CODY SHIMIZU

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Type: Bolted Multi-pitch with Scrambling
Difficulty: 5.8 with a 5.7 Variation
Car to Car: ~11hrs
Approach: 2hrs
Where: Mount Cory, South Peak
Gear: 60m rope, 10 draws, Few Slings

An underrated bolted multi pitch climb that I really haven’t heard being talked about in the world wide web. I randomly came across this route when I was scrolling through TAVBAR (a great resource for climbers in the Canmore area). This route takes you up the West Face of Mt Cory’s South Peak following beside the iconic Cory Crack. A popular multi-pitch trad route follows alongside called “Hoka Hey!”.

I don’t think we were moving too terribly slow but the entire route still took us much longer then the suggested time on the guide. We started not too early around 9AM where we parked at the Muleshoe Picnic area along highway 1A just outside of Banff.

The trail starts right behind the bathroom which takes you immediately across the road, it’s a fairly narrow, overgrown trail which meanders up until you come across a fork in the trail with a sign which has a picture of a hiker on it. Here you take the left trail which is really steep taking you straight up. After following this steep trail up for a bit it pops you out on the shoulder of a gully feature. After enjoying the views towards Castle Mountain you turn right back into the forest, after a short downhill and hopping a massive tree you’ll cross a riverbed where the trail heads up again. From there the trail makes you go through a burnt forest, it’s a little hard to follow the trail with all the fallen trees.

Once you reach an opening almost like a small sloping field below the beautiful face of Mt Cory. You cross down into a bit of a gully feature where there is a small trail that follows along the base of the wall. Immediately, after going down along the wall you’ll come out to a small bay, if you look pretty far up on the left side of a corner you’ll find the first bolt. If you traverse all the way to an clearing with a view across the valley or to the base of the Cory Crack you’ve gone too far. Be sure to look high! The first bolt is up there.

The first pitch is kinda sketchy and runout with lots of loose rubble, be careful not to kick anything down to your belayer. Then bring up your second off of a tree, from there it’s a short scrambling section from there. The next few pitches are pretty loose. After that there is a longer scrambling section involving 3rd and 4th class terrain. It is possible to belay off of trees and a few bolts but we just soloed the part, just one section with a bit of exposure, at the end of the scrambling cross over to the other side (south side) of the Cory Crack, if you stay left the route turns into Hoka Hey! Which is a trad route. The next 3 pitches were my favorite of the whole route. Absolutely beautiful with exposure and cool movements, on an iconic beautiful face. Then it takes you up to the crux pitch the C-Zack Corner an awesome, super cool feature as you make your way up the beautiful granite like corner.

From there all of the technical climbing is finished, its is just a bit of 4th class scrambling until you gain the ridge. From there go along the ridge with a few 4th class steps to till you reach Mt Cory South summit! There will be a massive summit cairn.

For the descent, we descended down the other side of the south summit to the col between the summit and all the other peaks. From there just carefully make your way down zig zagging down to make sure you don’t get cliffed out. Then we just followed a drainage all the way down, eventually it will all come together where there is a path alongside the side of the run out. Eventually keep an eye out for where you crossed the riverbed on the approach. Then just follow that trail down.