I woke up at 0315 on Saturday morning, August 14 2010 eager to drive to the Marble Canyon camp ground and a bushwhack up Haffner Creek. OK, I wasn’t exactly eager, but I did wake up! I arrived at the parking lot around 06:00 and by 06:30 our party of four was starting up Haffner Creek.
On Thursday, July 1 2010 I was joined by Bill Kerr to celebrate Canada’s birthday with an ascent of Copper Mountain in Banff National Park. Copper is one of those peaks that is very prominent and easy to access but doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention. Various trip reports on the internet indicate some confusion regarding the ascent and descent routes with stories of people getting cliffed out and even jumping off small cliffs to get down!
I woke the entire hut up at 07:00 on Sunday morning by turning on the stoves and lighting the lanterns. I paid for it by being recruited to help change the outhouse barrel!. I won’t go into detail on this except to say that the best way to ruin your morning appetite is to change an outhouse barrel. That is some nasty business my friends… By 08:30 we were packed up and ready to re-ascend the high col with heavier packs than the day before. I took some medication for my cold, hoping that it would be enough to get me through the day.
TJ’s alarm woke up the hut by going off repeatedly every 2 minutes for half an hour as TJ slept blissfully unaware of the annoyance with his industrial strength ear plugs. By 07:00 Ben had the lights on and the water boiling and we reluctantly left our warm sleeping bags for breakfast. TJ finally decided it was time to wake up and shut down his alarm. I barely managed to choke down some Nutri-grain cereal bars and some instant Starbucks coffee while TJ and Ben stuffed themselves with as much oatmeal as humanly possible.
On Thursday, February 18 2010 a group of us lit up the interweb with a flurry of emails regarding the upcoming weekend. The reason we were so excited was the weather forecast’s promise of an imminent stretch of bluebird days over the Rockies, specifically in the Wapta Icefields area. The Wapta is like any other ice field in the Rockies. If there’s even one measly little cloud in the forecast, chances are very high that you will be experiencing a white out once you get onto the glacier. It’s just the way the weather patterns work with large expanses of snow and ice when there’s any moisture around. Another bonus was the very favorable avalanche reports – somewhat of a rarity for a February snow pack in Alberta.
After spending the previous two days ascending Mounts Inglismaldie and Whymper I was ready for either a shorter day or even a day off. So I decided that a nice 1500 meter elevation day was in order. Huh? OK, originally I was going to do Copper Mountain with Harvey but he decided to do another objective that I’ve already done so I decided I would do Mount Burgess in Yoho National Park, solo, instead.
Summit Elevation (m): 2845Elevation Gain (m): 1250Trip Time (hr): 4Total Trip Distance (km): 7Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you break something. Difficulty Notes: Moderate scrambling with some route finding to keep it moderate. Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (3rd)Map: Google Maps I’d been saving Mount Whymper for a solo outing when I didn’t have a whole bunch of time. On Wednesday, September 30 2009 I found myself dropping the kids off at school at 08:00 with a full day ahead of me […]
Summit Elevation (m): 2964 Elevation Gain (m): 1450 Trip Time (hr): 8 Total Trip Distance (km): 16 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you sprain or break something Difficulty Notes: A classic Kane moderate where the line looks harder than it is. Definitely easier when snow free. Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (3rd) Map: Google Maps Mount Inglismaldie has held my interest for quite some time already. I’ve intended to scramble up it every spring before all the snow melts, presumably to make the descent a little […]
Just as I was lamenting the fact that the gorgeous fall weather was sure to end without me taking advantage of it my email dinged with a message from the crazy Pol – Raf. He was asking me if I would be interested in scrambling up Mount Sarbach. Yep! I would be very interested! Arrangements were hastily made. Raf picked me up at 04:45 at my house and 3 hours later we were at the trailhead. There was some haze in the air but the weather was perfect – calm and sunny.
Summit Elevation (m): 2984 Elevation Gain (m): 2400 Trip Time (hr): 10 Total Trip Distance (km): 25 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3/4 – you fall, you break something or worse Difficulty Notes: Easy alternate descent is the way to go on this one! Difficult scrambling on the ridge described by Kane. Note: This trip combines both Pilot and Brett with a bike approach. Technical Rating: SC7; YDS (4th) Map: Google Maps After ascending Pilot Mountain I decided to take advantage of the long approach up the Redearth valley […]
On Monday, August 31 2009 I decided to attempt Pilot Mountain and Mount Brett as a day trip. Both of these mountains are rated ‘difficult’ by Alan Kane and both of them deserve this rating. I knew that I was in for a long day and was hesitant about doing it solo but sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith and go with it – and I’m glad I did!
Summit Elevation (m): 2998 Elevation Gain (m): 1650 Trip Time (hr): 5.5 Total Trip Distance (km): 20 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2/3 – you fall, you sprain or break something Difficulty Notes: If there’s snow on the upper traverse / crux this is no longer a scramble and can be dangerous. Wait until its completely dry. Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (Hiking) Map: Google Maps On Saturday August 29, 2009 I decided to make a solo attempt at scrambling up the popular Cascade Mountain in […]
Summit Elevation (m): 2744 Elevation Gain (m): 1000 Trip Time (hr): 5.5 Total Trip Distance (km): 10 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2 – you fall, you sprain something Difficulty Notes: Easy hiking and scrambling on trail. Technical Rating: TL4; YDS (Hiking) Map: Google Maps On Thursday, August 27 2009 I took my whole family up Mount Fairview to check out what it looks like in the summer after previous doing it with my brother in April of 2004. Even the dog made it with […]
On August 25, 2009 I got together with Marta and scrambled Protection Mountain, a.k.a. Television Peak in Banff National Park. I had heard lots from Marta on the RMBooks Web Board and read many of her trip reports with interest but we had never done a scramble or climb together.
Summit Elevation (m): 2776Elevation Gain (m): 1050Trip Time (hr): 6Total Trip Distance (km): 17Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you break something Difficulty Notes: Moderate scrambling on the Kane route, note that the approach is on a decommissioned trail with deteriorating conditions. Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (3rd) Map: Google Maps After scrambling Mount Chephren Keith Bott and I bivied in the Waterfowl Lakes campground with high hopes to summit Mount Sarbach the following day, August 09, 2009. After waking […]
After a solo scramble on Observation Peak, I met up with Keith Bott for the trek into the bivy on Mount Chephren on August 07 2009 in the evening. I had Chephren on the radar for a long time already and finally all the pieces of life aligned to allow me a good chance at this giant. And make no mistake about it. Chephren is every bit the giant you may have heard or suspected it is! Just gaze at it from the highway sometime and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how big this mountain really is.
Finding myself with a free weekend in the summer is a very rare occurrence, so when it happened on the weekend of August 7, 8 and 9 I arranged a 3 peak extravaganza! The first summit would be a solo effort so I chose something without a lot of difficulties and a short approach, Observation Peak.
On Thursday, July 30 2009 I joined Eric Coulthard from Edmonton on a trip up Mount Coleman in Banff National Park. In order to facilitate an earlier arrival back home to Calgary after the scramble, we both stayed overnight near the trailhead and agreed to leave the parking lot around 0530. This was my first scramble with Eric and we proved to have much in common, including our love of the mountains and our method of ascent.
On July 24, 2009 I soloed the scramble route up Eiffel Peak in Lake Louise, Banff National Park. Technically there is a hiking restriction of a minimum part of 4 to get in this area but I simply hiked between groups of tourists that were slower than me and figured as long as I stuck with the groups, I’d be fine. There are a LOT of people on the trails in this area in the summer anyway, but you should be aware that there are stiff fines if you are hiking solo.
After scrambling up Commonwealth Peak the day before, Keith and I found ourselves driving to the Mount Aylmer trailhead at Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park on Saturday morning, June 27 2009. I should point out that we were fairly tired. And it wasn’t because we did Commonwealth Peak in 3.45 hours the night before. It was because of the rude neighbors we had at the Spray Lakes campground!
When JW and TJ invited me on a weekend ski trip either up White Pyramid or Cathedral Mountain I was more than ready to join them. We decided on May 1 2009 for a White Pyramid ascent. I didn’t know a lot about this mountain, but I did know that it was a lot of height gain since it’s next door neighbor, Mount Chephren has been on my “to do” list for while, and it’s almost 2 km vertical gain and not much higher!
I waited 3 years to finally accomplish what TJ, Megan and I did on Saturday, April 18 2009 – summit Mount Hector. Truthfully, on hindsight, it’s for the best that it took me this long. The ski down was much more pleasurable now that I’m more comfortable skiing powder. I’m not nearly as good a skier as TJ or Megs but I can enjoy myself rather than just do the ‘survivor skiing’ thing. Last year we made an attempt at Hector but turned around just before the headwall due to isothermal snow and a burning desire to ski something more supportive. At the time we were bummed out because the next week we found out that if only we would have struggled up the headwall we would have probably had a great ski day on the glacier.
On Thursday, March 12 2009 Bill Kerr, Wietse Bylsma, Kevin Papke and I set out to clear Kev’s head after a personal loss, the manner of clearing being a nice back country ski up some Wapta Peak. It’s been almost 2 years since I was last on the Wapta since I didn’t get up there at all in 2008 for some reason. I was also looking forward to finally bagging another peak for 2009 – my record of peak bagging in 2009 has been dismal so far!
On Wednesday, September 17 2008 the crazy Pol (Raf K) and I decided that the beautiful weather had to be taken advantage of. We wanted two things. Scenery and scenery. We got them both. So where do you go if you want a good day out with great scenery? Well, it’s always a good bet to go either on a glacier or somewhere really close to a glacier so that you can take lots of pictures of the glacier. Mistaya Mountain was done this year by a few people that Raf and I know and the pictures from those trips bumped it up both of our priority lists.
On Saturday, December 08 2007 a whole bunch of us skinned up the the ski-out at the Sunshine ski resort in Banff National Park with the intention of bagging a small peak near the ski resort called Twin Cairns.
