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Tag : assiniboine provincial park

Cautley Traverse, The (Cascade Rock, Gibraltar Rock, Ely’s Dome, Wonder, Towers)

It’s always bittersweet completing a busy trip like this one with all of the experiences still fresh and knowing that I’m closing many chapters of my Rockies adventures simply because I’ve done so many peaks and trips in so many areas of the Alberta Rockies at this stage of my life. People are always encouraging me to go to other ranges like the Purcells or the Columbia mountains but I love the local Rockies and I love all my experiences from Waterton to Jasper. I don’t need to open another massive range of landscapes to enjoy what I do. I love walking familiar valleys, wading through familiar rivers and streams and revisiting old mountain friends with great memories from almost all of them. As I get older I realize that numbers don’t mean anything – nobody cares how many peaks you’ve climbed or how fast you climbed them or even how much fun you had while you did it. The only thing that really matters IMHO is what kind of person you are and whether doing what you do in life makes you a better or worse human to all the other humans. The peace and beauty of the Canadian Rockies has given me countless hours of meditation and reflective opportunities to become the best version of me and that is something I will always cherish and be thankful for.

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Backpack / Bike / Camp / Hike / North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Nasswald Peak (Citadel Pass)

I’ve been dreaming of scrambling Nasswald Peak for many years now. It felt great to find a beautiful and straightforward route to the south face from the Valley of the Rocks Trail. Despite an easy ramble up the south face the final hundred meters of SE ridge to the summit was very loose and exposed terrain. A perfect fall day for a long sought summit!

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Backpack / Bike / Camp / Hike / North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Shanks, Mount

I can’t really say enough positive things about the Mount Shanks scramble via the route we took. What’s not to like about it? A pleasant hike through a burned landscape with wild rivers and streams, flowers, green grasses and incredible views to some big, remote peaks.

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Hawk Ridge / Hike / Scramble / Trip Report 1

Red Man Mountain

Sometimes you have to test your limits and that is never going to be comfortable. We learned something about our ability to push ourselves on this particular adventure and learning things about yourself is never a bad thing IMHO.

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Blue Range / Hike / Scramble / Trip Report 3

Soderholm, Mount

Mount Soderholm is already a classic in my books. How can it not be? The unexpected trail, the perfect snow conditions in the avalanche gully and the incredible views from the west ridge and summit all combined to make this a top ascent for 2020.

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Bike / Blue Range / Hike / Scramble / Trip Report 2

Alcantara, Mount

There really wasn’t a choice, was there? After a successful, and fun, ascent of Mount Brussilof we almost had to take advantage of good weather and a shared col to ascend Mount Alcantara’s south ridge.

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Blue Range / Camp / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Brussilof, Mount

Somehow, despite planning a trip into the Lyell Icefield to climb the last of the Lyells (IV) that I have left, I ended up in the Mount Assiniboine area yet again this year, with Phil Richards of course!

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Blue Range / Camp / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Nestor Peak

Summit Elevation (m): 2965Trip Date: Sunday, July 8, 2018Elevation Gain (m): 2400Round Trip Time (hr): 18Total Trip Distance (km): 42Reference Trip: Police MeadowsQuick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 4 – you fall, you are almost deadDifficulty Notes: A very long and tiring day including remote BC bushwhacking, routefinding, exposed ridges and steep snow with possible ice.Technical Rating: SC7; RE4/5GPS Track: GaiaMap: Google Maps On July 8th, 2018, Phil Richards, Eric Coulthard and I spent one of the longer days I’ve had in the Rockies scrambling and […]

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Backpack / Camp / Mitchell Range / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Simpson Peak

As we were ascending Simpson Ridge to the NW of Simpson Peak, we kept looking for possible routes that would save us time and effort in a traverse between the two. The immediate obvious one sucked as it involved losing hundreds of meters of elevation from the ridge before following a steep snow line up to the peak. Since it was 18:00 when we were finally done with the ridge, we no longer had time or energy for this option anyway. That’s when I spotted another potential route that would be much quicker if it worked. In a route-finding theme for the weekend my mountain goat senses were tingling quite accurately for once!

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Camp / Mitchell Range / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Police Meadow & Cabins

For years now I’ve wondered what the Police Meadows were like. There isn’t very much written about this place online and the few reports I could find that even mentioned it were quite vague. Now that I’ve been there, I seriously considered not doing a report on this area. I had to ask myself if better beta is going to ruin this place? Are hordes and hordes of backpackers now going to follow my GPS track in there, bringing all the trouble that humans bring when too many of us visit the same place? After thinking about it a while, I decided that the type of folks who bother to visit the Police Meadows after reading my description of it, will likely be the same sort of people that do their best to maintain and upkeep special places like this, rather than take advantage of them and do harm.

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Backpack / Camp / Mitchell Range / Trip Report 2

Simpson Ridge (Mount Edmonton)

As of July 2018, Simpson Ridge had been on Phil and my peak hit list for more than a few years already. The main reason was an enticing comment from the indomitable Rick Collier about his second ascent of the mountain in 1996(76 years after the first ascent in 1920!). Reading that there might still be an original 1920 summit register waiting to be rediscovered put our imaginations into overdrive. We didn’t yet know about the naming confusion or the difficult and multiple attempts at the original ascent – and didn’t realize this very interesting part of the mountain’s history until after returning from our trip days later.

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Backpack / Camp / Mitchell Range / Scramble / Trip Report 0
The outlier at right now with "Little" Fatigue in clouds at left.

Fatigue Mountain

For some reason, Fatigue Mountain had been on my radar for many years by the time 2018 rolled around. I don’t remember when or where I first heard about it, but it intrigued me as it sounded like a fairly easy ascent that wasn’t done very often due to its location far from any parking lots. When I skied to the summit of its tiny neighbor, Citadel Peak, back in 2011, I was even more intrigued.

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North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 0
Very dramatic scenery as we continue to navigate the ridge to Fatigue Pass after the storm.

Golden Mountain (Fatigue Pass)

After successfully completing my second ascent of the diminutive Citadel Peak (with it’s not-so-small views), Phil and I returned to our waiting overnight packs at Citadel Pass and prepared for the uphill trudge towards Fatigue Pass. I’d often wondered what this pass looked like and Phil also remembers wondering about it on his way to Mount Assiniboine years previous. We were about to find out. I had no idea if there’d be decent bivy sites at, or near the pass but as part of our July long weekend peak bagging adventure in the area, finding a bivy site was key.

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Camp / North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 0
Looking past the eastern cliffs of Citadel towards Golden Mountain (L) and an outlier of Nub Peak at distant right.

Citadel Peak

On a beautiful sunny, wintry May 1, 2011 I was joined by Raf and Mel on a ski trip through Sunshine Meadows to Citadel Pass and up Citadel peak. I repeated Citadel Peak again on a much less wintry, but also much cloudier day on June 29, 2018 as part of a three peak extravaganza with Phil Richards that included Fatigue, Citadel and Golden Mountain.

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North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 3

Towers, The

After completing a truncated version of the Cautley Traverse (missing Cascade Rock and Wonder Peak), I found myself a bit dissatisfied with the idea of simply heading back to my camp at Lake Magog. I was feeling disappointed with being turned back on Gibraltar Rock as well. It felt like I had over-complicated what should have been an easy traverse and on hindsight, I had indeed done just that! Cascade Rock was easy hiking on the north end of the traverse (not the south), and Wonder Peak could be accessed via a hidden chimney on climber’s right of the seemingly impenetrable cliffs blocking the route from Ely’s Dome.

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Assiniboine Group / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Ely’s Dome (Cautley Traverse)

After being turned around on a traverse from Mount Cautley to Gibraltar Rock and somehow completely screwing up where Cascade Rock was, I started the traverse south from the summit of Cautley, heading towards Ely’s Dome and what I thought was the traverse from it, to Cascade Rock. Confused yet? Apparently, so was I…

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Assiniboine Group / Hike / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Cautley, Mount (Cautley Traverse)

I woke up on Sunday, September 25 2016 in the Lake Magog Campground and poked my head out of my tent only to be immediately disappointed. This was supposed to be the day of my long-awaited Mount Cautley Traverse – 4 new peaks in one stretch – all located along the same, fairly easy ridge and all with stunning views over the Mount Assiniboine area, including of course, the mighty Matterhorn of the Rockies.

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Assiniboine Group / Hike / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Sunburst Peak (Goat’s Tower)

Ever since scrambling Nub Peak, Wonder Peak, Og Mountain and Cave Mountain back in 2008, I’ve wanted to go back to the Mount Assiniboine area and bag a few other scrambles. It took way longer than expected, but finally in 2016 I managed to get another trip into the area. After a long and tiring approach the day before via Sunshine Meadows and a morning ascent of the lowly Chucks Ridge, I was ready for Sunburst Peak in the afternoon.

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Assiniboine Group / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Chuck’s Ridge

After a long and tougher-than-expected approach the day before, I woke up on Saturday, September 24 after a night of rain and snow shower, with the plan to hike a local ridge I’d noticed on the map called “Chucks Ridge”, followed by a scramble up Sunburst Peak. Both of these objectives are located near the Lake Magog campground and both of them could presumably be done with some snow.

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Assiniboine Group / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Hiking Trails into Mount Assiniboine

There are various approaches to Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park and I’ve now done a number of them, excepting the easiest (from the air) and some of the more obscure ones. This is a brief description of each of the four routes I’ve done, and two that I haven’t, with a final comparison matrix at the end. These are also detailed at the Mount Assiniboine Lodge website. One short section of the climber’s access route that I haven’t done (yet) is the Gmoser Ledges from the Lake Magog Campground to the Hind Hut. You can find more details of that route here. My GPS route for that section is a guess at best.

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Assiniboine Group / Rockies / Trip Report 6

Sunshine Meadows – Mount Assiniboine

Ever since I first backpacked into the Mount Assiniboine area in early September 2008 from Mount Shark, I’ve wanted to go back in larch season – sometime in the last two weeks of September. I did go back to the area on September 22, 2012 but avoided most of the larches by going in via Settler’s Road and Assiniboine Lake before climbing Mount Assiniboine and Lunette Peak from the Hind Hut and returning via the same route. In 2015 I thought I’d be going back and for some reason or another it didn’t pan out. In 2016 I was absolutely determined to make the hike and scramble trip work out.

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Assiniboine Group / Backpack / Hike / Rockies / Trip Report 0

Monarch, The

On Friday, August 19th I was joined by the indefatigable Phil Richards and Wietse Bylsma for another longish day trip in the Canadian Rockies. After two previous off-trail adventures to Breaker and Molar, Phil and I decided that it was time for a mostly on-trail objective. We settled on The Monarch, located between Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park and Kootenay National Park in British Columbia. Wietse has had his eye on this peak for many years, since Ben Wards posted on the old RMB forum that his group found a scramble route on it. Since then, Alan Kane has come out with the 3rd edition of his infamous scramble guide and added the same route to it.

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Ball Range / Rockies / Scramble / Trip Report 0

Assiniboine, Mount | Lunette Peak | Mount Strom

I’ve been dreaming of the Matterhorn of the Rockies since I first laid eyes on her while on a hiking trip to the area in 2008. I never actually thought I’d be climbing its NE ridge but it was fun to imagine! Towering over everything in its vicinity and visible from almost every prominent peak in south Banff and Kananaskis , Mount Assiniboine is a big, beautiful mountain that has inspired climbers from all over the world to test its charms.

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Alpine Climb / Assiniboine Group / Camp / Trip Report 0

Citadel Peak – Ski Tour

On a beautiful sunny, wintry May 1, 2011 I was joined by Raf and Mel on a ski trip through Sunshine Meadows to Citadel Pass and up Citadel peak.

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Massive Range / Ski / Trip Report 0

Og & Cave Mountain

To get to Og Mountain, we first had to hike along the Windy Ridge trail from the Assiniboine Lodge area and our Naiset hut. After getting some sublime morning sunrise shots of Mount Assiniboine early in the day, it was nice to walk past it again in full day light. With a plume of snow peeling off it’s lofty 11,871 foot summit it looked incredibly huge and intimidating.

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Hike / North Assiniboine Crest / Scramble / Trip Report 0