Postcards from Alberta

Some photos from the ice opener in Waterton

2011-12-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

I tried ice climbing this past weekend at the ice opener with Jollin... There was a large-ish group of people including a number of first timers such as myself as part of an informally-organised 'ice opener' (ie, get out there and ice climb!) event.

That's J. in the top photo (I assure you, that is not a toy GI Joe on an icicle in my backyard!)

Great fun! But because of the large group, it felt kind of like skiing under the chairlift (only instead of thinking, Don't wipe out! Don't wipe out! It was more like, Please don't fall! Please don't fall! There was a fair group of 15-20 people, all really nice folks).

Kudos to the organizers for doing this year after year! Check out Chris Goble's Waterton Blogspot for more info on the ice opener http://waterton.blogspot.com/2011/11/2011-waterton-ice-opener.html

Wall Lake, Dec. 2011

2011-12-05T21:06:00.000-08:00

We skiied to Wall Lake with the Chinook club this past Sunday, Dec. 3rd/2011. Nicolas, Kristien and I were accompanied by Lucie, Claudia and Jollin and their kids, also pulled up in their sled. On the way to the lake, the Pavliks caught up and overtook us (speedsters!) Nicolas was having fun until we got to Wall Lake. He must have decided that was enough, since he cried all the way from the lake to the start of the descent down from Akamina (almost 1.5 hours!) I think we will go cross country skiing again this winter together as a family, but a 6 hour outing is probably way too long for him to sit still. Maybe 2 hours of skiing with a 2 hour break with another 2 hours of skiing at the end of the day, with no drive (perhaps do-able in Canmore).

montreal, nov. 2011

2011-12-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Video de Nicolas, Oct. 2011

2011-11-07T18:48:00.001-08:00

The List

2011-11-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Short day trips
1. Curly bear scramble (bike approach)
2. Grinnell point scramble (check out Josephine mine)
3. haystack butte family outing (FO)with baby backpack
4. Cross country ski to Red eagle lake, FO
5. Bc ski under divide Mtn on reserve, FO
6. Fo ski wkend in Glacier, Ski up elk mtn in marias pass one day sans bb, ski with baby sled in marias pass, blackmail hills
7. Cleft cave trip
8. Rock climbing at stone hill combo familyncamping biking hiking

Other trips:
1. Yellow mountain (is it possible to bike the 7 mile Slide lake approach to the park via the reserve

Other trips
1. Poia lake cave http://scottwickizer.com/?p=20

Big days
1. Castle peak
2. Wilbur
3. Floral park traverse
4. Lake macdonald via gunsight pass

Backpacking trips
1. Merritt
2. Blackfoot
3. Wapta ice fields peakbagging trip or Columbia ice fields trip
4. Canoe trip Milk river camping

Plus....
Texas
Las vegas red rocks climbing gambling shopping trip
Mtl
Cypress hills star party
Banff ski trip winter
Waterton ski trip
Try ice climbing

2011-10-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

Pix above by J. Charest.
7 pitches of trad climbing to the top of Bear's Hump with Jollin and James! (Lichen Left route, as per Chris Globle's guidebook).

James and I set up some top-ropes to practice ‘fake-leads’ a couple of weeks back. It was a hoot and we got some practice building anchors, rappelling and placing gear while safely roped up from the top. We did several laps on the same pitch and so this week-end, I felt sufficiently secure in my abilities to try leading a pitch in the same area (easy class V… 5.4).
Today James and I were accompanied by Jollin C., who has done lots of trad climbing before.. We discussed our goals for the day – doing some practice placing gear, just having a fun day out etc. Joll didn’t feel like doing anything hard and preferred bolted routes if we could find them. We definitely didn’t want to push outside of anyone’s comfort zone.
__________________

Feeling reasonably good about climbing in the same area where James and I did laps last week, I volunteered to lead the first pitch, which I figured would be the easiest psychologically, if we did decide to continue on up higher… After getting 2 feet off the ground, I realized immediately that freaking out was a distinct possibility. Trad climbing is completely different mentally than top roping, even if on the same route! DUH!
I was ‘all shook up’ like the Elvis song - my hands were shaking and my knees were weak. Took me an hour and a half to go up 75 feet and I ran out of gear cuz I placed so much protection. It was a great learning experience and I felt good about the multi point anchor I built at the top to belay my friends to my ledge.
OK, my anchor might have been a bit embarrassing, I had 6 pieces of protection for my cordalette and I couldn’t use them all cuz my cord was too short.
The rest of the day was a blur, as I had run out of quick draws at that point, I built my anchor and belayed the boys up and Jollin finished up the route I was on… we arrived at a wide ledge that James and I were familiar with from a couple of weeks back, and we had lunch… then James lead a pitch and Jollin followed with a pretty tough pitch. It became clear at that time that there were no more trees above us, and it was the point of no return (if we continued upward, to rappel down would probably mean sacrificing gear, instead of rappelling off a tree…)
I wasn’t feeling up to leading anything else and in any case I’m pretty sure the others wouldn’t have let me - in the interest of time… but Joll was in the zone and felt comfortable leading and James and I were able to follow (but 'Lichen Left' was still a lot harder than I would have guess for a 5.5). We did 6-7 pitches in total, mostly half rope lengths… We had two ropes and used a system where the middle guy would clip the second rope and haul it behind him like a long tail, so we would never have to toss a rope down to the third guy. I usually went third and cleaned the routes (removing the protection and clipping them to my harness as I climbed up).

I saw a hawk flying below riding the thermals and just felt so weird climbing up there just the three of us all alone with the townsite below, Mt. Vimy and Cleveland in their glory dominating the views above the lakes.
We topped out on the tourist viewpoint on the Bear’s Hump at about 6 PM after having started about 10:30ish. A fantastic, fun, HUMBLING day in the park. Thanks James and Jollin!

Climbing the ursine hump (Top roping in Waterton, Oct. 2nd, 2011)

2011-10-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Lineham Ridge (Waterton, Sept. 25/2011)

2011-09-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Red Eagle Lake (GNP, Sept. 18/2011)

2011-09-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Stick a fork in it, summer's done!

K. and I drove to Logan's Pass (Glacier National Park, Montan) today with the Chinook outdoor club. Our goal was to hike the highline trail from the pass and climb haystack butte, a minor feature that juts up a just few hundred feet from the trailc with airy views unfolding in the expanses of space in the deep valley below. Plan was aborted! Not only was it raining and cold (4 C), it was so windy that the rain was hitting you horizontally! We decided to hike to red eagle lake near the edge of the park to get out of the rain.

There were interesting views along the trail, very Blair Witch-esque through the remnants of the forest fire from a few years back.

The grasses and wildflowers were turning fall colours. We heard lots of elks bugling in the morning and saw a bald eagle near the start of the day. The 1913 ranger cabin looked interesting but it was all boarded up.

We hiked from 10:30 to 3:30 but never made it to the lake (we turned around at the bridge crossing).

We ended the day with some refreshments at the St. Mary Lodge and supper at Park cafe (we had the rhubard pie).

Sugarloaf Fire Mountain Lookout (Crowsnest Pass, Sept. 11th/2011)

2011-09-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

Mt. Logan kicked (my) ass

2011-08-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

August 19-21 (2011). Taking advantage of the good weather, Chris C. and James Y. joined me for a most excellent backpack/peakbaggin' adventure!

With a full weekend, I thought it would be interesting to do something with glacier travel/general mountaineering etc.. After considering various options, we decided to try Mt. Blackfoot in GNP. We were able to snag the required permits for back country camping (one night at Gunsight Lake and one night at an undesignated spot at our high camp below Mt. Jackson).

Our plan was to take off right after work on Friday, hike in via the Gunsight Lake trail and camp... Since success on Blackfoot was far from guaranteed, the plan was to make a quick ascent of Logan to ensure we got up at least one peak, then try and follow the ridge from Logan to Blackfoot... or alternatively climb Logan and descend to the glacier and then try the glacier route on Blackfoot as far as we could go, knowing that the crux of the route was probably pretty dicy and beyond our level of comfort.

Day 1: Hiked to Gunsight lake. Hustled to drive to the park after work and arrived at the Jackson glacier overlook trailhead at around 6:45 PM. Had eaten a sandwich for supper during the car ride and got going around 7:15ish... Saw a moose en route and bumped into some scrambling acquaintances - Andrew Nugara and Raff-the Mountain-Ninja, who mentioned casually that they had just summitted Mt. Jackson as a daytrip. (Some people are just in too good shape!)

We arrived at the avalanche debris field just before Gunsight Lake in full-on darkness. I had been warned at the back country office that the trail had been wiped out by an avalanche at some point and some route finding was necessary, but holy crap! Crossing that debris field in the dark was like something from a nightmare! It was like a dozen large dozers had run amuck - huge, broken trees scattered in piles willy nilly all over the trail with a mix of mud and snow gluing the entire mess together.

After some messing around, Chris and I somehow lucked out into finding the faint hiker's trail that (mostly) skirts around/above all of the deadfall, while James suffered through his own personal hell as he muscled through the debris field lower down and ended up having to bushwhack accross a little ravine to regain the trail. Arriving at the camp in darkness, we were happy to find an open campsite waiting for us. We set up our tents and went to sleep under a crisp starry night.

Day 2, Mt. Logan. Awoke to find Bullwinkle in our camp. A HUGE bull moose with a full rack was wandering around. Tired from our approach with full packs the previous night, we slept in and only left camp at 8 AM. It took a couple of hours to hike to our high camp and so it was 10 AM by the time we got going. Mistake #1. Note to self. Next time get going early, as in an alpine start...

To sum up the day - the approach was long! It took a couple of hours to get accross the little valley to the lunar-esque bowl at the foot of Logan/Blackfoot, then it took another couple of hours to cross past the dozens of little ledges/waterfalls/snowfields to gain Almost a Dog Pass. We followed Edward's West face route (as described in some detail on summitpost) to a tee. Class III all the way? I think Edwards was laughing at us from Heaven as we s*** ourselves on those goat ledges. It would have been a time saver to ascend the snow fields to gain the ridge, but we were somewhat unsure of our ability to self arrest due to their steepness. Plus we wanted to bag the peak, so ultimately we decided to stick to the easiest known route.

The west face route is by no means direct, but it was cool. The goat trail ledges were reminiscent of the diagonal route on Reymolds and the class 3 cliffs below the summit were a blast. Finally, we topped out at 4 pm. It had taken us 6 hours to summit from our high camp, and it had been 8 hours since we had left Gunsight lake. We were hard pressed to get back to our tents before nightfall. The ridge from Logan to Blackfoot looked beautiful - so close but yet so far away. An attempt of Blackfoot would have to wait for another day.

*******

We did a minor variation on the return trip. After descending to the base of the mountain, we decided to walk across the snow fields skirting the bottom of the glacier in order to stay high enough to get around the bowl. This didn't save us any time as we took a lot of pix and it still took us a couple of hours to get across. As daylight faded we thrashed our way down through the alders to the snow bridged stream emanating from Jackson glacier. For the second night in a row, we were hiking in full darkness! Our camp was nearby, but the problem was we had chosen a room with a view (above the valley floor, adjacent to Jackson glacier). Someone suddenly yelled, "ROCK" and I felt like a blind man playing dodgeball as the rock whizzed through some nearby bushes. Finding the smooth, rocky slabs that we had scoped out earlier from afar, up we went. Finally we hit the familiar snow patch that lead us right to our tents. Made it back at 10:30, 14.5 hours after having left Gunsight lake. Exhausted, we chowed down for a quick supper under the milky way.

Day 3. Hiked up Jackson glacier to Blackfoot/Jackson col. Had a surprisingly decent sleep. Chris found a good spot for his little one man tent. Tent options for me and James were either lumpy or sloped... We went for lumpy. My $50 3 man tent was battered by wind all night, but what else is new! Note to self: get new tent!

After breakfast, we roped up and practiced some glacier travel. We reviewed the basics of crevasse rescue and probed around carefully as we hiked up. There were some fantastic snow nuggets that had fallen onto the glacier, and we had heard rockfall at times during breakfast and were mindful to avoid those runout zones.

It did not take much time at all to hike up the Jackson glacier to the col between Jackson and Blackfoot. From that vantage point, it looked difficult to gain the false summit of Blackfoot by that route.... something I had always wanted to check out. The glacier was littered with thousands and thousands of little dead moths... At the col there were hundreds of white butterflies (not moths) flying about, perhaps a migration?

Views were great; Harrison glacier was splendid. Mt. Walton and the views down the other valley were fantastic. We made good time back down the glacier and quickly passed under some hazard from above and got back to our campsite at 12:45 and were on our way at 1:30.

Return via the Gunsight lake trail was mostly without incident. Chris, who has a decade plus in reserve on me and james and is quite athletic, got ahead of us as we descended to the Jackson glacier overlook trail. Out of view, Chris hadn't succeeded in finding the trail as we had surmised, and unknownst to us he started to work his way back upwards and got a tad lost, probably at the same time as James and I had spotted the trail below and had dropped straight down. Hitting the trail, we passed underneath Chris as he searched for the trail in a forested area below Mt. Jackson. Thinking that Chris had found the trail and could smell the home beers, we hustled to try and catch up. Chris, in the meantime, thought we were waiting for him and went a bit apes*** crazy searching for us, hiking down to Gunsight lake campground, then running back up the entire glacier overlook trail, not believing that we would have ditched him. Despite spending at least an hour looking for us, he still caught up to us at the end of the trail.

Note to self. Owe Chris beer. Also have group discussion before heading out about group travel and what to do about getting separated! Also be more organized. Chris was always waiting for us in the AM as he was the first one ready and the only one with the route description, which was needed... And bring map!

Note to self: can get onto Jackson glacier and skirt edge of snow and ascend steep snow fields to get onto Blackfoot glacier to avoid the crappy approach to Blackfoot glacier bowl, however some exposure to icefall/rockfall so would need to start early, might only save an hour. Alternatively camp in Blackfoot glacier bowl. Beautiful. Take 3 full days. Practice a couple of cookie cutter routes on glaciated peaks in Banff like St. Nic or Rhonda, etc. False summit of blackfoot might go still, study pix.

Notable quotable (James): Women and huckleberries are a lot alike - except one gives you s*** and the other gives you the s***s.

(re: various discussions on length of ice screws and their depth of insertion, etc.) "That's what she said!"

(Me, on stream crossing going past Gunsight): Well, that was still better than a kick to the groin.
(James): There is nothing worse than a kick to the groin

(Me, on approach in the dark up to our camp after 14 hours on Logan:) THAT was worse than a kick to the nuts!
(James) I agree.

Nico's 1st birthday, etc.

2011-08-08T21:45:00.001-07:00

Logan's Pass (Aug. 7, 2011)

2011-08-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

Siyeh Pass (Aug. 7th, 2011)

2011-08-08T21:21:00.001-07:00

If a picture speaks a thousand words, here's a twenty-thousand word essay on our hike up Siyeh Pass in Glacier National Park.

Ptarmigan Tunnel (GNP, July 31st/2011)

2011-08-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

Here’s a quick trip report from yesterday’s hike to Ptarmagin Tunnel. K and I, along with little N. made the return trip in 6.5 hours. Despite my list-mania ambitions, this was our first real hike in the Rockies this year with the baby backpack. We were somewhat hesitant about hiking in bear country with the little man (the park trail status report included a notice about a bear frequenting the area about a week back). Thought it over and decided to give it a go. We took the regular precautions - we each had bear spray and hollered every few minutes along the trail. It would’ve been preferrable to be part of a larger group, but the good thing about the Iceberg lake trail is that it is so popular and crowded that a lot of the time we were either tailgating others or being tailgated, so in effect we were often hiking as a group of 6 or more. Once past the turnoff to Ptarmigan Tunnel there were less people, but it was still pretty crowded.

The little shrimp likes being carried in the back pack and enjoyed seeing the people passing us in the opposite direction. He was continuously pointing at the people, mountains and trees - all the while babbling away in his gobby-dee-gook baby gibberish. Of course, he let out the loudest holler when a mountain chipmunk popped up close by at the tunnel! I dunno if the cliffs were directing his squeal, but I don’t think I’ve heard him scream that loud in excitement before.

Weather was great and views were awesome. No issues with snow crossings, which are basically just at the base of a couple of snow chutes and located just past the lake. Once up at the tunnel, a lady mentioned to us that you could see Mount Merritt and the old Sun Glacier if you hiked a short ways down the other side… Mount Merritt - being on the list - we had to go check it out! Made it back by 5:30 and had supper at the Italian restaurant at the Motor Inn to cap off a perfect day.

Visit to St. John's, Newfoundland

2011-07-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Wednesday, July 13/2011. Arrived via the red eye. Slept! Picked up Kristien and Nicolas. Ate lunch at East Side Mario's. Raining. Ate steak.

Day 2. Thursday, July 14,2011. Toured around by car to Signal Hill. Drove to bakery/greenhouse with petting zoo. Fluvarium. Avalon mall. Nicolas napped like crazy! Raining! Ate Spaghetti.

Day 3. Friday. Hiked from Dad's House to Signal Hill in the Rain in the AM. Went for a brief tour of The Rooms, Museum and Art Gallery. Museum was almost closed so we decided to just grab a coffee. Walked a bit downtown and looked at the boats. Drove to Middle Cove after supper. No capelin. Raining! Ate steak and sausage rolls.

Day 4. Saturday. Brunch at Chez Cora downtown. Walked around downtown. Whale Watching from Bay Bulls with Gatheralls. Hiked to new cafe and toured Quidi Vidi Lake. Nice weather in the City but foggy on boat. Big swells at sea (choppy on boat). Ate left over spaghetti.

Day 5. Sunday. Cape Spear AM. Saw whales from shore. Brigus Cove South Hike. Cliff walking. Saw birds diving for capelin just off shore at Tinkers Beach? (just near hydro plant). Ate lobster at K-cafe.

Day 6. Hiked up from Cuckold Lookout to Signal Hill and back down through the narrows.

Day 7. Went to Bowring Park.

Bad Marriage - Eagle Plume - Mad Wolf traverse with James Yearous

2011-07-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Climbing up a mountain can be just like a bad marriage. Our ascent was not unlike this peak's namesake, with more than a few moments of soul sucking uphill bushwhack. However, once up high on the open ridge, we forgot all about the bushwhacking and enjoyed a fantastic ridgewalk.

Unsure of the descent route off Bad Marriage, we decided to do the traverse in reverse and start off by ascending BM and descend off of Mad Wolf, which we could see looked straight-forward. We had also been forewarned not to drop down off of BM by the drainage as there were some cliffs adjacent to the waterfalls. I was hoping to find a weakness in the cliffs on the way up but as we hiked up the trail, the cliffs on the North face of BM looked like an impenetrable fortress. Finally, we hiked all the way up the valley and passed the interconnecting stream coming out of Triple Divide Pass, and found a more moderate approach that took us right up. Hiking further upstream made the first stream crossing much easier and other than being really frikkin' cold, was no biggie.

Views from the ridge were pretty grand. Lots of snow in every direction and the ridge walking was great. The connecting ridges from BM to eagle Plume was straight forward, as was the walk from Eagle Plume to Mad Wolf (despite appearances). On the descent we spotted a pair of bears far off below... reminded us a lot of the scenic point (Mt. Henry-Apistoki) traverse last year!

There were some good game trails from the reservation horses that seem to have taken over this corner of the park that we were able to follow through the meadows almost all the way back to the last stream crossing. The stream crossing at the end of the day was unforgettable (neither one of us swam but it was dang close! The water was generally 3-4 feet deep but I sank almost right up to my neck at one point when I found a deep pool right at the edge where the water velocity was zero). Cold water wakes a guy up, that’s for sure!

The drive home was an adventure, a moose popped out in front of the car at one point and we barely made it accross the border in time (there was a 10:40 PM Sunday traffic jam happening...) When I told the border patrol dude we were hiking in the Cutbank area, he thought we were hiking in the town of Cutbank and commented that he did not think there was much hiking to do in that town and asked if we had been hiking in the coulees... being tired, I almost could not remember the names of the mountains we had been on and I made quite the long awkward statement when I clarified where we had been, "We were up..." (pause) "Bad Marriage mountain... and" (pausing longer) "Mad Wolf mountain" (pausing one last time) "in the Cutbank camground area of Glacier Park."

Luckily he let us through. I was still pretty wet from the stream crossing and was happy we did not get searched!

Mt. Crandell, Bear's hump route. July 3 (2011)

2011-07-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

July 3, 2011. Had an alpine start! We awoke at 4:00 AM to feed Nicolas and pack up from the hotel. We got to the Calgary airport at 5:15 AM... After dropping Kristien and Nicolas off, I hustled south to Waterton to meet Ken M. for a GMS outing up Mt. Crandell via the Bear's hump.

Starting at 8:30, we took our time on the way up and descended by Tick Ridge. We had a bottleneck issue on the way up on a class IV ledge when some indecision by yours truly contributed to some unnecessary clinging-on-by-your-finger-nails-whilst-we-figure-this-thing-out but it all turned out ok. Didn't see too many ticks! Made it back down by about 6:30ish. Day 1 of bachelor'ing it... ate Swiss Chalet for supper.

July 1-2 canada Day in Calgary

2011-07-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

Friday we drove up to Cross Iron Mills and hot tub'd with Nicolas on the roof of our airport hotel at Acclaim! Saturday, we had Dim Sum in Chinatown and strolled around Prince's Island Park. We stumbled accross a water park for toddlers that Nicolas enjoyed... we didn't have his bathing suit but he dived no-worse-for-the-wear fully clothed.

Canoeing the Milk River, June 25-26 (2011)

2011-06-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

Kristien, Nicolas and I went on a 1/2 day canoe trip on the Milk River, passing through the very scenic area nead Writing On Stone provincial park. Our friends Claudia and Jollin organised the trip (they have young kids too, a 2 year old boy and a 9 month old girl) and our other friends Dany and Emilie came along as well. We camped for the night at Gold Springs campground.

We started off at the Weir Bridge, which was a bit exciting - there was a little set of rapids right at the place where we put our canoes in the water. Not having done much river canoeing I was somewhat concerned about dumping with Nicolas in the boat. I also took no consolation in seeing C. and J. wearing their neoprene wetsuits! I was like, what the hell! What are we getting ourselves into?! However, C. and J. do lots of white water canoeing and have all the gear, so it was not a big deal for them to throw those kinds of clothes on. They guided us through the canoe launch, which went without a hitch and we had a gentle ride the rest of the day.

We had a grand old time on the river. Nicolas napped a bit in the boat and enjoyed sticking his hands over the sides into the water, and from time to time the 'lil tigger would his various toys overboard. We managed to recuperate all of them (thanks Dany and Emilie).

It was the first time we tent camped with Nicolas. The fresh air must've tuckered him out because he had his best night's sleep in months!!! He slept practically through the entire night, except for one incident when I noticed he had somehow escaped from his sleeping bag and was burrowing in his sleep through the wall of the tent. He was also entangled in some cord (string) that was attached to his sleeping bag and it took me a good 5-10 minutes to get him into the sleeping bag again and get the zipper closed. Despite all the manhandling, he immediately went back to sleep until past 7!

Dancers at Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, June 19th 2011

2011-06-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Kristien's friend Luisa was visiting so we popped over to Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. There were drummers and Blackfoot dancers as a kick off to national aboriginal awareness week and in celebration of father's day. After we got all museum'd out by visiting the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, in the shadow of Turtle Mountain. Interesting exhibit at Frank, but too much to view both Frank and Head Smashed in a single day.

Park Lake (June 18th, 2011)

2011-06-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

White Calf Mountain (June 5th, 2011)

2011-06-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

I had a fun little climb this past Sunday up White Calf mountain with my friend J. We were moderately fast and had a 7 hour outing car to car… Uncertain of what to expect we brought everything (snowshoes, cross country skis, crampons, rope and ice axes)! Our skinny skis were on and off during the approach and we ditched the skis and snowshoes for good after we had passed underneath Divide. We used skis again on our way back down the radio tower road, through the charred remnants of the St. Mary forest fire... pretty bad conditions overall for skiing (unless you like skiing in snow the consistency of oatmeal and patches of mud/gravel) but it was amusing!

Maybe it’s because this was my first scramble of the year or because I don’t get out as much as I used to, but man, what a blast! That said, I don’t think most peakbaggers would recall Whitecalf as one of their highlights (I think our route via the North facing slopes would generally be classified as a scree slog), but we had a rare bluebird day and ended up doing a snow climb, which was pretty dang cool. Hiking up on firm snow was much easier than the ‘2 steps forward, 1 step back’ that we encountered on the bare patches of scree/talus.

Our approach was via the Radio tower road (so access was via the Blackfeet reserve). We were able to drive about a half mile up the road before it got snowy.

We initially tried to check out the ridge on the east side of the mountain, despite the imposing cliff block that looks insurmountable from afar. We thought if we could gain the ridge above the big cliff block that that we could avoid all the snowy slopes and get in some fun scrambling. After a bit of time scouting about (maybe 45 minutes) we realized it was going to take a bunch of time just to see what lay past the big cliff face… I thought that it would only be a 10 minute detour to be able to hike over to see the other side. Funny how mountain features that you see from far away can be way bigger than you think… or vice versa! Sometimes you never really know until you are right there.) It might be possible to do that route in the summer, but the scrambling was more difficult than I thought and the snowy slopes at the base of cliffs were rather steep and we chose not to try and traverse past the cliffs.

After deciding that we had farted around enough, we set our sights on a route up the backside (that is, the North face of Whitecalf that faces towads Divide mtn). We were able to drop down pretty quickly from the ridge so overall we burnt away maybe an hour.

Despite the lingering snowy conditions, there looked to be a streak of bare rocks/scree that ran up between the snowfields… we aimed for the bare rocky area but ultimately just walked up to the summit on snow. It had been overcast and the sun had not been shining for too long on that side of the mountain, so the snow was still quite firm and suitable for hiking due to the north facing aspect … we were able to fly up and down and were back down at the base by 2 PM. The snow was pretty firm and we were sinking in 4-6" or so with our boots (we were sinking in more on the way down).

From afar, the snowfields looked much steeper than reality but we still had ice axes out; we never roped up, nor did we feel there was much avalanche risk. Granted, we did observe some sloughing on the east face of Divide on the way back but did not see any sloughing or any recent avalanche debris on Whitecalf (it is very wind blasted on that north face so there is not as much snow accumulation but there was still way more snow than we had anticipated). Hazardwise rockfall was probably the biggest concern, followed by postholing through the snow and breaking your leg on the snow covered rubble field at the bottom of the valley between Divide and Whitecalf. Never really felt too worried about sliding because the snow was not that hard and the slope not that steep (we plunged stepped merrily all the way down).

It was very scenic up top and there were still some cornices along the ridge. We stayed away from the cornices… as much as I really enjoy looking straight down (going right up to the edge) once up on top of a ridge or peak, I have learned to resist the urge to take a single step out onto a cornice (a buddy of mine once fell 12 feet through a cornice while ski touring in BC and he convinced me never to walk out onto one if at all possible).

I unfortunately forgot my camera and J.’s battery died after only taking a few shots but more pictures prolly wouldn’t have done the summit views justice anyways. We could see the Sweetgrass Hills and Browning to the east and the prairies melted off into the haze like the ocean. To the west the sea of peaks were plastered with snow like ice cream sundaes. There were also these cool clouds just overhead that looked like they were a series of white circular discs painted onto a blue ceiling.

I currently have the worst tan ever as we were blasted by the sun from the reflection off the snow and I was wearing a helmet, so I have these white patches from the strapping on my face and on the back of my head!

KOA St. Mary

2011-05-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

May 14/2011. We decided to check out St. Mary and rented one of KOA's tent cabins at KOA for $80 a night (price goes up in high season). Great fun... they have a heated swimming pool (closed until mid June) and a little store. Everything in St. Mary was closed but we drove to the Leaning Tree Cafe for breakfast and tried to check out the museum in Browning (which we learned was also closed on the weekend until later in the summer).

Castle Skiing February 13/2011

2011-02-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

Nicolas -> Waterton!

2011-02-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

photos de bb

2011-02-06T10:44:00.001-08:00

Halloween hike 2010

2010-11-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Oct 31
Destination: HALLOWEEN HIKE, BEAUVAIS LAKE AREA
Coordinator: Becky C

Elev. Gain: c. 700 ft
Dist.: moderate (5 hrs), on and off trail

Come in COSTUME and enjoy a more laid back COC outing as the club celebrates its annual Halloween fest. We’re returning to the Beauvais Lake area again this year to make a scenic circuit of a small valley which lies just to the west of the lake. The hike starts out on the “Piney Point” trail, which begins at the group camp parking lot. At first the trail climbs up onto an open ridge overlooking the lake and the prairie beyond, then follows the ridge in a southwest direction until its ending above a small drainage valley. After a descent into this drainage, the route ascends the SW end of a horseshoe-shaped ridge and follows this ridge as it gradually climbs upward through evergreen forest. At a saddle in the ridge the view opens to provide excellent views to the west of Gladstone Valley and the peaks beyond it - a great spot for a lunch of shared edible and liquid goodies! More uphill on this open ridge gains its high point to the NW, bringing expansive views of prairie and peaks. Now the route joins a trail which drops steeply downward through trees and meadows, eventually leading back to the lake and to the parking lot.

Carbondale Fire Lookout (Oct. 17th, 2010)

2010-10-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

Kristien, my dad, little Nicolas and I rambled up to Carbondale Fire Lookout this past Sunday. It was a bit cool up top but we were able to hide out of the wind. Twas a good hike with the snugli child carrier... Can't wait for the little guy to be able to support his head better so I can carry him on my back, instead of at the front.

Kishinena Peak

2010-10-10T13:28:00.001-07:00

Here are a few pix from a cloudy Saturday scramble up Kishinena Peak (or as J. Yearous would call it, Kiss my Nina) in Waterton, Oct. 9th/2010.

James and I biked the eight km cart trail to Snowshoe cabin campground from Redrock Canyon. Since bikes are only permitted as far as Snowshoe campground, we stashed our bikes at that point and hiked up the trail to Twin Lakes. The plan was to continue along to South Kootenay Pass and follow the ridge to the summit of Kishinena. In the end, we didn't hike all the way to S. Kootenay pass, as we found an easy scramble up to the summit from the col between Bauerman and Kishinena (nothing harder than class III).

Kishinena's summit was just high enough to be sticking into the cloud ceiling, so views were obscured right at the top. Dropping down from the peak along the ridge, we were rewarded with the views we were seeking, looking west into the Flathead. We descended back via the Sage Pass hiking trail.

There was a well worn path along the ridge and I was surprised by the amount of human tracks. Kishinena must be a popular peak bagging destination for the back country campers at Twin Lakes.

The bike back to Redrock was a blast and didn't take too much effort, with gravity doing most of the work. Round trip time was 7 hours at a moderate pace with a short break at the summit and lots of photo breaks along the way.

Note: Maps show Kishinena peak located south of the highpoint (at a lower elevation... below the summit, at what appears to be a bump along the ridge just up from S. Kootenay Pass). Waterton park's summit list from GMS (Glacier Moutaineering Society) shows the elevation of Kishinena peak as that of our scramble's highpoint (7992'), as does peakfinder, so I guess that most people consider this the 'true' summit, although it is not the 'official' summit. See screenshot from GE or bivouac.com's link http://bivouac.com/MtnPg.asp?MtnId=8670

The last couple of images are of Kishenina Peak, as seen from Bauerman (taken last summer), with S. Kootenay pass circled in red in the other.

Dragon's Tail (Sept. 11/2010)

2010-09-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

A few pix from Dragon's Tail on Saturday with GMS. The perfect scramble for a windy September day!

Jim F. led our group of 6 to the col between Reynold's and Dragon's Tail. From there, we followed a grassy ledge on the east side of the mountain to the far summit. A great route... See photo with Jim pointing the route out to us from afar with his hiking pole... One of those, "You want us to go WHERE?" moments.

On the ridgetop, clouds would stream up and over us and down to the valley below. Intermittent views between the clouds to the south allowed for views beyond Fusillade mountain, including Jackson glacier, as well as teasers of Sperry Glacier. Will definitely return on a clear day.

Starting at 9 AM, we hiked at a moderate pace and were back at the cars by 4 after a brief lunch at the summit.

The route we followed is described in some detail on on summit post
(click here to see SP posting.)

Welcome to the world, Nicolas!

2010-08-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Little Nicolas finally arrived Friday, August 6th (one day after his mum's birthday and after 27 hours of labour). Mum and baby are doing fine. A little miracle, indeed!

To do list... Hikes to do with a child carrier backpack

2010-08-02T19:15:00.001-07:00

Ok, I have done some of these but not all... more of a 'bucket list' of hikes to consider with the little shrimp in a child-carrier backpack.

1. Catarack mountain, GTTS road near Piegan Pass, Glacier Park (Montana) *****

1(i). Lincoln Peak, GNP

1 (ii) Haystack Butte, GNP

1b. Altyn peak, Many Glacier (GNP)**

1c. Mount Helen, Two Medicine (GNP) ****

1d. Mount Fairview and Saddle Mountain, Banff ****

1d. Beehive, Banff ****

1e. Sugarloaf fire lookout

2. Mt. Lineham

3. Scenic Point

4. Avion Ridge

5. Moose Mountain Fire lookout

6. Mount Oberlin

7. Table Mountain

8. Mount Allen / Centennial Ridge El. = 9249 ft/2819m, El. gain = 4,592 ft / 1,400 m, Distance = 16 km round trip

9. Paget peak lookout, banff

10. Eeor, Canmore

11. Mt. Indefatigable, kananaskis

12. Mt. St. Piran, lake Louise area, banff

13. Mt. Fairview/saddle mountain, lake Louise area, banff

14. Ha ling peak, Canmore

15. Victoria ridge, castle wilderness

16. Grotto mountain, canmore (1350 m el. Gain)

17. Pocaterra ridge, k country

18. Pigeon mountain, k-country

19. Mt. Indefatigable, k country

20. Old baldy, k country

21. Mt. Stevens and Teepee, near Cranbrook

22. Bow Peak, Banff

23. Windtower, K-Country

24. Dragon's Tail, false summit, GNP

Fire Lookouts in Glacier National Park

1. Apgar Fire Lookout El. = 5236 ft, Distance = 6.8 miles (round trip), El. gain = 1,835 ft.

2. Heaven's Peak Fire Lookout El = 7,244, Distance = 22 miles round trip, 3,600 ft el. gain

3. Huckleberry Fire lookout El. = 6,593 ft, Distance = 12 miles, el. gain = 3,400 ft

4. Loneman Fire Lookout El. = 7,181 ft, El. Gain = 3,900 ft, Distance = 13 miles (roundtrip)

5. Mount Brown Fire Lookout El. = 7,478 ft, 4,235 ft el. gain, 10.8 miles round trip, can be done in winter on snowshoes

6. Numa Ridge Fire Lookout El. = ~ 7,000 ft 11 miles round trip, 3,000 ft el. gain

7. Scalplock Mountain Fire Lookout El. = 6,919 ft (2,109 m), Distance = 9 miles (14.4 km), El. gain = 3,199 ft (975 m)

8. Swiftcurrent Mountain fire lookout El. = 8,436 ft (2,571 m), Distance = 15.6 miles (25 km), El. gain = 3,556 ft (1,084 m)

Mt. Mclaren (July 11, 2010)

2010-07-18T12:42:00.001-07:00

Bike/hike with Jollin... This was an outing with the Chinook outdoor club that I was coordinating. We divided into two groups - 'hikers only' and those who were interested in biking the approach up the ATV trail. Only Jollin C. was interested in joining me for the bike ride (J. brought along his infant son Tristan in a child carrier). We never caught up with the hikers, who started ahead of us from Lethbridge. We slogged our way offtrail up Maclaren's front slopes with hopes of checking out a cave that I saw last time I hiked up Maclaren, but in the end we simply made our way to the summit.

Scenic Point Ridgewalk and a strange bear encounter

2010-06-16T12:37:00.005-07:00

June 13th, 2010. Glacier National Park, Montana

James Yearous and I spent the weekend peakbagging in Two Medicicine and did the Scenic Point ridgewalk on Sunday, as described in the climbing guidebook by J. Gordon Edwards. This traverse encompasses three minor peaks along the way and is a great early season destination.

I was a bit tired from our previous day's scramble up Never Laughs mountain and decided to bail on Scenic Point, which was a detour along the traverse. I took a break at the false summit of Scenic Point and James and I agreed to meet up again in 30 minutes. From my vantage point I could watch J.'s progress and saw that he made it to the Point in 15 minutes. When I saw him turning back to meet me, I decided to try and intersect him before the col, and expected to see him below me on the interconnecting ridge between Scenic Point and Medicine.

As I started to ascend the connecting ridge, James disappeared from my view - only for a few minutes until I got over. When I topped out on the other side, I scanned beneath me but could not see where he had gone, not realizing that he had ascended ahead of me and was further along the ridge to the south. Searching for him below, I dropped down a ways and traversed, intermittently calling out his name, side- stepping clumsily along. As I scanned beneath me for James, I thought I saw some movement off in the distance.

"Geeze, is that a rock or a bear?" I thought to myself, spotting a little brown dot off in the distance that was possibly showing signs of movement. I banged my poles together just in case it wasn't my imagination. The little dot showed some sign of reaction to the noise. Upon closer inspection, it was a grizzly sow and she had a cub with her and they were maybe a couple of kilometres away. The bears seemed quite pretty far off and didn't seem too distracted by me, still I was glad that I hadn't surprised them closer up. I hoofed it back up to the top of the ridge and as the slope flattened, they disappeared from my view. I came accross James almost immediately, and found him sitting down and rummaging through his pack, about to take a snack break.

"Didn't you say earlier on that you really wanted to see a grizzly bear today?" I foolishly asked James. I explained that the bears were a safe distance off, and lead him over to catch a glimpse of the grizzlies off in the distance.

In retrospect, the rounded ridge was not much of an obstacle to overcome, but I felt safe by the distance. Descending back towards the eastern slope, the view of the valley beneath us opened up and we spotted the bears on the slopes below. We snapped a couple of pictures as they went about their business, although the sow seemed to look directly at us at one point for several seconds. We were directly upwind and there was a light breeze blowing. After only a brief couple of moments, we decided to get out of there and continue upwards to Medicine and the long traverse ahead of us.

We hurried along and joked about the experience, taking the odd nervous glance over our shoulders as we approached the base of the rounded dome that is simply noted as 'Medicine' on my trail map.

Barely into our ascent, James caught a glimpse of the bears, now on the ridge with us, and stated simply, "S&?t! There they are!" Unsure of what to do, we pressed on with our ascent, mindful not to run, which might make us appear as prey. The bears followed our footsteps, almost as if we had left bread crumbs!

Our hearts pounded as we ascended at a good pace, putting out our fitness to the test. We also traversed as quickly as possible to get some distance between us and the bears, so really we were ascending diagonally. The grizzly and the cub covered the ground between us effortlessly, and began to run towards the base of the mountain - towards us. As the bears neared, we discussed our options - I had a bear banger in my pocket and planned to use it if the bears started up the slope after us and if they got within 50 metres. We both had bear spray and were mindful of the stiff breeze and questioned the effectiveness of spraying directly into the wind. As we traversed, the domed shape of Medicine hid the bears from our view, and we could not see more than 40-50 metres to the west of us. We hadn't stuck around long enough to see if the bears had followed us upslope or had gone down the next valley, so we were constantly glancing to west. We spotted fresh tracks in the snow in the the valley below us, and guessed that the bears had been hanging out in the valley for awhile, although there did not seem to be any source of food that we could figure out.

Topping out in record time on Medicine, we were glad to see that we had the peak to ourselves. To the south, there was a pair of tracks in the snow beneath Mount Henry, and we speculated that it may have been the bears, and that perhaps the wisest thing to do would be to turn back. Exhausted, I collapsed to have a quick bite and we nervously kept watch, myself eye-balling to the south and James to the north. Views were nice but we were almost afraid to look down Medicine's rounded slopes, lest the bears still be nearby. Finally, we decided that if the tracks ahead of us belonged to the bears, we would turn around, but if the tracks belonged to some other animal, it meant the bears were still behind us, and the safest thing would be to finish the traverse.

After our short break on Medicine we continued along the ridge towards Mt. Henry, and the mystery was immediately solved. James spotted a large grizzly a few hundred metres below us on the ridge's steep slopes. We couldn't spot the cub and almost thought it was another bear, although that made no sense, and later we did see that the cub was immediately behing her and that it had perhaps been hidden from view while nursing. We were safe at this point, as the slopes were pretty much sheer cliffs beneath us and we reached the conclusion that as strange as it had been to see the bears running towards us, that the bears had not not been stalking us and had been curious enough to follow our scent for a ways.

We put our efforts into the ascent ahead of us, and resolved to concentrate on the matters at hand - there was yet some steep scrambling, snowy slopes and miles of ground to cover between our location and Apistoki. With still so much snow, it was quite hard to say if a safe ascent of Mt. Henry was even possible.

We scared off a small herd of sheep just beneath Mt. Henry and tramped through snowy slopes as we approached the crux of the day - the arrets just beneath the summit. Gord Edwards states in the climbing guide that the arrets can be easily avoided by dropped 100 or so feet beneath the summit and following some class 3 terrain to the sunmmit, but everything gets more complicated when there is snow.

Arriving at the arrets first, I was undaunted by the exposure and prepared for some mad ninja moves to cross over. James wisely pointed out that although crossing the arrets was do-able, we were facing a likely retreat, as the steep slopes just beyond the pinnacles were snow laden. After much farting around, we managed to drop below the arrets, below a steep snow slope and climb up some easy class 2 and 3 slopes to the regular route, topping out on Henry. At one point, James crossed a snow slope that I was uncomfortable with, forcing him into a second sketchy crossing of said slope sans protection of any kind, but it all worked out.

From Mount Henry's summit, the rest of the traverse was viewable and we felt confident in our ability to route-find our way past any other possible difficulties. We carried on and had no other issues the rest of the day.

The bears descended down into the valley below us and we spotted them much later in the day as we made our way to Apistoki. Little dots off the distance - now that's the best way to view a bear in the back country!

This long ridge traverse included 3 named summits: Medicine Peak, Mt. Henry and Mt. Apistoki.

Kurt and Brian from trailpeak.com lent me a headcam for a couple of months, which they are advertising the website so I brought it along to try out (hence the youtube vid shown above). The head cam is a fun idea but you end up with a crapload of kind of boring footage, so I don't think I would reccommend one just for hiking/scrambling... more for action sports/skiing. I've flipped the camera back to Brian, so my POV videos are probably done, although it would be fun to stick it on the baby and make a fun 'day in the life' gag video for the family.

Never Laughs Mountain. June 12th, 2010 (Glacier, Montana)

2010-06-16T12:37:00.001-07:00

Another little POV video done for trailpeak.com

Kurt and Brian from trailpeak are advertising this camera line on their website and lent me a 'Drift' headcam from POV cameras to try out for a few months. Annoying music was a free track that came with my computer...

Mount Proctor. May 24th, 2010 (Fernie, B.C.)

2010-06-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a little POV video I made for trailpeak.com

Kurt and Brian from trailpeak are advertising this camera line on their website and lent me a 'Drift' headcam from POV cameras to try out for a few months.

Milky way and star trails

2010-04-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Hatted Fence

2010-04-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Tundra swans (2004)

2010-04-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

Snow Geese at Tyrell Lake (Feb. 19, 2004)

2010-04-28T21:12:00.001-07:00

Great horned owls (Park Lake, 2005)

2010-04-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

wildlife pix 2003-2005

2010-04-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Forum ridge (April 10, 2010)

2010-04-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

There was a dump of 20 cm Thursday night so J. and I thought we might get in another April tour. Clear, beautiful day with little wind (ok skiing conditions). All pix courtesy James Hessian Yearous.

Wall Lake, April 5th

2010-04-05T19:01:00.001-07:00

Skied to Wall Lake in my new (second hand) tua diablos and leather boots.

Divide Mountain (April Fool's day scramble 2010)

2010-03-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures from yesterday's April Fool's scramble (we did this hike on Mar. 28th, so I am not sure if it technically counts as the April Fool's scramble or not!)

This year, instead of dicy slopes in the Castle, SJ and I dealt with epic winds in Glacier Park. Got knocked down a few times, but never out! Finding the fire lookout still standing was a bonus.

Forum Ridge, Mar. 21st/2010

2010-03-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

For sale by owner:

Igloo. Forested lot with fantastic views.

Needs new roof.

Price negotiable

Made it up to Forum Ridge for the second time this winter (prior trip was Feb. 21st.) Hubert from COC really wanted to build an igloo on the ridge but the plan was foiled when only two of us decided to show up, meaning that much more manual labour to build the thing! We dug down about a metre and built up a couple of layers of blocks... but no proper roof.

We took a slightly different route than I am accustomed, skiing to Cameron lake and ascending from the south side of the cutline, eventually gaining the ridge just above the really steep portion of the cutline. We descended east of the burn zone as Hubert did not want to be forced to traverse on the flats back towards the south. This worked out ok but resulted in slightly more tight tree skiing.

Flattop Mountain, Marias Pass area (Montana)

2010-02-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

Feb. 28th, 2010. Here are some pictures from today's ski tour to Flat top in the Marias Pass area. All photos by J. Yearous. Thanks to Ear Mountain Ralph for the suggestion awhile back! (And Dell M. and Bud I. for their advice too.)

We made our way from the parking lot at Marias Pass to the Pine creek road around 9:30 and soon turned off the road, following ski tracks into the forest towards Flattop. The tracks took us through the burn zone and eventually switchbacked up to the ridge. We continued down the ridge to the highpoint and ran into 3 snowmobilers, who were whipping about the mountains on their sleds.

We considered continuing along the ridge to Elk Calf but decided to leave it for another day… we made our way back down through the trees and were back at the cars by 3. Snow was crusty 2/3rds of the way up but we found some decent turns on the way down… we were too lame to yo-yo but twas great… hope to return again for a few laps in the snow!

Can’t believe it’s already March (mind you, usually a good month for the snow).

Ski to Lake O'hara Lodge (Banff wkend Feb. 12-14, '10)

2010-02-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

Saturday we skiied to Lake O'hara Lodge. The summer road to the lodge is closed in the winter but the lodge is accessible (and open) to cross country skiiers. Apparently it costs $690/couple per night to stay at the lodge!

Distance from the parking lot to the lodge is about 11 km. We left our car at 10:15 and made it to the lodge at 1:30... just in time for lunch, which was served until 1:45 PM. We had a fun ski back to the car and afterwards, stopped by Castle Junction for a quick visit with the COC. We didn't stay too long as we had supper planned (fondue!) with Em. and D. in Canmore.

Sunday, K. snowshoed at Bow Summit while I did a quick skin-up/ski-down with my new K2 'Work Stinx' tele skis.

To revisit our first night in Banff, we arrived at the HI in the village on Friday around 10:30 PM and found the partygoers to be a bit more vigorous than normal! We wandered into the hostel lobby amidst a graduation party and discovered several dozen inebriated youngsters who were just delighted to be discovering their first beers. Luckily, the economy seems to be hurting as we were able to find alternate accomodations to our satisfaction within 2 minutes walk of the hostel, so we ended up ditching our original plan to stay at HI Banff and found stylin' accomodations just accross from the hostel at Tunnel Mountain.

Ski to Summit Lake (Sunday Nov. 1st)

2009-11-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

Goat Moutain (Oct. 25, 2009)

2009-10-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

SJ and I hiked up Goat Mountain this past Sunday, October 25th. There was a lot more snow than we expected but we were able to pick our way up to the summit. Starting from Sunrift gorge on the Going to the Sun road, we hiked up the Siyeh pass trail for a couple of kilometres and ascended just to the left of a big gully. The gully would be a good summer route to the top.

As we ascended, we heard some distant whoomphing noises that soon after were followed by a thunderous clamour from accross the valley as an avalanche poured off of Going to the Sun mountain. We re-assessed our route several times and were mindful about the avvy potential on Goat, but there was not much snow to worry about. Still, we stayed out of the gully and stuck to moderate slopes - this was also because of the snow covering everything - it would have made any hands on scrambling quite difficult.

When we got within 300 metres of the peak, our route was blocked by some cliffs/cracks that dropped off sharply below us, but we managed to carefully navigate around them. Descending we thought briefly about following the ridge south and going back more directly to the car, but to be conservative we didn't stray too far south and eventually rejoined our route form the morning.

The elevation gain was a lot more than I'd thought(4,156 ft/1266 m)! Took us a bit longer to get to the summit than planned... Guess we should've studied the map closer. My legs were just about done by the time we got to the top (El.: 8826 ft/2690 m) and my hamstrings were on the verge of cramping. The summit was truly getting blasted by the wind and blowing snow, which made it quite unpleasant, so we didn't linger too long.

A google of 'Goat Mountain' shows that at one time (back in the 1940's), there had been a trail maintained by the park all the way to the summit. The trail had been abandoned by the early 70's, as per George Ruhle's 'Guidebook to Glacier Park'.

80's and 90's Nostalgia

2009-10-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hasta la Vista (Collage)

Blue Rodeo, Head over Heels (bad audio!)

99 Red Balloons (Nena)

Take On Me (Aha)

Walk like an Egyptian (The Bangles)

Seven Wonders (Fleetwood Mac)

Oct. 18th, Prairie Bluff

2009-10-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Another fun outing with the Chinook outdoor club! Hiked up the Shell access road to a couple of high altitude sour gas well sites and followed the ridge to Prairie Bluff's summit.

Descended off trail back to the cars without kicking rocks on each other and stopped by the Heritage Inn in Pincher for a couple of cold drinks.

Drywood, Sept. 26th (2009)

2009-09-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

James Y. and I headed out for some top-rope practice at Drywood this past Saturday. James had been there before but it was my first time climbing there. There are a number of bolted routes that can be top roped by scrambling up the west side, passing between the cliff face and a cool gendarme. We left Lethbridge around 8:30 and by time we drove out there and got all our bikes and gear sorted out it was 10:15 AM. We brought a couple of ropes and way too much stuff.

We biked as far as we could and slogged our way by foot with our heavy bags to the cliffs. There are a number of bolted routes on some cliff faces below an adjoining ridge of Drywood peak and arrived at the Ram's head around noon. I hadn't realized how much time and effort it would take to get to the cliffs (about 350 m elevation gain to get to the cliffs) but it was almost worth the hike just for the impressive views below.

The routes from Goble's book were a lot tougher than anticipated! I could only muster getting up the easiest sport route and could barely get partway up the other rope we set up. J. tried a lead climb towards the end of the day.

Biking in the morning was a slog and it was crazy windy, so it didn't feel like we were saving much time on the way up (but it definitely was worth it biking out). We were driving out by 5 back in Lethbridge by 6:20.

Some useless stats for the day:
El. Gain: 1135 ft (346 m); Car: 5133 ft (1564 m), Cliffs: 6267 ft (1910 m)
Round Trip Distance (9.5 km)

Ft Frances (Sept. 18-21)

2009-09-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pics from our visit to Fort Frances. A fantastic journey to get there, but worthwhile.

Unseaonably hot Sept. weather = fishing, swimming, tubing, boating, fun! The mosquitos took a pint or two of city slicker blood but we fought them off successfully. Lots of good food too. Every meal was a joyeuse festin. Rob actually cooked us pan broiled pizza that rivaled pizza hut.

Attached are various pictures of us boating around in Rainy Lake (just behind Anne and Rob's house). Anne and Rob have 3 boats to speak of: a canoe, a pedal boat and a James Bond speed boat that zipped us around Rainy Lake.

Another highlight was swimming accross from the lake with K. to a beach for a picnic (with boat support in case we cramped).

Other activities included watching the little girls play with various my little ponies, the free carlsberg poker chip tournament and the trivial pursuit (for slow people) challenge. Who knew that super red giants were bigger than red giants? Not I, said the fly.

We also visited Anne at Confederation College where she works and saw what the colleges of the future look like:

* Classrooms with teachers sometimes present in-the-flesh or, more often than not, teaching à la distance education over the internet, with their voices beamed in over speakers and their powerpoints shown with an overhead projector at the front of the classroom, instead of a blackboard. Students seemed to all have laptop computers complete with online cam's... it was noted that a lot of students were logging in via the internet and were not physically in the classroom.

Calf Robe Mountain (Sept. 14th, 2009). East Glacier area, Glacier National Park

2009-09-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

K. and I camped with J. and C. (and little Tristan) at the Two Medicine Lake campground this past Sept. 13th and 14th and did a couple of pretty good hikes.

J and C actually brought Tristan along for a couple of huge hikes in a backpack and were impresively well organized (almost with military precision) to deal with all the various things that babies throw at a guy - poopy diapers, feed-me fits etc. Tristan actually was really good though, aside from not sleeping completely through the night in their tent trailer.

Saturday we hiked up Scenic Point (see previous blog entry) and Sunday we tackled Calf Robe Mountain. Pix follow below.

See route description on trailpeak

Scenic Point (Sept. 12th, 2009), Two Medicine area, Glacier National Park

2009-09-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

Scenic Point is a minor peak in front of Two Medicine Lake in East Glacier. The well maintained trail continues past the viewpoint all the way to the village of East Glacier. We stopped at Scenic Point and enjoyed the great weather and views of the mountains to the west and the prairies to the east. We could even spot the Sweetgrass hills off in the distance.

We were tempted to continue further afield to Medicine Point but decided to save that for another day. An interesting ridgewalk described in the climber's guide is to do a big loop starting on the trail and hitting Medicine Point, Mt. Henry and Mt. Appiskoti all in the same day. From Mt. Henry you would drop to the saddle between Mt. Henry and Appiskoti and then either go back down from the saddle, or run up to tag Appiskoti and then descending via the saddle back down the drainage and eventually crossing the drainage and rejoining the scenic point hiking trail.

Elevation gain: 682 m (2,240 ft)
El. at summt: (2,292 m) 7,522 ft
Distance: 12.3 km (7.7 miles)
5 hours round trip including lots of breaks.

Bear Banger results in death

2009-09-10T09:15:00.001-07:00

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Bear+banger+victim/1977963/story.html

BY FLORENCE LOYIE, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

EDMONTON — A teenager was killed in Rocky Mountain House on Monday by a device that fires flares or bear bangers.

The teen was with a friend in a vehicle parked outside a residence on 52nd Avenue when one of them picked up the pen-type device and began to manipulate it.

The device fired and one teen was struck in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the Rocky Mountain House hospital.

Sgt. Chris Matechuk said the device is a type of pen launcher that can be bought in safety equipment stores and is capable of firing flares or bear bangers, a projectile that flies about 30 metres before it explodes, making a loud noise.

The devices are commonly used by hikers and people who work in the bush, Matechuk said.

RCMP are waiting for autopsy results before releasing the dead teen’s name. The incident is still under investigation. There have been no arrests and no charges have been laid. Rocky Mountain House is 220 kilometres southwest of Edmonton.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MegaBushman#play/all/uploads-all/2/hUKpUhMXG38

Visit to the Prairie Tractor and Engine Society Museum (Labour day Monday,'09).

2009-09-08T17:36:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Kristien and I visited the tractor museum in Picture Butte.

I was interested in the antique tractors, historical machinery and implements (tillage equipment, threshing machines etc.) but the museum has a whole lot to see than tractors!

We were the only visitors so we had the curator to ourselves. Merle, a retired mechanic from LNID gave us a private tour that lasted a couple of hours. The bulk of our visit was spent chatting with Merle mostly about various antique items that were kicking about (including looms, horse carriages, butter churns, antique stoves/ovens, washing machines, various ag-industrial machinery including a curious contraption for shearing sheep!)

There are ~30 members of the tractor society and once a year they have a tractor pull-contest and people come from all over to participate. Merle said he himself had restored more than a couple dozen tractors! It would have been fun to watch the tractor pull, which is normally hosted in mid-August (they were rained out this year and might try it again on Sept. 19th).

Some of the historical buildings that are onsite include the old train station from New Dayton, a blacksmith's shop, post office from Burdett, the first Dutch reform church in the province, an old school and a couple of historic homesteads that have been handsomely restored dating back almost 100 years.

Dawson pass - Pitamakin pass trail hike

2009-08-31T11:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday (Aug. 30th/09) Kristien and I led a hike with the COC to Dawson and Pitamakin Passes in the Two Medicine area of GNP. This is one of Glacier's classics! In between Dawson and Pitamakin, the trail clings to the edge of steep scree slopes and cliff ledges with some really great views along the way. Far off to the west, Mt. Stimson looks quite foreboding; other cool mountains in the area include Sinopah to the south. The loop actually circumnavigates three peaks (Rising Wolf, Flinsch Peak and Mt. Morgan).

We caught the 9 AM ferry and hiked over Dawson Pass and went all the way to Pitamakin Pass. Instead of completing the loop by dropping down from Pitamakin and following the forested valley trail back to Two Medicine Lake for approximately 10 km, we returned the way we came and caught the 5:15 ferry back to the campground.

Perhaps as a future COC hike (maybe in a year or two) I would like to hike to Dawson Pass but include Flinsch Peak or Mt. Helen as part of the day and skip going all the way to Pitamakin pass.

Other notes: we left Lethbridge at 6 AM and got to Two Medicine at about 8:30, including a bathroom break and driving the speed limit... so factoring 3 hours for the drive is plenty conservative (we went via Cardston and St. Mary). On the way back one car returned via Browning and the Del Bonita border crossing and they beat us back to our designated car dump in the 'bridge, so it must be a bit faster via Del Bonita!

We saw lots of wildlife from the tour boat (named, the Sinopah) - black bears feasting on huckleberries on the avalanche slopes below Rising Wolf, a bull moose. We also saw mountain goats beneath Flinsch peak while hiking back...

Some kewl links

2009-08-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of links recently stumbled upon...

1. Ralph Thorton's webpage: http://www.earmountain.com/page/choteaucam.html

and a posting of an ascent of Walton

http://www.earmountain.com/page/bigchoteaucam/bigwaltonmtn.html

2. Glacier National park web board
http://glacierparkchat.com/phpBB3/

3. Glacier's centennial http://www.glaciercentennial.org/Home.html

4. Glacier ferry to get accross Two Medicine http://www.glacierparkboats.com/reserve.htm

5. Firebrand Pass Ski tour http://www.glacierlife.com/?p=394

6. ACMG conditions reports http://www.acmg.ca/mcr/default.asp

Iceberg Peak (August 24th, 2009)

2009-08-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

From the summit of Iceberg peak we had awesome (but somewhat vertigo-inducing) views looking straight down upon Iceberg Lake... To the north the sea of peaks include Ahern, Ipasha and Merritt; Wilbur dominates the view to the to the south. Swiftcurrent mountain fire lookout and the southern end of the Highline trail can be spotted as well.

Another group scrambled up with us to the notch (they hiked to the notch and did a loop descending below Swiftcurrent mountain to the trail and back to Many Glacier).

Ascending to Iceberg notch was really fun (solid class III the entire way). I was apprehensive about descending this way but it worked out fine... one just had to be careful not to trip on all the marbles that cover the ledges.

Other possible descent routes that we discussed were: 1. descending to the Highline trail below and following it back to Swiftcurrent pass and back to Many Glacier. 2. Descending to a saddle between Swiftcurrent mountain and from there dropping down via a goat trail, crossing above Windmaker Lake to the Swiftcurrent trail (this route was a bit exploratory... but David, a dude in our group had done it years before... we discussed it briefly with the other group that we met ascending to the notch and they managed to pull it off (we met them back at the parking lot at the end of the day). Not sure if I have described this second descent route correctly... looking down from the summit, I couldn't see any goat trails to get accross!

We passed B7 pillar on the way up (a 5.8/9 rock climb; two rope pitches) that Ken Mc. had done earlier this summer.

A classic ascent with the Glacier Mountaineering society!

Round trip: 12 hours
Total Ascent: 1,387 m (4,552 ft)
Total round trip distance: 23 km (14 mi)

Mount St. Eloi

2009-08-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

August 16th, 2009.

We wanted to climb Mt. Dungarvan but again had to go with a backup plan due to uncooperative precipitation!

As an alternative, we decided an easier summit with no hands on srambling required, and settled for Mt. St. Eloi in the Castle Crown. We biked the approach as far as we could and the precip actually held off all morning... but it started to rain lightly around 1 PM. We followed a drainage up to the ridge just below the second summit of Mt. Syncline and enjoyed a great ridgewalk to St. Eloi. The ridge top was quite rocky and almost otherworldly - and with the intermittent views from the shifting clouds, it was quite worth the slog to get up to the ridge.

We got to the summit around 1:30 PM and I whipped out the old umbrella. Instead of retracing our steps along the ridge, we dropped down from the saddle summit and got simply drenched bushwhacking back to the main trail and were back at the cars by 5 PM.

Final stats: 14.7 km round trip
Total elevation gain: 1173 metres

Tofino and Ucluelet

2009-08-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pix from our honeymoon earlier this past June.

Twas perfect! We flitted about Vancouver Island spending most of our time in Ucluelet and Tofino, although we visited M. and spent a night in Nananimo and a night in Victoria as well as a couple of days in Van-City.

Weather was cool but not rainy, perfect for hiking and exploring. Highlights included sea kayak day trips from Uclulelet and Tofino; hiking along the wild pacific trail and enjoying the huge oldgrowth trees (cedar, spruce, hemlock); exploring the long, beautiful beaches between Ucluelet and Tofino... and surfing! Surfing was a blast but I could hardly move for several days (I was quite sore in places where I didn't even know I had muscles!)

We even had time to pop over to Hornby Lakes provincial park and explore one of the easily accessible caves.

Mt. Anderson, Lost Mountain and Mt. Bauerman

2009-08-08T16:39:00.001-07:00

Some pix from the Mt. Anderson, Lost Mountain and Mt. Bauerman Traverse (lead by K. McDermott with GMS - July 18th, 2009)

Ghostrider Peak (Mt. Hosmer, Fernie)

2009-08-05T21:44:00.001-07:00

Sunday, July 26 (2009)
I forgot my camera in the morning(left it on top of my vehicle, no less...) so all pix here are by James Yearous - who caught up to us at the summit despite a 1.5 head start. Tanks James! Good news was my camera was found after we got back to the parking. All's well that ends well!

Gargantua Cave

2009-08-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

Aug. 1st, 2009.

Waaaay high up Mt. Ptolemy In the Crowsnest Pass There is a cave they call Gargantua!

Great fun! Loooong day

My friend Jollin organised the outing... We started out as a bigger group with some of Jollin's colleagues from Alberta Agriculture... The Alberta Ag gang were only interested in hiking to Gargantua and exploring the first chamber. To get up the cart road, one guy quad'd and another dirt biked while the rest of us used mountain bikes.

Jollin, Matt, Chris and I dragged along some climbing gear and our plan was to descend the first rappel, explore a bit of the second level and climb back up the rope with Jollin's ascender. We parted company with the Alberta Ag dudes after lunch as we wanted a head start on exploration in the caves...

We got to the entrance around 2PM and met some people who had done the full route before and they encouraged us to follow them and do the full route. They figured it would take only 3 hours (give or take). They were a family group from Kamploops/Lethbridge and had approached the cave from the B.C. side...

They went on ahead after the first rappel, but luckily we were always able to catch up to them at the subsequent rapelling stations... despite us getting lost a couple of times. The map was pretty confusing and there's no signage or anything in the caves, but once you find those rap stations you know pretty much where you are. Still, one time we went down the wrong chamber, another time Matt rappelled down too low into a big hole and the ropes got wedged somehow and we had to fashion a pully system to pull him back up.

Anyways, the 3 hour estimate was a tad off... we started around 2:30 PM and didn't exit until 8:30. By the time we got back to where we stashed our bikes it was after 10 PM and it was pretty dark... so the bike back was pretty exciting as it was almost pitch black and we had to do all those stream crossings - plus there was a electrical storm that was pretty cool... lots of lightening but we only got rained on for a few minutes.

Ended up back at the cars at 11:30 PM and only got back to town at 2 AM!

Mt. Oberlin (June 27th, 2009)

2009-07-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

A few photos from June 27th. James Y., Chris C., Kristien and myself drove down to Logan's Pass to join the Glacier Mountaineering Society (led by J. Foster) for a group scramble to the top of Mt. Oberlin.

There is a hiking route to the summit but Foster led us on a route with a bit of scrambling (including one pitch of class IV) to allow those unaccustomed with steep terrain to get accustomed to this type of climbing.

Jim actually belayed a couple of folks on the most difficult part and a few people ventured further along the ridge to explore some pinnacles just beyond the summit.

Chris C., Kristien and myself stayed overnight at the Swiftcurrent motel and hiked again with GMS on Sunday.

Mt. Kupuntkamint (June 28th, 2009)

2009-07-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pix from hiking in Glacier on June 28th, '09.

Kristien, Chris C. and I drove down to Cutbank ranger station in Glacier Park (Montana) to scramble up Mt. Kupuntkamint with GMS. Led by Dell M., we summitted Kupuntkamint just after lunch and almost got blown off our feet! We followed the ridge towards White Calf Mountain but decided to bail because of the wind and the longer than foreseen distance.

Last photo shows the summit of White Calf mountain off in the distance.

A high place to be in a storm (Mt. Henkel and Mt. Apiknuni, GNP/Montana) July 5th, 2009

2009-07-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

With 40% chance of thundershowers, my friend James and I decided to bail on our original goal - Mt. Dungarvan in Waterton. Dungarvan has a long approach and with the weather forecast we wanted to avoid getting caught high up in a storm. As an alternative, we decided to venture south of the 49th for a shorter scramble up Mt. Henkel. If the weather allowed, the plan was to follow the ridge over to Apikuni for an alternative descent. Apikuni was bad decision, as it turned out...

Leaving Lethbridge at 7 AM, it was still quite cloudy from the night's thundershowers and getting up a peak in the Rockies looked doubtful. However, by the time we got to Cardston it cleared up and as we drove down the valley in Many Glacier, it was blue skies all around. Starting at 9 AM from the Iceberg lake trailhead, we scrambled up a fun route (climbing up 3,500 ft) of mostly class II/III ledges (with a bit of class 4 every now and then) and were at Henkel's summit by 12:30. From the summit, we could see some ugly clouds far off to the west, but they were so far away it did not seem to be a concern. Or so we thought.

We rested at Henkel's summit for about 20 minutes, taking pictures and eating lunch. The clouds were visibly closer by the time we got moving again... but they were still so far away we figured we could pop over to Apikuni and down to the valley before the rains arrived.

Descending from Henkel, there was a bit of dicy downclimbing, as per the Edward's guidebook - one class IV ledge that had to be downclimbed that we could not avoid. We took our time climbing down to the saddle. We then proceeded to hoof it as fast as we could up the adjoining ridge to Apikuni's summit. As we progressed, we noticed the weather was getting worse and started to notice some rumbles of distant thunder. When we finally summitted Apikuni it was 2:45 and looking back towards Henkel's summit, it looked like the Armageddon had arrived! The clouds were dark gray and we could spot lightening and the distant thunder was clearly not-so-distant any more! We stayed at the summit for less than 5 minutes and hurriedly started our way down.

The ridge turns south and drops towards the highway and as we followed we knew we were in trouble. The lightening was more noticeable and I was counting the seconds between the lightening strikes and the the thunder to judge the distance of the storm. Even though the storm was fast approaching, we were losing elevation and moving quite fast so I still wasn't overly worried as I figured we still had an hour before the storm hit us.

After only 25 minutes from the summit, the storm caught us. The winds picked up and suddenly the skies opened up and it started to hail and the lightening and thunder were happening virtually simultaneously. James was ahead of me at this point by 50 metres or so and I hurried to catch up and descend as fast as possible. We had lost maybe 1,500 feet from Apikuni's summit by the time the worst of the storm hit. Although we were not on top of the ridge we were still quite exposed and we were truly still in the belly of the beast.

As we ran down in the hail, the ground started to turn white with the pea sized ice. The thunder would at times crackle and pop and positively boom and echo in the mountain valley. I put my poles into my pack for fear of them attracting the lightening, reasoning that they were more insulated in my pack.

We dropped and dropped and still the storm raged. After what seemed like hours, the hail eased up and the thunder became less frequent. The hail turned to a hard rain. The hard rain turned to a drizzle and after (only!) an hour we were out of the storm. Reaching the bottom of the valley, it stopped raining. As we hiked out towards the highway we were again under the sun.

Final stats: 9 hours, 15 km, 1494 m total ascent (4,903 ft)

The Twins attempt (ridgewalk west of Table Mountain)

2009-04-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

April Fools Scramble 2009
James Y. picked out a ridgewalk for our first scramble of the year - the long undulating ridge just west of Table Mountain, near Beaver Mines Lake.

It ended up that there were only two April fools this year, just myself and Scramblin' Jimmy. We both were of the mindset to try an interesting ascent route - challenging and fun - rather than the alternative slog up a scree slope.

To that end, we decided to find either a good scramble route or preferably, a snow climb up a gully. While driving, the snow climb idea was hatched when we spotted what appeared to be a suitable snow slope that we could reach by hiking along the base of the ridge. In the early going, the snow was hard and seemed perfect for crampons, however, after a couple of hours of deliberating and screwing around on the ridge's lower ledges, we decided to abandon the idea of a snow climb and go back to our original idea of scrambling up the mountain's front cliffbands. We had crossed a number of snow chutes by that point, but they were never very long and we never bothered donning crampons, proceeding by kicking steps carefully with our boots.

Getting up to the top of the ridge by our route was an adventure - at times fun, but there were also moments when I regretted venturing up there. Those rotten ledges were bad enough with loose pebbles and scree; the new dusting of snow we had received earlier in the week didn't help. The crux of the day came after ascending a couple of fun chimneys (tight gullies). We got to a point where there was an awkward ledge about 10-15 feet high that had a bit of an overhang. Rather than tackle the overhang, we took off our packs and found a way around it to the right... we almost lost our nerve and stood around for way too long on that little ledge. James broke out the rope, which we simply used to haul up his pack. Above this crux, we were confronted by another couple of dozen feet of steep cliffs that if we were feeling adventurous, we may have been able to climb... but by that point,I had lost my appetite for doing any more scrambling and was happy just to be able to find a way to clamber up the snow just on the edge of the trees and make it to the top of the ridge.

By noon, there we were - finally up on the ridgetop. We found a sheltered spot to stop for a quick lunch. After three hours, we were only a couple of kilometres away from the car but maybe a couple of thousand feet up. From there, we still had a long ways to go to reach our intended destination. Not so much in terms of distance, but what we thought were little bumps were in fact little peaks in their own right, and we had to drop and regain approximately 500 feet three times, not to mention the other little undulations along the way (see attached profile from my GPS).

By 3:00, we could see how far away we still were from our intended destination- the twin (un-named) peaks just to the west of Mt. Gladstone. We made a final push and ran into one last difficulty. There was a ton of snow plastered to the top of the ridge and we were worried about venturing too far onto the snow for fear of falling through a cornice. At that point there was a snowy cliff that looked impassable, but we found a scrambly route that was obscured from afar by a massive boulder.

Ahead there was a bit of snow climbing. We stuck relatively close to the rocky spine of the ridge and were comforted somewhat by the fact there were lots of trees off to the edge, fairly confident that there was no true overhanging snowy cornices that we were treading on.

Upon reaching the southerly end of the ridge it was already 3:45. The higher summits of the Twins beckoned us to the east but it was so late we decided it would be prudent to turn around. We were comforted by great views of Castle Peak to the south and the surrounding mountain panorama.

We tried to hoof it back, but it still took quite a bit of time to retrace our steps. Descending a scree slope to the east of our ascent route we just managed to beat darkness and were back at the cars by 8:45. An unexpected, mini-epic! Final stats: approx. 4,500 ft elevation gain, 16.1 kms round trip. A bit longer than we counted on.

Marias Pass

2009-04-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

A few pix from cross country skiing in Marias Pass earlier in April.

Wapta Traverse (March 2009)

2009-03-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 14th (2009)
Drove up from Lethbridge and met Shannon at the Calgary airport.

We had reservations at the HI Banff Alpine Centre and drove straight there from the airport. By the time we left Calgary, it was after 10 PM. Driving into Banff late at night, I unfortunately got lost and drove aimlessly around Banff townsite for 15 minutes or so and had to ask directions from a taxi driver. We finally got to the hostel at 11:30 PM and met Chris at the check-in. The main building was rocking as there is a basement bar in the hostel (complete with karaoke on Saturday nights, as we discovered).

We found our room in the next building over and discovered we were sharing with another fellow who was already in bed. We got our stuff together and sat around for a few minutes in the common area. Chris had a bottle of whiskey that he kindly shared with us. We discussed our route whilst dodging pillows and toques (rowdy kids were having a pillow fight of sorts in the common area). We decided to go for it and enter via Peyto lake, as early as we could muster the following day.

Day 1 (Sunday) 9.5 hrs.
Peyto Lake to Peter and Catherine Whyte Hut (Peyto Hut) crossing Peyto Glacier

Left HI and parked a shuttle (my rental car) at Wapta Lake in the parking of the closed-for-the-winter West Louise Lodge. The lodge was closed but the parking area was cleared of snow for skiers. We arrived at Peyto Lake trailhead around 9:15

Skiing from the car, we skinned up and followed a rolling trail through the trees and arrived at the lake in about an hour. After skiing across the lake, we arrived at one of the most difficult parts of the trip at 2:30 PM – the ascent of the moraine, which required crossing a dicy slope, one-by-one for 30 feet or so. We had hoped to arrive a bit earlier but conditions were quite cold and stable, although the sun came out just as we got to the crux. We had all studied this part of the trip extensively and had discussed the Peyto Lake entry with Percy Woods, public safety warden for Banff/Yoho parks. Chris lead us up.

The crux itself looked quite bad from afar, but the closer we got, the more reasonable it looked. There is an avalanche slope that can be avoided by taking off one’s skis and hiking on the interconnecting ridgetop. Unfortunately, at the junction of the ridge and the avalanche slope, there is a bit of exposure. Percy had described about 30 feet of exposure to potential avalanche danger and suggested going up one at a time over this piece, as quickly as possible. Once we got to that junction, we saw that others had switchbacked up. Chris took a more direct approach and climbed straight up. Once above the chute, we were greeted with wind blasts and steep climbing on thin, slippery snow over rock, but little avvy danger. We broke out our ice axes for a few minutes and made it above the steep climbing quite quickly.

Finally we reached the glacier and continued skiing. When we reached Glaciology station I thought incorrectly that we had arrived at the ACC hut. Wishful thinking... Talk about disappointment! We crossed the Peyto glacier following a number of long aluminum poles that were sticking out of glacier. The ‘beacons’ are part of an ongoing glaciology research project, though at the time I thought that the park wardens had placed these as poles as guideposts.

Finally we caught sight of the hut and we slogged up the final ramp. Chris said he witnessed a natural release (powder avalanche) coming off Mount Thomson as he arrived at the hut. Chris and Shannon motored on up the final slopes and awaited me inside. By this point I was quite bagged. I took several breaks over the final 500 metres and arrived inside at 7:30 PM, just as sun was setting over mountains to the west, completely exhausted. It took me over 1 hour to cover last 500 metres. Peyto Hut was very nice, but colder than I imagined… no wood stove. On a clear day I am sure that there would be some amazing views, but by the time I got to the hut, all I could see was white.

Day 2 (Monday) 4.5 hrs
Across Bow Glacier to Bow Hut

Slept ok. Awoke to a fairly decent whiteout. Wintery outhouse (buttcheeks froze on toilet seat!) We ate breakfast and sat around until 11 AM. We finally headed out into the whiteout around noon. It took a lot of time to ascend the 150 metres elevation gain to glacierfield above… it felt like a lot more than 150 metres. We used our GPS route find our way between the Onion and St. Nic.

St. Nic looked different afar from the west, not like the distinctive shark tooth that I recalled from memory and we disputed whether we were descending at the right point for a few minutes. We went higher (south) a little more than we needed to, but it made little difference…

Had a fun but slow ski down from the glacier to the hut. Bow Hut was pretty packed. There were all kinds of interesting folks milling about the hut and it was fun chatting with the different groups.

Later on Shannon and I practiced an avalanche beacon rescue (around 9:30 PM). Shannon and I were both under 4 minutes, but mind you, we only buried the beacons about a foot or two deep.

Day 3 (Tuesday) 5.5 hrs
Bow Hut to Balfour Hut via St. Nic – Olive col via Vulture Glacier

Some kids were partying in the hut kitchen (where I unfortunately chose to sleep) until 2 or 3 AM. All part of the Bow Hut experience. Had stomach issues for the second day in a row.

We got up at 7AM and after a slow start, left the Bow Hut by around 10 AM. Some older gents passed us on their summit attempt of Mt. Gordon. We made it easily over the col between St. Nic and Mt. Olive but had a short boot pack. We resumed skiing and finally got out of the wind and we took a break. As we sat and ate a quick bite, a couple of dudes appeared out of thin air - Chewie and co.! Chewie and his friend were going the opposite way (these were a couple of Banff dudes we’d met at Peyto hut – they’d bypassed Bow Hut the previous day, going directly from Peyto to Balfour in the whiteout). It was quite funny to meet them; they really appeared out of nowhere. They had quite the adventure the previous day, having some trouble with route finding. They’d accidentally gone ‘to the right of Rhonda’ and ended up having a 10 hour day.

Daunted by yet another whiteout that morning, they wisely chose to turn around, rather than foolishly risk traveling up Balfour col in poor visibility. These two gents were fast buggers – they had managed the ski-in to Peyto Hut in only 5.5hours, so I can only imagine how much ground they had covered in a 10 hour day. We followed their ‘up’ tracks back down to the Balfour Hut and didn’t worry about any crevasse issues.

At the hut, there was another group of 6 who had arrived the previous evening. They had had an even bigger adventure than Chewie and co.! Leaving Bow Hut at noon, they only arrived at Balfour hut at 11:30 PM! The group was spotted by Chewie when he was out for a pee late at night… must’ve been strange sight to spot a train of headlamps in the darkness of the glacier coming towards the hut.

The sky cleared up somewhat as we skied the final kilometre to Balfour and I finally broke out my camera to take some pictures.

We arrived fairly early in the afternoon and had some time to practice roping up with the other group and discussed the route in detail with them. They were a group of 6 (5 dudes, 1 gal). Some members of their group were experienced back country enthusiasts including a couple that were ski patrollers at (at Big White near Kelowna, if I recall correctly).

Day 4 (Wedsnesday), 8 hrs
Balfour Hut to Scott Duncan Hut via Bafour col

Awoke at 7AM. Restless night. Kept thinking about the route and potential hazards over and over. Good news, though! Clear weather... No whiteout, just what we had been hoping for! If there had been a whiteout, we had planned to wait one more day at the hut… We had decided that if poor visibility (whiteout conditions) persisted, than we would retreat back to the highway via the Bow Hut approach.

I made an unfortunate discovery as I placed my climbing skins. My right binding was ripping out of my ski... It was a terrible feeling, knowing that my binding was potentially on the verge of breaking right off. Balfour hut is basically two day’s hike from any ski shop! The binding was beyond just ‘tightening up’ the screws with my leatherman, since the screws were pulling out. One of the member’s of the other group had some twine, which we used to basically tie my binding tightly to my ski. It wasn’t pretty and didn’t exactly improve my skiing, but I was (and still am) very grateful that he had the twine and helped me to repair my ski.

After much screwing around, we headed out by about 9 AM. The other group proceeded to gear up, but after heading out a short ways they decided to back off. They wished us luck and in particular, they thanked Chris, who had lent his extensive back country experience to the group. He had lead the previous day’s discussions regarding the route over Balfour col, discussing potential hazards and mitigative measures; he had also coordinated much of the the roping up/crevasse rescue practice we had done in the hut the night before.

Multiple hazards are present on this leg of the traverse. Planning-wise for me, this was the crux of the trip, (although in retrospect, ascending the moraine the first day by the Peyto approach was probably also pretty risky). I had obsessed particularly over the ascent of the Balfour col and had read over the various route descriptions over and over. A huge crevasse (viewable from the hut) has to be crossed; the crevasse is boxed in by a rocky cliff to the east and basically extends to the edge of Mt. Balfour to the west. On the high side (close to Balfour) there is danger of serac-fall. Indeed, a huge nugget the size of a mini van is planted in the crevasse about two-thirds of the way across. The guidebook generally describes the ‘lower route’ as less risky but more exposed to avalanche danger. We decided on this day that the higher route was the safer option.

We proceeded west towards a huge rock that we thought was the old hut (it was just a big rock) and turned left/upwards at an opportune time, heading towards the wide ramp that leads straight and true like a four lane highway. The ramp leads up to the crevasses below the cliffband and from the hut looks somewhat exposed to avalanche danger.

My concerns about avvy slopes on the ramp were quickly allayed. It was indeed wide and flat and there was little danger of triggering anything. If there were some natural trigger -cornice failure etc. it would take a huge slide to reach the bench. I put away any further thoughts of pulling my veto card and concentrated on keeping up.

As we ascended towards the col, the route started to disappear in front of us into a snowy fog. As we got nearer to the big crevasse we roped up and continued. We switchbacked a couple of times as we neared the crevasse and it started to feel like a whiteout. Trailbreaking in the powder was once again taken up by Chris, and for the first time I felt like I could have gone faster. (Chris was a real machine when it came to the trailbreaking, happily agreeing to set tracks 90% of the time while still traveling faster than I could honestly follow in his wake!) I assumed that Chris was taking it easy on us, conscious we were all roped up and had to travel at the same speed –although later he said that was not the case.

We passed over the crevasse easily and quickly. Soon after, we crossed over some fairly recent avalanche debris from the mountain above – an unwelcome surprise. As we crested the top of the pass, we were greeted by a complete whiteout.

For a few minutes at the top of the Balfour col, the whiteout navigation became suddenly quite intense. It was completely disorienting – I, for one, could not tell up my ass from my elbow. Shannon and Chris had their GPS’s but I had ditched my unit in the car to save weight and relied on their route finding. At one point in our struggle with route finding, Chris noted that something was wrong as he felt we were headed towards a potential cornice and he did not want to ski down the slope blindly in the whiteout. We retreated away from that area and Shannon figured we were backtracking. Chris eventually got us back onto our GPS route and took a bearing and navigated by compass. The wind was whipping the snow violently against our faces and we all had snow and ice building up on our bare skin which lead to a bit of frostnip, which we’d learn later on (I was the worst affected with my sensitive skin, even though I had a neoprene mask on).

We arrived at the base of the hut by 6PM. The Scott Duncan hut is positioned a couple of hundred feet above the base of the glacier and there’s a wee bit of a climb to get there. A real kick in the teeth at the end of a long afternoon’s whiteout travel! I had issues with my skins and duct-taped one on and worked my way up the final slopes with my climbing skins on a single ski.

Notes:
1. The route taken (up the ramp from the hut towards the col) wasn’t exactly as per Chic Scott’s description; but sort of shown on Murray Toft’s map.

2. Chris mentioned there some avalanche danger (possibility of triggering) on the slope passing the crevasse but generally the risk was low... this was my main concern –triggering something. Once up there, I did not feel much danger of this at all and was surprised that this was the case; I could see the possibility from icefall above on the mountain. Have to keep up my avalanche safety education, for sure.

Day 5, Thursday March 19, 8 hrs
Scott Duncan Hut to Wapta Lake

We were quite happy about our previous's day's epic to Scott Duncan and had the small hut all to ourselves. The door kept intermittently locking us in or not closing at all unless you slammed it! During the night it got crazy windy and when I had to go out to use the outhouse at night, I thought I was going to blow away.

We got up early (6:45) and dragged out asses getting ready. We finally left the hut by 10 AM and started to ski down to the glacier. It was a mistake to leave so late, as we’d find out later on in the day. The light was very flat and we had no depth perception.

My skins were no longer sticking so I had duct taped them on at the hut and was anticipating not taking them off until I got over the high point... unfortunately, I took them off too early and when we reached the avalanche slopes under Mt. Niles there was a bit of climbing required, so I made do with what I had and used ‘grip tape’ (a product which is basically grip wax in a roll) and was able to climb up. I could not quite following the other's tracks, but I was able to cut a slightly more conservative line. We were exposed to some danger from above for about a km or so, skiing across debris that had recently released (the debris was not covered by snow and it was lightly snowing, so it had to be pretty new).

We stopped for lunch at a safe point past Mt. Niles, but to our dismay, we still had to ski though a bit of a gully with some sketchy cornices and slopes above. The slopes were not exactly part of Mt. Niles proper and I was surprised that there was still avalanche risk that we had to contend with. Chic Scott's book didn’t mention the gully, nor did any other references (Murray Toft's maps, correspondence from the park warden Percy).

Chris clearly identifed the risk to Shannon and I and they started to take off their skins. I had mine off an hour earlier, skiing with the grip tape, and suggested that I go ahead. Chris said, don't fall, whatever you do, ski it fast and wait in the trees in the safe zone. About half of the slopes had already released and it was tough skiing as there was strange, flat light, holes and variable snow conditions (hard packed avalanche debris versus fluffy powder a few metres over). I wiped out and got snow on my sunglasses and fogged up. I immediately got up and wiped out a second time... this time my ski released and I had to take my ski off and put the binding back together and put my ski back on. I did so proficiently but forgot to do up my binding and I fell again as my stupid ski came off and I had to stop again underneath the avalanche hazard. Finally I made it to the bottom and took off my pack and awaited Shannon in the trees.

Shannon caught up and we awaited Chris, who skied just a bit higher up on the avalanche debris. He skiied quickly down and as he cleared the final slopes a slow moving avalanche released; about 80 metres wide at the top and 200 metres wide at the base. It was about 100 metres high, give or take. It was a slab avalanche that was probably caused by sun crust; about a foot depth. It didn't make a huge thunderclap but the sound was more like a big whoomphing.

Shannon yelled avalanche and Chris skied past us and stopped a couple of dozen metres away and yelled at us to hoof it... Shannon tried to help me get my bag on and eventually hauled it back a few metre as I proceeded to fall down (instinct kicked in and I guess I tried to run, rather than ski away). Finally I got to my feet as the avalanche stopped a few dozen metres away.

It was a surreal experience. I never thought the avalanche would reach us as it was so slow moving, but it was still a dangerous situation as Shannon and I had stopped in an area where the trees were pretty short, indicating they had been wiped out by the same avalanche chute at one point or time. The entire mess took about 30 seconds or so to come to a complete stop.

I was a bit freaked out – I think we all were, but there was lots of skiing left to do to get down to the lake. Skiing through the trees to get down to the drainage out was steep and predictably difficult. Shannon’s GPS was used to get us back onto route – we had drifted a bit too far towards the gully to the west, but we figured it out.

Descending into the thick, tall trees, we were out of imminent avalanche danger but conditions were not completely safe. It was quite warm and we did not take it for granted that there were still unpredictable conditions. We skied one by one and I fell a million times, but we got to the lake around 4:30ish. We skiied accross the lake and heard some fantastic cracking noises. Shannon said actually he sank down at one point but we made it accross without falling in.

We arrived at the car by 6:00 PM. We packed everything in the rented mazda, which briefly got stuck in the parking (!) and shuttled over to Peyto Lake to retrieve Chris's car. We had beer and a nice meal at the HI in Lake Louise!

Links to Chris and Shannon's websites:

http://www.outdoorchris.com/1/2009-Wapta-Traverse-Ski-Trip/

http://picasaweb.google.com/climbingshanman

Shannon's trailpeak entry:

http://www.trailpeak.com/trail-Wapta-Traverse-An-Overview-near-Banff-AB-5922