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HomeMount Kidd South Peak
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Mount Kidd South Peak |
| Elevation 2895m Height
Gain Time to Reach Summit Degree of Difficulty Scenery Date of Most-recent
Ascent |
Park at
Galatea Creek parking lot and follow the trail to Lillian Lake. This same trail is the
access to Guinn's Pass, Galatea Lakes, and Ribbon Lake. Start early if you wish to avoid
the crowd. Early on, the trail crosses noisy Galatea Creek three times before settling on the north bank. After approximately 3.5km the summit can be seen through clearings on your right. There are no obvious trails through a short belt of trees, and when you come to the next bridge crossing the stream to the south bank you'll need to back track 100m or so. Pick your spot and bushwhack your way through the thickets. As tedious as this may be it only goes in 30m or so. Slog up an embankment to gain open slopes. As you proceed up and to the left the way narrows into a small drainage. Once you reach this point you'll need to use your route finding skills, as the way up will involve a variety of scrambling and bushwhacking. This section is dreadful - don't be surprised if it takes you 30-40 minutes to get through it. You may want to try staying high and to the right of the drainage, although the slope is fairly steep, especially on the way down. When you come out of the drainage, an avalanche gully continues upslope to the summit. It is possible to go straight up this gully on medium-angled slabs, with a couple of brief scrambles through intervening rock bands near the top. The easier path follows a faint trail on the left of the gully, which in 30 minutes or so takes you to the bottom of steep grassy slopes. Angle up and to the left to reach a broad shoulder, at which point the path up to the summit ridge becomes obvious. The first glimpse of Guinn's pass come to view at this point. For the remainder of the journey the path is cluttered with large rocks and boulders. Lichen covering these rocks will be slippery when wet, so exercise caution through the steeper sections. A cairn marks the first minor summit. As you make your way to the true summit to the north-east, you'll need to descend to scree slopes to the right to bypass intervening notches. The summit offers fine views of Mt. Bogart and Mt. Sparrowhawk to the north and Mt. Kidd North Peak to the northeast. Beneath you to the west is Ribbon Lake, with Mt. Buller in the distance. Mt. Engadine is slightly south, with Lower/Upper Galatea Lakes and Lillian Lake at its bottom. Mt. Galatea is in the southwest.
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