Summit Elevation (m): 3073
Trip Date: March 24 2012
Elevation Gain (m): 1151
Round Trip Time (hr): 9
Total Trip Distance (km): 27
Quick ‘n Easy Rating: Class 4/5 – You fall you hurt bad or die. If you’re caught in an avalanche you could also hurt or die. This mountain could kill you. But it probably won’t.
Difficulty Notes: Glacier route includes crevasse issues and steep snow slopes. Don’t minimize these risks and learn how to manage them before attempting this trip.
Technical Rating: MN7; YDS (5.0)
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
On March 23/24 I joined Kevin Papke for the first summit attempt on his quest for 50 summits in a “Summits for Seniors” fundraiser in his 50th year. Considering his birthday is on March 22nd Kev wasted no time to start his summit bids! We decided that in order to make a big day trip slightly shorter we would ski into the Bow Hut on Friday evening and summit Habel on Saturday before heading home. We left the parking lot under warm conditions, lots of fresh snow and cloudy skies – but with high hopes that the weather forecast for Saturday would come true with a mix of sun and cloud and little wind.
Right up front I should comment on the name of this peak. I mentioned that we were climbing “Habel” to a few people in the hut and since then and everyone assumes that I’ve made up the name. Not so my friends! Habel was named already back in 1986. “North Rhondda” may be a more common name but it’s not the real one in this case. The trip into the hut went smoothly. There was much more snow than when I did Little Crowfoot a few weekends ago and the trail was very conservative in avoiding avalanche terrain where possible.
At the hut we met a bunch of interesting folks, including John Shellenberg from Edmonton who is a regular on the clubtread.com forums (Johngx) and who was leading a Grant McEwan club trip up Mount Gordon on Saturday. It’s always cool to meet fellow mountain aficionados, conversation is easy and pleasant! Around 20:30 we went to bed but sleep didn’t come to me until well after midnight, thanks to a full hut and a LOT of snoring, sniffling and I think even some farting on my bunk level (not me)… Add to that people with small bladders and the ‘party crowd’ coming in at 21:30 and I remembered why I should never forget ear plugs while staying in a hut. There’s a reason I love bivying…
Oh well. We got up at 06:00 and after a leisure breakfast we were on our way up the headwall to the Wapta Icefield above the hut. The headwall went quickly. For some reason after spending 2.5 days on the Columbia Icefield in February, the Wapta seemed nice and cozy! The headwall used to seem quite large, and the peaks were far apart but now I thought everything was much closer together than I remembered – except the peaks at the far reaches of the Wapta like Collie, Ayesha or Mistaya of course.
Kev broke trail almost all the way up Habel on his super-light gear. My gear felt heavy and I felt sluggish. I was carrying the rope but that shouldn’t have made me feel so heavy. The views continued to impress as we got higher, most impressive was the north face of Mount Rhondda and eventually the very impressive summit cap on Mount Ayesha. The ridge was heavily corniced to our left (east side) but we managed to avoid too much exposure to them and soon found ourselves looking at the final summit block over a small notch in the ridge.
The summit of Habel is actually not often ascended. Apparently most parties are content to ‘almost summit’ due to the exposure of the final block – especially while wearing ski boots and usually in the winter when the weather isn’t the most pleasant to be setting up belays etc. Goldenscrambles.ca had a nice picture of their route up the summit block, but TJ had sent me an easier option that him and Jason Wilcox did a few years ago, not even bothering with any protection. After putting on crampons and setting up a belay around a huge rock, Kev proceeded to check things out. He didn’t really like the exposure on TJ’s route so he tried the other one, not liking it either. Eventually we decided to let me check things out and I found a 3rd route up the summit block! In the following photo, Josee and Fab’s route is in red, TJ and JW’s route is green and our route is purple. The rocks are the crux for the red route while the exposed snow traverse to the shallow gullies is the crux for the other two routes. Kev also tried the crack to the left of the red route but it was almost over hanging with no good holds so he backed off.
Our route was nice because we could easily protect both sides of the crux off of slings, but a fall would’ve hurt like heck no matter what, due to the direction of the fall relative to our gear. A 30 meter rope was just enough to cover the entire blue line of our route! Once on top we were treated to fabulous views of the entire Wapta. Habel is even higher than Rhondda, which surprised me a little. Kevin was ecstatic to make the first peak of his 50 in such great conditions!
After a few photos we headed down – we still had a ways to go before heading home and with 3 hours of sleep we didn’t want to be driving too late.
The ski down was fantastic! Even the headwall above the Bow Hut was skiable – usually it’s wind scoured when I try to descend it. After a quick hut-stop to pack up our sleeping bags and extra gear we completed the easy slog back to the car. Habel surprised me with outstanding views and a great little summit block challenge. Highly recommended.
