New Rockies Moderate Alpine is Full Moon Corner

The new routing in the Canadian Rockies has continued with another 400-metre alpine mixed route.

On Nov. 5, Noboru Bob Kikuchi and Toshiyuki Yamada made the first ascent of Full Moon Corner. The M6 WI4R is on the 2,695-metre Unnamed Peak next to Storm Mountain at the Trans Canada and Radium Highway junction.

The route climbs above Arnica Lake and was done on the same day Ian Welsted and Simon Richardson climbed a new route up the same feature.

To have two parties head to the same alpine mixed route is rare, to have two on the same day heading for new routes is almost unheard of. Except for the time two teams went to make the first ascent of a route that eventually became Sans Blitz. But that’s another story.

“We saw one fixed anchor (small nut and piton) which looked very old, near the top of the route but it seemed to be used for rappelling so we believe we are the first people to climb it,” said Yamada.

“We named our line Full Moon Corner since the full moon really helped us climb in the dark.”

The seven pitch climb is mostly drytooling over snow and rock with a few sections of ice. The crux is the M5R pitch six, which climbs patches of ice to a slope.