Aye & Eon Mountain still looking quite sizable as we get closer

After an early wake up we were off by 3am and the intial kilometers went by quickly on solid trail. It was close to a full moon so by the time we got onto the scree we had more natural light to work with than expected which helped with navigation and we slowly made our way up the loose rocky terrain towards the glacier.

I used micro spikes to get up the glacier since I wanted to stay in my approach shoes for the climb and they worked fine aside from being slightly insecure on the steepest sections, Simon, Andrew, & Liam opted for crampons and walked up no problem. After the short lived glacier crossing we switched back to rock footwear and ascended the last scree slope to reach the Assiniboine-Strom col where we could scope out our ascent line and the Hind Hut. From the col it was a whole lot of choss but it wasn't long till we reached the base of the north ridge to begin our ascent.

A couple water crossings to start the trip

Past Assiniboine Lake now and heading up the choss

Looking back, through a good portion of the elevation gain now

We ascended a bit too high here, sidehilling to get back on track

Looking back, the ideal line is to the right

Had a mishap with the footwear getting onto the glacier, clay is not easy to get off...

Looking down at the crew transitioning to glacier footwear, I opted for microspikes here

Some prime views of Assiniboine as we get closer! More clouds than expected
though

Last steps before getting off the glacier

Final uphill scree bash before reaching the
Hind Hut area

Looking down the other side, the Hind Hut visible just left of Lake Magog

Using some snow to access our scree line to the base of the ridge

The climb of Assiniboine's north ridge starts off with lower grade terrain that feels more like climbing the face than the ridge but gets steeper, more exposed, and more technical as you get higher. Reaching the red band about two thirds up the sharp massif of the mountain is nothing more than fourth class if you take the best line but past that things get more serious.

Following the red band the route meets with the ridge head on aside from a couple difficulties that can be bypassed slightly to climber's right for an easier line. Around here we started encountering snow on the face and this is where the ascent got more serious. We climbed a steep section a bit after the red band around the 5.3-5.4 grade that some parties would want to rope up for in the conditions we did it in, and soon after we reached the grey band which felt more secure than the previous airy step.

With the grey band behind us we still had a bit of exposed ridge ascending to go but only one step felt comparable to the difficulty we dealt with before the grey band, and soon after that things eased off and we were on the summit ridge to the top of Mount Assiniboine!

Liam on the lower grade terrain below the red band

Climbing quickly now! No visibility of the east face unfortunately

The snow made things quite a bit tougher here

Quite socked in but enough visibility for a few views

Headed straight into the cloud for Lunette Peak

After taking in the views for a few short lived minutes before we got fully socked in at the summit and caught a chill we decided to press on with our plan to descend via the SW face and check off Lunette Peak along the way. Visibility was quite lacking and initially we headed too far west and had to switch to crampons with the snowy conditions to traverse across the face and get back on track but following this section it wasn't an issue to stay on route. The conditions did make things tricky and what would likely be a rather simple 4th to low 5th class downclimb in dry conditions was much more involved and slow going for us.

Although there were a number of hands on sections, things started off downclimbable but once we reached some large pinnacles on the south ridge of Assiniboine leading towards Lunette Peak the terrain got more serious and with the wet rock we decided to take out the rope and rappel. Here Liam unfortunately lost his phone as his pocket wasn't zipped during the rappel so we lost a good portion of our group's photos for the ascent of Assiniboine. Following this steep section we probably should've descended more right away because what we didn't realize was we could have avoided an additional cliffband downclimb and rappel with a break immediately below us but with the lack of visibility of the entire slope as a whole there was no way for us to know and we got dead ended a couple times and had to do some backtracking and routefinding to continue. For the rappel we did in this section there was tat but we had to do an awkward downclimb just to get to it so definitely not ideal, and while Andrew was rappeling a large loose chunk of rock broke off below the anchor and hit him in the arm and leg. Thankfully he was fine but this terrain is clearly very loose compared to the north ridge so best to avoid this rappel if possible!

Our rappel took us right to the Assiniboine-Lunette col if you can even justify calling it that, and from there the ascent was rather straightforward with a ledge traverse to get around some steep cliffy features to a bowl with various weaknesses on the SW side that we navigated up to reach the summit!

Unknowingly descending the wrong ridge that trends west

We checked the GPS soon after and had to traverse across the face to get back on track, we switched to crampons here

And another downclimb, the snow made things a lot more challenging

Quite the pinnacle here, if it was dry this section could be downclimbed although it would be technical

This section had a series of ledges we followed, looking back we should have
descended more here to avoid our second rappel

Me with the large pinnacle on the ridge behind

The view to Lunette Lake opened up around here

The route traverses around these cliffbands before reaching easier terrain

Some good routefinding skill required here

Lunette Peak summit! Not the views we were hoping for to say the least

After some seriously anticlimactic views atop Lunette Peak we started the descent and it honestly went a lot better than expected. We had heard about groups needing to do numerous rappels after getting off route and encountering exceedingly difficult terrain on the SW face so we were concerned given that we didn't know the route well since we hadn't ascended this way, but with a GPX file and careful navigation we ended up finding the weaknesses in the cliffbands without issue and made good time on the way down.

After the sizable amount of hands on terrain the scree / choss was a welcome break and although the slope down to Lunette Lake was quite foreshortened this section also passed rather quickly and we were surprised to spot a couple grizzlies a few hundred meters below us before we hit treeline! Once we reached the trees it was pretty much bushwhacking until we eventually connected with our GPX file on either a faint mountaineer trail or a game trail which sped things up as we made our way back to the main trail and wrapped up an epic day with a few final kilometers!

The upper section had some good scree which made for easy descending

That being said still quite complex terrain

We traversed left here to get around a cliffband

Mount Birdwood at far left with Sir Douglas & Joffre in the distance

Looking back at the upper cliffbands, easy to see why getting off route on this SW face could get nasty

Mount Sturdee, that left peak probably doesn't get done much!

Final section of hands on terrain before the scree slope

We spotted a couple grizzlies as we got closer to the lake! The black one is the cub

Lunette Lake with Mount Assiniboine, Lunette Peak, & Mount Sturdee above

Although we didn't get the views we had been hoping for, our trip up Mount Assiniboine and Lunette Peak was definitely an exciting one and with the suboptimal conditions it felt good to pull off both peaks! Liam had work the next morning so after exiting and a bit of celebration once we reached the lot we had to head out and get him back to Calgary, talk about making the most of a weekend "window"! It was a lot of fun checking off this iconic peak and hopefully we can get this crew together again sometime for a cool objective in the future! I definitely plan to do Assiniboine again one day when there's less cloud cover to see the epic east face, though I can say with confidence that I'll never be touching that SW face or Lunette Peak ever again.

Just a couple days after this trip the high pressure and low cloud cover weather was holding well around Lake Louise so Troy Martel and I decided to commit to plans we'd been scheming up and gunned for one of the toughest rock 11000ers that also ended up being one of the most memorable trips of the year, for reasons good and bad!

Other related trip reports: The Goodsirs | Mount Alberta | Deltaform Mountain || Mount Fryatt | Whitehorn Mountain

11000ers of the Canadian Rockies