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Sonielem Peak (Missions) - July 20, 2019


Date: July 20, 2019
Trip Leader: Laurel Vielle
Attendees: see below

For the first time this season, we had a perfect weather day to muscle our way up the very steep East St. Mary’s climber’s trail in the Mission mountains. The group successfully made it up the trail and over to peak Y, the first of our destinations.  A few climbers even ran up and tapped Peak X (Lowary) having not climbed it before.  After that, we started the meat of our climb, traversing the ridge between Peak Y and Sonielem.  We decided to stay high on the ridge, which ultimately was a mistake.  While we had a lot of fun scrambling on the class III and IV terrain, it slowed us down considerably.  At 2:00 pm we realized we were only about half way to the high point of Sonielem and made the wise decision to turn around.  None of us wanted to be dragging out of there at midnight.  Those who had not climbed Sonielem made a pact to return and summit a different day, being sure to stay low!   This was a combined climb with Glacier Mountaineering Society (GMS) and The Rocky Mountaineers (TRM) with 2 climbers from GMS and 2 from TRM with the coordinators, Dell and Gail Meuchel and Laurel Vielle, being members of both.  In attendance from GMS were Steve Dagger and Anne Dellwo.  In attendance from TRM were Adam Drobish and Casey Lammers.   Photos by Laurel Vielle