Catacombs Mountain

Summit Elevation (m): 3330
Elevation Gain (m): 2100
Trip Date: September 14 2013
Round Trip Time (hr): 36
Total Trip Distance (km): 60
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you break your leg
Difficulty Notes: A long approach including crossing the Chaba River, bushwhacking and scrambling just to reach the mountain. Loose, steep scrambling to a high icefield from the bivy, that contains many crevasses – bigger than you’d expect.
Technical Rating: MN7; YDS (II)
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps

On Thursday evening on September 12 2013, I met Liam, Eric, Ben and Steven in the Sunwapta Falls parking lot at 21:00 hours for yet another Rockies adventure. This year has been a good one for long treks, climbs and scrambles for me and in part this is due to my friendship with these crazy guys. On the long hike out of the Devon Lakes area, after summiting Mount Willingdon, we were already discussing our next trip. Eric had visited the Fortress Lake area years before, with his brother, and fell in love with the surrounding peaks. Ever since then he’s had a hankering for the summits of Catacombs and Fortress mountain. The issue with both summits is that they are so rarely ascended, there’s very little beta on routes or approaches.

As far as we knew, only the original ascent party had stood on the true summit of Catacombs (the grizzly group only summitted the lower, west peak) and we only knew of two previous ascents of Fortress Mountain (the original ascent by R. L. Barrett in 1896, and the same grizzly group). Of course, this is the main reason we wanted to ascend these mountains. To be perfectly honest, when Eric first mentioned them, I’d never even heard of Fortress Lake before, much less any of the peaks in the area. But I like remote ascents and bushwhacking so he didn’t have to ask me twice! Apparently I’m not the only one, because Ben, Liam and Steven didn’t take much convincing either. We agreed to meet at the Sunwapta Falls parking lot on Thursday after work and get the 14.5km hike to the Athabasca Campground done in the dark – to give us more time for the Catacombs approach on Friday.

Update January 2022: As so often happens with FRA’s and remote trip reports, often someone comes along and emails me saying something to the effect of “I read your trip report and it reminded me of a time I did that peak in 1986 as a solo venture”. This is exactly what happened with Catacombs Mountain. Apparently in 1986 Paul Holden and his dog Hector made the trek into the same valley we did and Paul made a solo ascent of a very snow Catacombs over the next few days. I love getting these updates even though it takes our accomplishment down a peg. I’m learning that people go up far more peaks than you’d think – and often they’re quiet about it and solo. Claiming an FRA – especially in this day and age – is probably just a temporary status until the right person stumbles across your claim and goes, “that reminds me…”. Paul sent me some photos and I’ve included a few of them below, just to give his summit claim some extra veracity and his dog Hector some fame.

Interesting Facts on Catacombs Mountain

Named by Arthur O. Wheeler in 1920. The mountain has an alcove formation, which Arthur Wheeler felt was like the recesses in an underground burial tomb. Official name. First ascended in 1927 by W.R. Maclaurin, Alfred J. Ostheimer, J. Weber, guided by Hans Fuhrer. Journal reference CAJ 16-23.

Eric is great at planning aggressive and remote mountain adventures. He spends hours on his web site, planning and scheming up new approaches, routes and summits to bag. This trip was no different. Using photos of Catacombs from other peaks, he scouted out a route up the south flank of the mountain that looked to be scrambling to the summit glacier cap. From there it would be a bit of an unknown to travel on the glacier to the summit – we had no idea if the glacier would be passable from our top-out point above the south face. We also weren’t sure how to get into the valley between Fortress Mountain and Catacombs – we knew it would be a bushwhack but had no idea how bad it might be. Assuming we made it up and down Catacombs, we then planned on continuing on to Fortress Mountain via an unknown route over two cols between the two valleys. Awesome.

The Approach

The 3+ hour long hike into the Athabasca Crossing campground was long but passed by fairly quickly thanks to the darkness and our fresh energy. I’m always amazed at how much shorter approaches seem than the egress, even though they’re the same distance and we’re usually walking quicker on exit. We almost stepped on a number of huge toads before arriving at the camp site under a brilliant star studded night sky. As we set up our bivy sacks for the night, Eric mentioned that hopefully the flying squirrels wouldn’t get into our packs on the bear poles. I never knew there were flying squirrels in Alberta but Eric was proved correct when we saw one early the next morning right above our bivy (they’re nocturnal).

After only sleeping 5 hours we were up and at ‘er early on Friday morning. We had a long day ahead, with a lot of unknowns. Crossing the Athabasca River on the old hanging bridge was interesting we all wondered what Parks Canada is going to do when this bridge has outlived its life. Crossing the Athabasca River at this point would have been impossible without the bridge, but the water was very high for mid September so maybe some years it could be done. UPDATE 2015: I guess the bridge really was old as it collapsed in 2014 and there are no plans to replace it. This is very unfortunate and makes the area outlined in this report very difficult to access. We were hoping to gain the valley between Fortress Mountain and Catacombs via a bushwhack, roughly following a stream up from the Chaba River, not too far past Dragon Peak and the Athabasca River crossing. We followed the trail for a kilometer or so before plunging into the bush on our right and heading for the Chaba. 

The views of Fortress Mountain from the river flats were flat-out amazing! Eric had certainly picked a nice objective for our second peak. We were all very impressed. We weren’t as impressed with the Chaba River crossing. Since we were just winging it – we had to wade upstream and downstream, trying to find the safest channels to cross. This meant more time in the frigid glacial runoff and more time meant more PAIN. I’m serious. My feet were so sore by the time we finally got out of the river that it took over 30 minutes of hiking to get the blood flowing properly in them again! Yikes! It was a great way to wake up though.

After crossing the Chaba River we headed up through the bush, trying to stay on a small ridge, climber’s left of a rushing stream. By staying on the ridge we managed to avoid any real bushwhacking for the first half of the ascent to the valley. After that we paid our dues. For about an hour we were in pretty thick bush but after a final, steep grunt we found ourselves in the alpine with only small trees and scrub to contend with, between long stretches of delightfully open meadow. We also started getting our first glimpses of the looming bulk of Catacombs itself, rising steeply above us with an impressive cap of snow and ice.

We were planning to bivy near a small lake under the south face of the mountain and ascend from there. The views from the bivy location were astounding, especially the very impressive northeast face of Fortress Mountain and it’s steep outlier. The haze from the warm weather was a bit depressing but of course the clear skies were a bonus. Our original plan was to ascend Catacombs early on Saturday but with 7 or 8 hours of daylight left (it was only 13:30) we decided to attempt the peak right away.

The Ascent

Ascending our chosen gully up the south side of Catacombs worked like a charm. Grassy slopes led to loose rock ledges on climber’s right of a steep gully with water running down it. When the main stream diverged to the left (it is generated from the glacier high above near the summit) we crossed into the almost-dry gully, or stayed on the edges to avoid the worst rock fall. I’m really impressed that nobody got hurt from rock fall on this trip. 

Fortress was worse, but Catacombs had its share of really rotten rock and with 5 guys ascending and descending the same lines, we had to be very cautious with our hand and footholds. Huge slabs would shift when you pulled on them (you learn to push before pulling) and many hundreds of smaller rocks would go hurtling down the gully with each few meters of height gain from the group. Climbing like this, you learn pretty quick to stay off the fall line of the guys above you and stick really close together so there’s less velocity in any rocks that do end up hitting you.

Eventually we found ourselves in a high rocky bowl with old glacier on our left and cliffs on our right. We could also spot an escape route through the cliffs on the upper left, just off the glacier and we headed for that break. The route worked out beautifully and soon we were standing next to an impressively sized ice field, steeply rising above our position on the upper ridge.

With no way to know if we could make the summit, we prepared for glacier travel and set off up the ice, Liam leading Eric and I with Ben and Steven as the ‘rescue group’ following us. Thankfully the glacial ice soon became snow (most of us only had light aluminum crampons) as we traversed over small holes and around to the north east side of the summit cap. Here’s where we got a surprise. The ice field on Catacombs was pretty darn big! Liam had some careful navigating to do, winding his way through some pretty serious crevasses and a few big ‘schrunds before we finally figured out that our route would probably work. We curved up a moderate slope and under a massive ‘shrund before crossing it on climber’s left and then following more snow slopes to the glacier-capped summit itself. Due to crevasses all over the narrowly ridged summit, we took turns taking photos while the others waited or held the rope tight.

The views were incredible in all directions, even with a smoky haze over the western peaks like Clemenceau. Other peaks, like the 11,000ers around the Columbia Icefields were in perfect eveninglight. Incredible peaks like Quincy, Woolley, Diadem, Alberta, North Twin, Twins Tower, Columbia, Smythe and King Edward beckoned with their towering summits.

We couldn’t enjoy the summit too long because the shadows were lengthening already and we knew it was going to be a very slow, delicate descent. We slowly made our way down the glacier, basking in summit glow as we listened to thundering seracs falling off the icefield below us.

Surprisingly, the rest of our descent down the terribly loose gully went pretty quick and painless and we made it back to our bivy well before sunset where we enjoyed some good conversation, views and supper.

We all turned in around 22:00 in anticipation of a long next day, but very content with our first major objective completed safely and well within our budgeted time / route. Catacombs Mountain will always linger in my memory as one of the “good ones”. A remote, giant peak with views to match its spectacular location, combined with a sense of adventure and off-the-grid travel makes this peak a formative one in my long list of Rockies summits.