At the crisp hour of 10am Finn, Logan and I started our journey beginning from Kokanee Glacier hut and trekked our way along the magnificient Sapphire Lake Trail.

This trail is truly wonderful as it wanders along the babbling and chortling Griffin creek, as well as plentiful crystal clear pools with which you could dip in to cool off or simply reflect. The only exciting part of this scenic trail is that you must jump over the river at some point. Depending on the time of year this can be more or less difficult.

We cutoff from the main trail just before Sapphire lakes to head up a ridgeline towards Mount Giegritch. It was a fairly easy ascent only made slightly more tenuous by wildfire smoke filling our lungs and solid 30 degree weather. Keep note of the heat as this would be an important aspect going forward.

We honestly weren't sure if the ridgeline would go so we did a bit of exploring and, loe and behold, a path lay before us. A few sections were fairly intense with steep dropoffs on either side but for the most part it was fairly gentle meandering with amazing views of Kokanee Glacier park.

We were feeling a bit high (from the elevation and smokey weather) so we took plenty of breaks to rebalance and re-center as well as consume much water. The heat was absolutely giving us a beating as we traversed across over to Nansen mountain. We were certainly reaping our just punishment for the late start.

Heat, desparation and lack of water drove us down from the ridgeline and towards a nearby creek where we briefly refilled, chilled, drank and summoned the courage to continue.

Back on the ridgeline we had some steep scrambling both up and down but encountered few areas with serious class 4 exposure. Generally we stuck to safe routes that limited our exposure since we knew that the heat and elevation could give us an out of body experience.

However our luck ran out when Logan discovered the chunkiest ticks known to humankind, one each on his leg and on Finn's back. We were already feeling the heat, and adding ticks was just what we didn't need at that moment. Moral was at an all-time low but we decided to continue the trek to Mount Robert Smith at least before turning back. Boomerang mountain would have to wait for another day.

Robert Smith, bagged. However, we were eager to get out of there as the Tick, heat, exposure combo was weighing heavy on our souls. We decided retreat after refuelling, cutting down Robert Smith and into the valley below, accepting that this would mean a bit more elevation gain and loss but reduce exposure overall.

I was scrambling up a steep section in the trees and decided to grab onto an apparently very loose rock with both hands. As I pulled, the rock started sliding down with Logan and Finn below and me still holding onto it. I yelled out, "ROOCK", and tried desparately to hold on before it tumbled onto them. I don't exactly remember what happened, but when I looked I noticed with relief that Finn and Logan had both managed to avoid the rock. Unfortunately I didn't escape unscathed as my arms and legs took quite a beating from the rock scraping against them. Nothing that would stop or slow down our return to base camp but I knew it would sting quite badly the next few days.

We speed-packed our way back down, running some sections, filling our water and generally glad to be out of there in one piece.

8ish hours later we returned, changed but intact.