Two O'Clock Peak
Route Map
Summit Elevation: 2808m
Elevation Gain: 1859m
Round Trip Time: 7 hours 59 minutes
Total Distance: 19.3km
Technical Rating: Easy scramble
Difficulty Notes: Steep hiking on bare dirt, and a dash of scree at the top. Upgrade the rating to SC6 if you plan on passing through the boulder field on the summit's upper slopes.
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Preamble
I first remember hearing about Two O’Clock Ridge when I was four years old. Family vacations when I grew up were almost always a three or four night stay at the Two O’Clock Creek campground along HWY 11 - and my brothers and I loved it. Finding cool sticks and rocks, chasing each other through the woods, damming and redirecting the creek as we saw fit - vacation at the creek was something we looked forward to every year.
Two O’Clock Ridge came up time and time again as a hike in the area that we should do as a family - someday. Four-year-old me was very insistent that we should do it now, and that I was big enough and strong enough to make it to the top - as was five-year-old me, six-year-old me, and so on - but my parents wisely never agreed, and we always ended up exploring other areas instead such as Siffleur Falls, Allstones Creek, a dozen or so trips to the cave up Hoodoo Creek over the years, et cetera.
As I grew, so did the mythos surrounding the hike - around age 7, I learned that there was a mountain up there, and if you followed the ridge far enough you could get to the top! But the years passed, and we never attempted it - by the time I was old enough, younger siblings had arrived and now they were too small.
Things would finally change some 17 years after first hearing about the ridge, on June 14, 2025. We had been camping at Frontier Lodge for the last few days, and shockingly the entire family had made it despite our diverging paths in life. The forecast for the day? Rain, but only around Nordegg. Further along Abraham Lake towards the Kootenay Plains and Siffleur Wilderness, the forecast remained dry - the perfect excuse to finally bag Two O’Clock Peak.
My dad, however, did not like the 1800m of elevation gain to the ridge alone listed in the David Thompson Hiking Guide. I was pretty sure this was incorrect (it is; the actual value is ~1500m), but regardless we peaceably parted ways for the day - he and some of the young’ns went for a few laps on the MTB trails at Black Mountain before the rain hit, while I and two of my brothers piled into a different car and headed for the Kootenay Plains.
Ascent
The drive down HWY 11 from Fish Lake was absolutely lovely. The entire corridor has a special place in my heart, and it never gets old seeing the familiar scenery surrounding the crown jewel that is Abraham Lake. We were unsure where to park, and made the decision to pull over on the access road into the campground to avoid any chances of a ticket from the campground owners. It was only a few hundred meters on flat ground to the trailhead from there anyways.
We set off from the car at 1133hrs - a late start, but one that would not cause any major problems for us that day. The trail was well-maintained with reasonably clear signage and flagging, while being quiet enough that it wasn’t worn down to a fine powder with zero grip like more popular routes. Marmots sunning on cliffs below turned tail and ran as we passed them; I made a mental note to see if I couldn’t get a shot of them on the return journey.
Then we got into the thick of it. “Unrelenting” is an excellent description for the majority of the ridge trail; it consists of alternating flat sections followed by grunts that are probably near 40% grade. Having since moved to Banff and started scrambling on an almost weekly basis, I will add that it’s not actually that bad - but at the time, it was pretty tough despite adding trekking poles to the mix for the first time, which were a significant help.
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By 1423hrs we had topped out along the ridge. Oddly enough, the ridge cairn is about 25 vertical meters below the ridge highpoint, despite there being no difficulties in attaining it - and everybody who had ascended for the past while had stopped right there, as evidenced by a patch of old snow just beyond the cairn with zero footprints showing.
Going was easier beyond the ridge highpoint, albeit not by much. The ridge undulates fairly substantially, and is largely composed of alternating loose rubble and a hardpack dirt/scree mixture. We had to gain and lose about 100m of elevation throughout the crossing, which I was not particularly happy about.
As we ascended towards the saddle between Whirlpool and Two O’Clock, one of my brothers decided he was tired of scree and started ascending into a boulder field higher along the ridge. I reluctantly followed; I knew the field was likely quite loose based on Vern DeWit’s Landslide Traverse
Vern DeWit
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After taking our time picking our way through the manky crap of the boulder field, we reached the final ascent slope: an easy hike up a shallow scree incline, which was oddly squishy underfoot due to the recent melt. We reached the summit cairn without further difficulties, and took in the far-reaching views both into the Job/Cline PLUZ and back across HWY 11 into the Siffleur Wilderness.
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The summit register was fairly recent, first signed by Ephraim Roberts on April 14, 2024, and with only a handful of trips since. We were the second ascent party of the year.
Interestingly enough, my altimeter didn’t drop below 2800m the entire time we were at the summit - it hovered between 2800 and 2810m. While I’ve seen variances of 10-15m before, this is a bit much - so I suspect the commonly accepted height (2741m) is wrong. DEM data retrieved from NASA EarthData confirms this, with the highest point measured via satellite being 2788m. 2808m is the average of my altimeter’s summit readings, and is what I’ve added to this trip report.
We trended closer to Landslide Lake when descending to the saddle; I wanted to see whether a traverse down to the lake would be possible from the col. It definitely would go; I may make use of this in a future trip.
Descent from this point was fairly straightforwards; we sidehilled on rubble and hardpack dirt to avoid the boulder field higher up, and went around the ridge on skier’s right instead of going up and down and up and down and up and… you get the picture. Just before crossing the creek on the return, I spotted a marmot sunning in the same spot we’d seen on the way up. I approached slowly, and got some fairly passable shots of it before continuing along the trail and scaring it off.
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By 1932hrs we had made it back to the car - closing off our adventure just barely under 8 hours. An hour after that we were back at the lodge, sharing tales of our adventures with our family.
It’s hard to describe how it felt to summit something after that long on the bucket list. Part of it was triumph - finally reaching that goal so many years later. But on the flip side, a younger me expected more - I don’t know what exactly, but more of something. The reality is that Two O’Clock is just another hunk of limestone surrounded by thousands more like it, and the mythos surrounding it has been dispelled.
That being said, I have one last bit of unfinished business with Two O’Clock. Not all of my family has made it up there - so I may return and guide them up to the summit in a few years’ time…