Postcards from Alberta: August 2015

Abbot Pass trip, day 3 (Fuhrman ledges route from the hut to Lake Louise)

The Fuhrman Ledges was a great descent route from Abbot Pass to Lake Louise. From Lake Louise, we hitched a ride to our car at the staging area for Lake O'Hara. Took us about 6 hours.

I didn't take any photos on the actual ledges, which were wildy exposed but extremely cool. It was like something out of Lord of the Rings, you could not see the route from afar until you were actually on it.

There were 3 areas that were protected by cable and a couple of tricky exposed spots that we solo'd that are worth considering protecting with a belay.

Crossing glacier near hut

Past glacier and shooting gallery of rockfall from Lefroy

Finding the start of the ledges and one of 3 cables

End of the ledges near the scree descent to boulderfields and Lefroy glacier / Victoria glacier

Crossing the gravel covered lower Victoria glacier

Looking back at the Fuhrman ledges and ascending to the Plain of 6 glaciers trail

We all hopped into the lake for a quick swim - it was cold but so refreshing!

Abbot Pass trip day 2, Mt. Huber (continued)

Dropping from SE ridge to Huber glacier

Looking at our objective

Traversing across steep face during the ascent, recent storm snow was about 4" thick above hard ice. Protected running belays with ice screws. Crossed a poorly bridged crevasse that ran across most of the face.

We traversed across the front to the very edge of the glacier and ascended where we felt there was less chance of triggering a shallow slab

Summit of Huber! Accidentally walked right up to the cornice. Upon retreating from cornice, promptly fell in a crevasse to my knee right near the summit... heavily crevassed little mountain.