Leader: Kate Krawczyk
It was a very windy Friday the day before the trip and it was questionable whether or not the wind would be too strong to attempt the ascent of Gordon’s Knob. But we decided that it was going to calm down a bit on the Saturday and went ahead.
The sun was shining and it was a bit breezy when we started out from Richmond. At the parking lot on Inwood’s Lookout it was a bit more than breezy.
We climbed through to the first ridgeline and the wind was howling! It was hard to remain on our feet, it was blowing so hard. We looked at each other with some concern – after all, if it was blowing so hard this low, it must be worse at the top!
A few trampers expressed their concerns early and with cloud covering the top of the Knob, were not keen to go all the way to the top but we decided to find a sheltered spot and have a break and some food.
We climbed up into the saddle and found a spot out of the wind in some bush. Getting out of that wind was great and we collected ourselves and carried on. We dipped down through the saddle through the bush and reached the tree line at which point a few people decided to turn back and descend slowly back to the car park – the wind and cloud wasn’t worth the push to the summit. The rest of us decided to push on and reached the top about half an hour later.
The irony was that, despite the fact that we were in the cloud and didn’t have much of a view, the wind was actually not so bad at the top; that was strange. The lower ridgeline must have some kind of funnel effect with the wind because it was so much stronger down in that area – which defies logic, especially when you’ve been in the mountains a bit.
There were some rewards at the summit regardless of the view. There were some incredible snow and ice formations on the alpine grasses and rock, and then of course, the satisfaction of bagging the high point of the Gordon’s Knob massif.
There were, of course, some ‘knob’ jokes made on the way, and on the way down. Having signal on my smart phone, I looked up the definition of a ‘knob’, as we had some discussion about the meaning, which is:
knob (nb) noun.
1. A rounded protuberance.
2.a. A rounded handle, as on a drawer or door.
2.b. A rounded control switch or dial.
3. A prominent rounded hill or mountain
Participants were Kate Krawczyk (scribe), Chris Louth, Dion Pont, Sue Henley, Charlotte Orr, Phillip Palmer, Uta Purcell, Dan McGuire, Annette LeCren, Andrea Cockerton, Ian Morris, Pauline Tout & Christine Hoy.