Mt. St. Piran is a small peak in the Lake Louise area which is hardly noticed due to the prominent peaks in the area such as Mt. Victoria, Mt. Fairview and Niblock/Whyte. Even the Big beehive is probably noticed before Mt. St. Piran. It's unfortunate since this peak offers a much greater view with almost the same effort as the fore mentioned Big Beehive.

My partner for this day was a girl from Ottawa named Rie. This would be our first climb together.

I met Rie through a Canadian forum for Japanese visitors earlier this year. She was an individual who climbed mountains in Northern Japan so when she told me she was coming to Banff for 2 months, she happily agreed to join me during my scrambles in the Rockies.

For our first scramble, I decided to try something simple since she had just arrived from Ottawa a few days prior to this climb. Mt. St. Piran was a good objective since it'd give me an opportunity to show her Lake Louise, Lake Agnes and Moraine Lake at the same time.

After picking her up at around 8:30am, we proceeded to Lake Louise where we took a few shots before continuing on towards Lake Agnes. The weather this day was a little strange in that it was constantly switching between rain and sun in 15 minute intervals.

The hike up to Mt. St. Piran was fairly straightforward thanks to the posted signs. After reaching the intersection just before Lake Agnes we turned off towards the little beehive where we encountered the trailhead for Mt. St. Piran in appx. 15 minutes. We found it a little strange that the sign was all scratched out but decided to continue onwards.

The trail was very well defined and consisted of switchbacks on good footing which turned to slabs near the summit. The image on the left was taken about 5 minutes from the summit.

As stated in the Scrambled guidebook, the summit of Mt. St. Piran is full of cairns of all shapes and sizes. There were small cairns, huge cairns and even some rock furniture such as a sofa and even a queen sized rock bed.

Although the scenery around us was obscured with clouds, it was impressive none-the-less.

Here's the Bow Valley on the left and a look towards the Columbia Icefields on the right.

Due to the unstable weather we encountered this day, we decided to descent shortly after arriving at the summit. We decided to take an alternate route down as we descended towards the Mt. St. Piran/Mt. Niblock. col.

As you can see to the left, Mt. Niblock/Mt. Whyte looms in the short distance.

I was probably telling Rie that I wanted to climb them in the near future. Interestingly enough, we'd end up climbing both peaks exactly one month to that day.

After ascending a steep slope full of bushes, we finally made it to the base of Mt. Niblock/Mt. Whyte and then continued on towards Lake Agnes and finally Lake Louise.

We descended the grassy slopes on the image to the left.

We finished our day with a stop at Laggan's where we washed down a sausage roll with a Vanilla Coke. Not a bad day considering the heavy rains which were in the forecast.