Mount Cleveland 3191 m

Glacier National Park, USA

Mount Cleveland (left) from lakeshore trail, Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta.

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Mount Cleveland is the highest peak in Glacier national Park, Montana. It sits at the south end of Upper Waterton Lake, and is often climbed by taking a boat shuttle from Waterton townsite, Alberta to Goat Haunt, Montana. From there, we hiked 5 km and camped at Kootenay Lakes the first day. Boy, were the mosquitoes ever glad we came along!

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A foreshortened view of Mount Cleveland from near treeline, showing our route. We took about 2.5 hrs to this point from camp.

A view of the southwest side of Mount Cleveland, west ridge is to the far left. Though it may not look it, there are 1000 metres elevation to gain yet. With no snow, almost any gully would be easy. The first rockband is the highest one you encounter.

Traversing across a snow slope to reach the first rockband on a beautiful July morning.

Maybe it's the routes I choose, but there is never a lack of scree...and there sure is a lot of it on this peak.

This long snow gully was much better than the tedious scree. We were glad to have brought axes and crampons along.

After the final band of black rock below the summit, loose shale and a pleasant walk up a ridge led to the top.

  8 hours later it was a real treat to be on horizontal terrain again. My partner Sim admires the view north of Waterton Lakes to Waterton townsite where we began. The cairn did not have a register, but we did leave a Canadian flag. Just 20 minutes were spent on top and after a late lunch we headed back down. Our descent route followed easier ground to the left ( when descending) and avoided most snow gullies and required 5 hours. We missed the 8:05 p.m. boat back to Waterton though in spite of hurrying, but since we had extra food we spent a pleasant night camped at Goat Haunt. This was a good early season trip to help get in shape for bigger peaks like Mount King George.

For peakbaggers into climbing/scrambling high peaks, Mount Cleveland is highly recommended as an ascent--- but only once!  The ascent is described in the book Climbing in Glacier National Park by J. Gordon Edwards.

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