Eiffel peak is a relatively popular peak in the Moraine Lake area. It's overshadowed by it's lofty neighbor of Mt. Temple but its interesting ramp/wedge shape catches the attention of anyone willing to trudge up to Larch Valley. It's also visible from the Tower of Babel.

I first noticed this peak during my ascent of the Tower of Babel in 2006 and promptly added it to my list of "things to do".

My regular partners Yuji and Kazumi joined me for this scramble - as did 4 other friends : Akie, Eisuke, Mayumi, Toru and Hideyoshi. At least our group of 8 easily met the 4 person pre-requisite for entering Larch Valley.

After leaving Calgary at around 7am, we met up with Akie at 9am who just happened to live 15min away near Chateau Lake Louise.

As you can see, it's a beautiful day and the parking lot is already full at 9am.

The switchbacks up to Larch Valley were pretty long and boring but at least we never ran out of things to talk about.

Here's the group approaching the valley.

Here's a look back towards Mt. Fay from the trail above treeline. The weather was perfect. Not too hot with a light breeze.

For this trip, we each brought along a beer which we placed under some rocks in a nearby stream. We figured it'd keep us motivitated on the way down.

Here's the group looking up at Eiffel peak. A few members thought I was joking when I pointed it out. Two of my friends (who only did Heart Mtn prior to this) claimed that I told them that Eiffel peak was very similar to Heart Mtn in terms of difficulty. I never remembered telling them that but I told them that if I did, I meant that it was similar... if you leave out the first 400m of elevation gain to this point.

For some reason, I neglected to take a single picture of Temple during this trip. I did see some people scrambling up and took some zoomed up shots but I never took a "normal" photo.

To get to the shoulder of Eiffel Peak, we had to lose some elevation and gain it back on rubbly slopes. Upon reaching the shoulder, we noticed a trail which ran along the ridge.

We ended up taking it on the way back and to our delight, it brought us right to our beers but it's too bad we didn't notice the trail on the way up.

Here's Yuji, Hideyoshi and Kazumi taking a break on the shoulder. We spent around 15min relaxing on the last bit of grass before we hit the rock.

Here's the peak from the shoulder. There was a trail which made its way up to the summit - complete with cairns. However, it was a lot more obvious going down than up.

Here's Toru waiting for Eisuke to clear a small gully before advancing forward. The rock was fairly loose as we got higher but thanks to the popularity of this peak, most of the very loose stuff was already pulled off.

After a leisurely 5hrs from the parking lot, our group of 8 finally made the summit.

The first thing I did was to check out the Eiffel Tower as seen to the left. This tower is around 80m high and is pretty much level with the summit of Eiffel Peak. I wondered if I could take a running jump and latch onto the tower like that scene from Vertical Limit but I decided to try it some other time.

The dark green Eiffel Lakes can be seen to the lower left.

Click on the image for a full portait sized image.

Here's a zoomed up shot of the summit block on the Tower of Babel. From this angle, it looks more like a Fortress than the Fortress in Kananaskis.

We also observed some people on the summit ridge of Mt. Temple from our summit. The people resembled tiny little black ticks as they slowly moved upwards. It made us appreciate the sheer size of Mt. Temple.

I thought about doing Mt. Temple as early as August of this year but I wondered to myself if I could push myself to do another 400m of vertical after summitting Eiffel Peak. Probably not on this day.

After around 30 minutes on the summit, it was time to head down.

Moraine Lake can be seen in the distance. We encountered 2 groups this day but we were the last to descend.

We made sure to leave lots of space between each other since we weren't using helmets. Luckily, nobody came close to being clobbered on the way down.

After arriving back at the trail, we promptly made our way to our beers which were ice cold and so refreshing!

Unfortunately for Hideyoshi, someone must have come across his Coors Light because it was missing from the stream. The other 7 of us hid our beers under a huge rock so were more fortunate.

The day ended with some burgers and Guinness's at the Outpost Pub. A great end to a great day out.