Mount Bell Route Map (see link in desciption - or click here - for interactive version).

After the uneventful 5.1km hike through the forest, we emerged at Boom Lake. My older sister, Kaitlyn, and her boyfriend, Evan, decided to join us, not sure if they would come all the way to the summit. The hike seemed to go by faster, with more people to engage in conversation!

After a bit of boulder hopping along the lake, we soon arrived at the base of the avalanche gully we'd ascend (just a bit bushy at the start!).

The higher we climbed, the better the views of Boom Lake became! The ascent gully is characterised by the pile up of avalanche debris jutting out into the lake.

Soon Evan was getting blamed for sending rocks down, but he's no dummy, and kindly passed the blame on to me (who consequently had nobody to pass it to, because I was in the front...rip me!). After some lighthearted joking, we eventually reached the treeline and began traversing left, towards the col.

Kaitlyn continues side-hilling, while Evan builds a cairn to help him find his way back 😂.

There it is!! After a long trudge we finally get a view of what we've been working towards!

At the col...Now the scrambling begins! Kaitlyn and Evan opted to wait for us here, as this was Evan's first time scrambling, and we didn't want to take him on something above his comfort level.

Lots of blocky scrambling on this one!

Around the corner, we were met with a big scree gully. Unsure whether we should ascend it (to the blocky terrain above), or side-hill across it...we saw two "scramblers” descending the blocky terrain above the gully, so we decided to head that way! As we neared each other however, we realized that they weren't scramblers...they were climbers, who ascended the technical NE ridge! Oh well! We continued ascending the same way anyways, hoping they weren't coming down anything too technical, as we were too lazy to lose the elevation we had just gained in order to go around.

Some hands on scrambling up big blocks!

After this section of steep, block scrambling, we arrived at the ridge that led us to the pinnacles.

Mr. McGregor spots you! You can just barely make out two tiny figures (digital zoom is pretty bad eh?) sitting on a grassy patch on the col (note the speck of orange - Evan's bright jacket).

Climbing up loose scree, on the right side of the first set of pinnacles.

Unique looking pinnacle! We scrambled up the scree gap on the left side of the pinnacle in this picture, to join back up with the crest of the ridge.

For the next set of pinnacles, we traversed below them on the left side.

Almost at the summit (far-right)!

Scrambling along the last, narrow bit of ridge before the summit!

Couldn't resist the photo op! ;)

Summit cairn!

Storm Mountain's got a decent amount of snow already! Mount Assiniboine can be seen peeking out in the distance, to the right of Storm!

The Tower of Babel is dwarfed by the mighty Mount Temple! When we scrambled the Tower of Babel, our extension towards Mount Babel followed the obvious ridge rising to the left.

No peaks to interrupt the view of Mount Hector in the distance!

The flat, open valley below Chimney Peak (center-left) and Bident Mountain (right).

Close up of the receding glaciers below Chimney Peak (left) and an outlier!

Bell's got a bit of a glacier hanging onto it as well!

"Chimper" Peak (center) in the valley over!

Looking straight down to Lake O'Brien and two other small alpine tarns!

Castle Mountain fills the foreground. The impressive snowy peak center-right is Mount Aylmer!

Ball (left) and Stanley (right) rise above Boom Mountain's sheer north face!

Summit selfie!

Only a couple pieces of paper in the register! 25th mountain scrambled this season!!

My dad on Mount Bell's summit!

Me, with Mount Lefroy (left) and Mount Temple (right)! Photo credit: Dad

Taking in the sea of peaks waiting to be climbed! Photo credit: Dad

Bident Mountain, Mount Fay, Hungabee Mountain (in the distance), Mount Babel, Mount Lefroy, Mount Temple with the Tower of Babel below, and Panorama Ridge (left to right)! A section of Consolation Lakes is also visible below the Tower of Babel.

Close up of Hungabee, between Fay and Babel.

After having our fill of the incredible views (Who am I kidding!? I could never get enough of these views! ;) ), we made our way back down the ridge, towards the pinnacles.

Beautiful valley to the west!

Looking off Bell's east face.

Heading down the loose scree gap between the pinnacles.

The far end of Boom Lake, with Mount Whymper rising center!

The view back up the first section of the ridge. Once past the pinnacles, we decided to try a route different from our ascent route, down a gully closer to the ridge.

Descending big blocks, as we joined back up with our ascent route! This route turned out to be much easier, and we were glad we didn't have to downclimb the steep section we scrambled up earlier!

Our approximate routes up (red) and down (yellow), to/from the first set of pinnacles! From here, we tried to stick to the ridge, but had to drop down (on the scree slopes) a few times, when the ridge cliffed out.

Looking back, as we near the col!

Boom Lake's log boom is still a long, unpleasant gully away!

With the fun part behind us, it was just an uneventful, knee-jarring trek, running down the steep slopes to Boom Lake, where we found Kaitlyn and Evan waiting for us (they had headed down when we let them know we'd reached Bell's summit).

Looking back up to Bell, as we boulder hop back to the Boom Lake trail.