Read's Tower

Last weekend Tom and I decided to attempt a hike we've been wanting to do for a while: Read's Tower/Sparrowhawk Tarns... but we only ended up doing the Read's Tower portion, so will have to go back to explore the Tarns.  Read's Tower loop is about 11 km round-trip with 1125 m of elevation gain.  It starts from the Sparrowhawk Tarns parking lot on the Spray Lakes Road, but quickly branches off for a slog up steep scree slopes.  We still managed to reach the summit of the Tower in about 1:45 of moving time, so a respectable pace.  We started losing some people when we got back down to the bottom of the saddle and informed them they had another scree slope to head up to get to the pass... from there it's a dryas meadow slope down to the Sparrowhawk Tarn trail.  Because it was getting late and some of us had enough we just took the pleasant rolling, well-packed dirt paths back to the trailhead rather than ascend into the tarns.

Read's Tower Hike profile

Tom on the ascent.  Read's Tower is the triangular feature on the right, Mt. Bogart to the left.

Tom above Spray Lakes.  It was a bit hazy out because there was a controlled burn going on just south of us along Buller Creek.

Xavier & Anka

Duncan & Breanna

There was a lot of scree on the way up to Read's Tower... we ended up cutting across to the far right or the slope (going up) where there was more exposed rock and vegetation, making for more stable footing.

The shutter-bug... snapping a photo of me setting up for the group shot.

The group shot

Panorama view from the top of Read's Tower... Spray Lakes in the centre, Mt. Bogart on the right, Buller Creek is the next cirque over the mountains to the left (where the fire was).

Read's Tower from the saddle between it and Mt. Bogart.

Having a bit of a rest in the saddle.  After coming down ~300 m of the Read's Tower there was another disheartening scree slope to ascend to get to the saddle... but well worth it because heading out on the Sparrowhawk Tarns side is much easier on the knees!

View of the Sparrowhawk Tarns side (Read's Tower centre, Mt. Bogart just to the right of it, Sparrowhawk Tarns is the valley in the centre, Mt. Sparrowhawk on the far right.  Exit out to the Spray Lakes Road is to the left of Read's Tower).