Mt Galwey Scramble on 25-Jul-2025

Participants: Pam, Carolyn, Simon, Tatyana, Maryse, Stephanie

Total Distance: 6.81km, Elevation gain: 950m, Total Time: 4h50min

With strong winds we were unsure if we would be able to make the summit, but to fortunately the direction of the winds we were protected by the summit block.

Due to recent popularity of the window, there was a clearly defined and pounded in trail all the way to the summit block. Once over the bumps and hills, there is what appears to be a long and arduous scree section, which in reality is not bad at all and is ascended in 20 minutes. This take you to the first scramble, which is easily climbed and then you wrap around the backside of the mountain.

Here again, there is a clearly defined trail with lots of cairns making the way. This leads you to a gully, where and to the front of the summit block. There is one spot where being tall certainly has its advantageous.

Once on the front of the summit block the fun scrambling begins, with the traverse across the ledges. While the lower ledges look like the only possible way across, they are not. Just above and slight to the right there is a large cairn marking the way across the upper ledges. These are the ledges Sim Galloway is featured in on the front cover the 3rd edition. Although, initially tempting to use the lower ledges because the window is easily seen from them, do not. The upper ledges offer far better foot and handholds and are much larger than the rubble below.

The upper ledges conveniently also take you right to the start of the gully that must be ascended to get on top of the summit. Again, the initial first step in the gully was more challenging for shorter people. Although daunting at first, the gully is keeps you in nice and tight and makes you feel more protected. Once through the gully, it is a simple walk to the top, with lovely views of the surrounding peaks.

Descending the gully was much easier than anticipated and the large step at the bottom was not bad at all. At the ledges, Stephanie and Carolyn chose to remain high and follow their route back out, which led to the large cairn spotted at the start of the ledges, and a simple walk off. The rest of the group chose to drop below the crumbly lower ledges, but this required another upclimb in a crack where foot and hand placements were trickier because the rock in the center was not stable.

Once back off the ledges, we followed our route back down using cairns and our GPS track with some minor deviations but no challenges.