Siffleur Mountain
Route Map
Summit Elevation: 3129m
Elevation Gain: 2348m
Round Trip Time: 3 days (moving time 28hrs 53min)
Total Distance: 58.71km
Technical Rating: Easy scramble
Difficulty Notes: Boilerplate easy scrambling. The challenge is getting to the base of Siffleur Mountain via the derelict cutline!
GPX Download
Preamble
Vern DeWit - Explor8ion.com
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Rick Collier - Bivouac.com
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My good friend Jamie Fehr has been to plenty of places around the globe, and gotten into some pretty adventurous things in the past - skydiving and scuba to name just a few. One item that has been on his bucket list since 2008 is to summit a peak over 10,000 feet - and I convinced him to join me on the grounds that, while the access trail is terrible, Siffleur itself is a less-technical 10000’er and well within both our abilities.
Almost a year of planning and careful review of Vern’s excellent beta later, and with about a half dozen summits under my belt, Jamie and I set off via bike from the Siffleur Falls Staging Area on August 15, 2025 at 1126hrs. We both knew we’d be “in for it”, so to speak - Vern had made it very clear just how bad the conditions on the cutline were, and we had no illusions of making it through quickly with our relatively large packs.
Day 1: Approach
Route Maps: Cycling, Hiking
Elevation Gain: 498m
Moving Time: 7hrs 31min
Total Distance: 21.23km
The Siffleur Falls trail is well maintained, and includes a narrow suspension bridge across the North Saskatchewan river which is just barely wide enough to walk a bicycle across. This lovely crossing is followed by a pleasant cruise down a boardwalk, after which the path to the wilderness diverges from the trail to Siffleur Falls and instead follows the banks of the North Saskatchewan.
After following the river for a short while, we turned hard left up a decently steep slope, and continued along the trail. We restricted our speed as the trail was already reasonably wild, featuring the occasional deadfall prompting us to step off the bikes, and young evergreens threatening to skin us if we travelled much faster.
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Just before the 7km mark, I tired of the trail’s seemingly endless ups and downs, and gave caution to the wind on one of them. I picked up a pretty solid amount of speed - and promptly caught a stick in my rear wheel which hit with enough force to shear my rear derailleur off! We’d gotten a few twigs in our wheels prior to this one, but the force this one carried meant I’d be walking all the way out. Ouch.
Thankfully we were just 800m shy of the wilderness boundary, where bikes are no longer permitted anyways. Alberta Parks has a register here; unfortunately this was too soaked to write in. After spotting an un-signed entry from another scrambler who had bagged Siffleur a month after Vern, I emptied the canister of standing water and replaced the register, this time in a ziploc bag.
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At 1314hrs we set off from the sign and headed into the wilderness. The trail deteriorated rapidly from this point onwards, and frequent deadfall became a fact of life. I suspect the only reason the trail remains remotely passable is thanks to the local elk and moose using it as a wilderness highway of sorts. Despite that, in some cases it was necessary to bushwhack as much as 5 meters off the cutline to get around recent evergreen deadfall just above waist height. We noticed as we travelled that most of the older deadfall has been cleared by some helpful soul - however, trees are simply coming down too frequently for this to make a long-term impact. I’d estimate 60-70% of what we encountered has been cut through, with an additional 20% being fairly easy to just step over if you are tall enough.
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Conditions worsened again as we encountered increasingly large doses of standing water. Jamie wanted to avoid wet feet where possible, and thankfully the terrain worked to our advantage. As mentioned before, the cutline evidently sees a substantial amount of moose and elk traffic; their hooves churn up the already-muddy routes that runoff takes from Siffleur, and create alternating low and high points. While the high points have some “give”, they do not sink far enough for water to fill them if you move fast, and it is possible to cross every wet section with dry feet. Bushwhacking a few meters off the cutline to dryer terrain is occasionally - albeit rarely - required to avoid larger puddles.
At one point, we spotted a substantial amount of standing water - probably 3-4 meters wide and as many long - and decided to bushwhack to the banks of the river, hoping to follow that for a while instead of dancing around on mud and waterlogged moss. Suffice to say this wasted a colossal amount of time and was not in any way worth it. If you come here, my advice (Jamie will disagree - lol) - is to stay on the cutline and get your feet wet; unpleasant or not, it’s the fastest route by far, and your feet will dry out quickly once you reach the remains of the Porcupine wildfire.
The status quo continued for several hours after rejoining the cutline - picking our way around standing water and over deadfall, letting small brush whip and abrade our legs, and marching onwards with the V-shaped cutout of our path ahead stretching off into the distance. At 1844hrs, we finally reached a bend in the cutline. We debated camping there briefly - it was the first workable open area we’d seen so far, bar the riverbank - but decided to go a few kilometers further to an abandoned site Vern had described in his report.
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Somehow the trail deteriorated even further past the bend. We found ourselves shoving through narrow gaps between pine and spruce, with branches often perfectly positioned at eye-poking height, and often dead - meaning no needles, and therefore no cleanly sliding past your body like evergreen branches often do during a bushwhack. At this point, we were both thoroughly battered, exhausted and irritated, and swore our way through the worst of this.
After about a kilometer the trail improved for once, and we found ourselves hiking through the remains of the 2018 Porcupine wildfire. This section would have been quite pleasant, but the trail was quite faint and our tired eyes kept losing it! We realized on the return journey that watching for trample marks on deadfall was the easiest way to keep the trail…
At 1925hrs, we reached the abandoned campsite that Vern had described two years prior. It wasn’t much of a site - just a wider section of the trail free from obstructions and widowmaker trees - but I spotted a decent bear hang almost immediately, and could hear a pretty loud creek nearby. It didn’t take much deliberation before we dropped our packs and made camp for the night.
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Day 2: Ascent
Route Map
Elevation Gain: 1668m
Moving Time: 14hrs 54min
Total Distance: 17.61km
We had ourselves a lazy start (that we’d regret) the next morning, and started along what we thought was the trail at 1020hrs. We ended up on a brief bushwhack across the nearby creek, followed by intermittently finding and losing the trail yet again.
We reached Vern’s approximate ascent point at 1120hrs, after pausing in a plentiful raspberry field to enjoy several fistfuls. The trail beyond this point is littered with an absolutely ludicrous amount of deadfall, and I feel for anyone - including future me, who intends to venture up Laughing Bears Creek next year - who has to work their way past that crap!
The path up the ascent slope was pleasant but steep. I set a relaxed pace to ensure Jamie did not tire prematurely - he is not an experienced scrambler, and this was a crazy introductory trip! The recent burn made for lovely hiking with a pleasantly cool breeze, while a glorious view of the upstream river valley opened up behind us.
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I knew from Vern’s beta that there were two options around a cliff we’d encounter on the lower slopes, namely following the creek to the left or side-hilling around to the right. We decided to follow Vern’s ascent path and headed right, encountering pleasant mixed dirt and slabs. These soon shifted to moderate, and for Jamie’s sake I opted to travel below them on some obnoxiously slick grass - if you come here, I’d avoid this route unless you can comfortably handle upper moderate terrain, or absolutely insist on viewing the upstream valley from this specific angle.
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Slick grass eventually gave way to a hardpack slope littered with young pines, which we followed to its apex. The view beyond this was lovely: a trickling creek wound its way through a massive alpine valley, with sections of alpine meadow hemmed in by towering ridges on both sides. We took a break for lunch, topped up our water, and pressed onwards.
We travelled to the back of the bowl and ascended an easy gully on climber’s right. From here, instead of taking the ridgeline immediately we sidehilled around to the west side. Around 2700m, Jamie began experiencing brief lightheaded spells; given the summit’s importance to both of us, we decided to cut our pace substantially instead of turning back, while I watched Jamie closely for worsening symptoms.
As if on queue, it also started to rain; a good look at the sky indicated there were no thunderstorms in store for us, but we’d be getting a good soaking nonetheless. I wasn’t too concerned as we had plenty of scree to work with, and it wouldn’t affect the safety of our ascent or descent - but the idea of a rainy summit view was certainly demoralising. Our hands weren’t exactly warm, and we stopped frequently both to windmill our arms and for Jamie to catch his breath.
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We still had not made the summit when the rain stopped around 1800hrs. Morale rose as the sky cleared and we realized we were in for quite the treat as far as summit views were concerned. Strong winds (likely in excess of 100km/h) briefly forced us to brace on the final ridge traverse, but with a bit of gumption we made the summit at 1900hrs. The views were “well worth the price of admission” in Jamie’s words, and I have no intentions of arguing with that - nor does the 280MP panorama I stitched as a souvenir! Now I just have to figure out how the heck to get a 24’ canvas print made and shipped affordably…
I checked the cairn thoroughly and came up empty - whatever happened to Collier’s register I don’t know, but it is no longer there. Without a register to refer to, I’d hazard a guess at 5th recorded ascent.
Jamie’s lightheadedness subsided quickly as we started our descent. I showed him the basics of scree surfing, which kept us entertained thanks to a plentiful amount of loose scree and rubble. We made it back to the bottom of the bowl at 2143hrs, and had a choice to make with dusk approaching quickly - backtrack on slippery grass and wet slab in the dark, or follow Vern’s descent path. Vern had described his descent path as “steep scree” and “steep forest”, which sounded a whole lot nicer than the way up, so we decided to give it a shot.
We had hoped for more scree surfing on descent here; unfortunately, the descent path was all hardpack scree and dirt. There were plenty of grippy options to keep descent easy and safe, but it wasn’t particularly fast - and as dusk turned to darkness, we took our sweet time navigating the unfamiliar terrain, with our headlamps on the dimmest setting to conserve battery, and everything more than 5 meters away shrouded in darkness.
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I found myself constantly checking my GPS watch to ensure we were exactly on Vern’s route. Any minor difficulties that he had glossed over could be a much more significant nuisance for us, since I couldn’t do any meaningful routefinding without my headlamp turned up - and I wasn’t sure how much runtime I’d have if I kept it on a higher setting. Thankfully, descent was uneventful and by 2245hrs we had rejoined our ascent path.
Aside from briefly turning my headlamp up to routefind through a small cliff band, descent was largely monotonous from this point onwards. We stopped frequently to snack and boost our blood sugar back to normal levels; Jamie was thoroughly bagged at this point, and while I still had gas in the tank I wasn’t all that enthusiastic either. I had long since stopped taking photos, and both of us were thoroughly fixated on three things: camp, a warm meal, and bed.
Camp was not far off, and we arrived at 0115hrs Sunday morning. Jamie went to bed immediately after we had finished supper, and I was tempted to join him - but I’d been eyeing the night sky during our descent, and knew I had an opportunity I could not pass up, exhausted or not. I stayed up until 0236hrs taking shots of the sky, and ended up with some pretty great results that were well worth the extra time awake. It’s astounding what a modern smartphone can do when you remove light pollution from the equation.
Day 3: Departure
Route Maps: Hiking, Cycling
Elevation Gain: 327m
Moving Time: 6hrs 28min
Total Distance: 19.87km
We had decided not to set an alarm the previous night, and took our time the next morning, starting our way back down the trail at a late-ish 1108hrs. We took a moment before leaving to laugh at how beat-up our legs were - while Jamie had taken zip-off pants, he hadn’t bothered to use the legs, and I’d only brought shorts!
I felt strangely tired as we began our hike out (not that strange after guiding an almost 15-hour scramble stretching past midnight I suppose). Nonetheless we made quick work of the recent burn and manky pine-whack, and reached the bend in the cutline by 1150hrs. Jamie wanted out of this place and had become a man on a mission, and we agreed to have him lead - I had no issue matching his pace, but inevitably slowed down every time I took the lead.
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We dealt with substantially more standing water on the return journey, courtesy of the drenching we’d had up on Siffleur. Jamie’s waterproof boots nonetheless kept his feet dry, while I danced around on the moss as best as I could - though my approach shoes took on water pretty quickly.
Departure was much of the same crap for the next few hours - water, deadfall, scratchy trees, water, deadfall, deadfall, water, trees. I cannot emphasise enough how un-trail-like the conditions on this cutline are. It is passable with enough grit and determination, but I fully agree with Vern’s assessment that people with less “Dutch” in their genes may want to rethink any planned trips here!
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We arrived at the wilderness boundary at 1600hrs, where my efforts two days prior had paid off - the register was now dry enough to leave a messy, barely decipherable scrawl triumphantly proclaiming our poor decision-making process to future sorry adventurers. By 1631 we had stowed our poles and unlocked the bikes.
At this point I put in motion a plan I’d been mulling over with Jamie for the past two days: removing the chain and rear derailleur from my bike altogether. While this wasn’t entirely ideal, it let me push like a toddler on a trike on flat ground, and coast the downhills, which was a heck of a lot faster than walking the whole way out.
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At 1752hrs, battered, exhausted, but overjoyed to see civilisation, we rolled into the parking lot. We spent quite a while remarking on exactly how ludicrous our little adventure was, after spotting Siffleur way off in the distance.
Jamie’s opinion is that the trip was “worth the price of admission - but only once”.
And me?
I’ll be back. Probably not this year - the memory needs to fade before I subject myself to the cutline’s horrid conditions again. But there’s something about just how wild and untouched the Siffleur Wilderness is that calls to me, and there’s plenty more to do there. In particular, I’d love to locate Putnam’s Tower up Laughing Bears Creek, and maybe bag a few less-travelled peaks like Loudon and Peskett.
The only trouble will be finding someone crazy enough to go with - or finding the gumption to do a trip that remote solo. We shall see…