On an early (0430) August 6 2005 morning, I joined Dave Stephens and Blair Piggot on a full day trip to scramble Mount Smuts and The Fist in Kananaskis Country.
Dave, Sonny and I walked into Stanley Mitchell hut on Friday morning and managed to negotiate steep snow slopes to Isolated’s summit that afternoon.
On Canada’s birthday I decided to celebrate by doing a scramble. Originally I had planned Isabelle Peak with Dave Stephens but when that fell through I decided to salvage the day with an easier but just as long outing.
There are two reasons why Kane rated Mount Engadine as a difficult scramble. One is the nature of the ridge itself. Long sections of ‘no-fall’ zones coupled with loose rock and tricky down climbs make this a much more difficult climb than even other difficult scrambles such as Lady McDonald.
Summit Elevation (m): 2462 Trip Date: Friday, April 15, 2005 Round Trip Time (hr): unknown Elevation Gain (m): 920 Total Trip Distance (km): 8 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2 – you fall, you sprain something Difficulty Notes: Easy scrambling on a good trail. The hardest part might be driving to the trailhead. Technical Rating: OT4; YDS (Hiking)GPS Track: Gaia Map: Google MapsPhotos: View Album I’ve wanted to scramble Black Rock Mountain for a long time. It just has a […]
Turtle Mountain became my first scramble of 2005 on a gorgeous spring-like Saturday morning in early March.
Summit Elevation (m): 2435 Trip Date: Sunday, April 10, 2005 Round Trip Time (hr): unknown Elevation Gain (m): 1050 Total Trip Distance (km): 7 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2/3 – you fall, you sprain or break something Difficulty Notes: Moderate scrambling on the Kane route in dry conditions. Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (3rd)GPS Track: Gaia Map: Google Maps Third time lucky! Finally I managed to summit Sentry Mountain after two previously unsuccessful attempts. On hindsight this is not a […]
This was the third peak in a massive 3 peak day that Dave Stephens and I did. The first two summits were The Fortress and Gusty Peak.
So what does a 3am wake-up time, 14km biking, 22km walking, 4 litres of Gatorade, 5 granola bars, a dozen gummy bears and some peanut M+M’s give you?
On a beautiful late September day Sonny and I headed out to the Little Elbow Valley to scramble our way along the Glasgow to Banded Traverse.
If you haven’t done Fullerton or Fable make sure you don’t do these two mountains in the same year. If you’ve done Fable and you thought it was a long approach you better psych yourself up pretty good for Fullerton or you won’t make it!
Mount Galwey is an excellent scramble in Waterton Lakes National Park in southern Alberta. I thought it deserved its difficult rating simply because a slip on the crux would have been very painful.
Mount Tecumseh doesn’t seem like a very popular mountain. It hasn’t seen a whole lot of ascents over the past few years and I really don’t know why as I found it to be quite enjoyable.
Mount Ward was an enjoyable scramble in the Crowsnest Pass area. It presented very few difficulties and was quite easy to find.
Crowsnest Mountain has long been a goal of mine – it just sounded like a lot of fun! It didn’t disappoint but like all our scrambles in the first week of September 2004 (six in total) this one was rushed because of thick clouds and rain moving in from the west in the early afternoon hours.
On July 10 2004, Wes, Ed and I headed up the Centennial Ridge trail with Mount Collembola, not Mount Allan, being our objective.
Sonny sent me an email on Monday saying that he was planning to do a scramble on Friday evening and wondering if I was interested. Duh! Of course I was!
What a day! We dragged the kids all the way to Helen Lake! Actually they did very amazing. KC must have hiked about 4km in and 1000ft of height gain and Niko went about 700ft of gain and 3km in.
Friday afternoon found me scrambling up this short but enjoyable mountain. I thought for sure I would run into a bear given my record this year so I made plenty of noise on the lower slopes!
What a day! With the weather reports predicting a perfect scrambling day on Saturday, Sonny and I hooked up to do the north peak of Mount Kidd.
I was determined to bag a peak this weekend after three weekends of nothing. The problem was that there was a ton of snow in the hills so I knew that I would be climbing something that I’d done before.
Fable has the reputation of being a long and boring hike with only partially worthwhile views once at the top. Well, I must have picked the right day because it was a fantastic outing for me!
For some reason this peak became quite popular as of late and a number of scramblers, including me, decided that since the weather has been so nice of late we would get a jump on the season and bag a peak.
I woke up on a lovely morning in February and decided that work could wait. I was going to bag a peak and that was the end of it!
Five of us pushing our heart rates into the stratosphere on a snowy, windy day on yet another slope in the Canadian Rockies. We’ve all done this before. Many times.
