Taking advantage of my temporary bachelor status, I took Thursday July 10 2008 off work and drove down to the Crowsnest Pass area to do an interesting and short scramble – Thunder Mountain. Why is this mountain interesting? Well, it’s the first mountain in the Canadian Rockies climbed by a non-aboriginal.
After getting out the previous two days on an attempt of Commonwealth and then a great day on Nihahi and Compression Ridges, it was time to visit the Castle / Crown area again. Keith and I drove down to the Gladstone trail head as described in Andrew Nugara’s scrambling book.
On Saturday April 12, 2008 I joined Wietse and Keith on a tramp up the east ridge of Yamnuska, down into the CMC valley and then up the southeast ridge of the East Peak of Wendell.
On November 24th 2007, Wietse and I dragged ourselves out of bed way too early and headed out to the Powderface Trail and the parking area for Tiara Peak and Belmore Brown.
I had a score to settle with Mount Romulus, so when TJ mentioned on the web board that he was going to be attempting it on Friday, November 2 2007, I decided that work could wait. Kevin Papke and Bill Kerr also decided that their work could wait, so we all hooked up on Friday morning and drove two vehicles with our bikes, to the Big Elbow Loop trail head.
On Saturday October 20 2007 Wietse joined me for a repeat slog up into the Castle Mountain environs. This time, thankfully, we actually made it.
On June 02 2007 Wietse and I headed to the mountains to attempt a peak from Kane’s scrambles book. Unfortunately for us, there was way too much snow in all the areas that we wished to scramble so we were forced to come up with alternate plans for the day.
After hiking Raspberry Ridge, Wietse and I decided we still had (just) enough energy to try for the summit of Gunnery Mountain and complete a 3 peak weekend.
On Friday March 09 2007 Wietse and I decided that we’d had enough of winter and set out for the Livingstone area to bag some peaks. We decided to try Mount Burke on the Friday and give Raspberry Ridge and Gunnery Peak a shot on Saturday.
On Saturday, October 14 2006, I scrambled Mount Bell with Sonny, Calvin and Jeff. The weather was very acceptable for mid-October with some high cloud and temperatures anywhere from around 10 degrees at the base of the mountain to around 0 at the summit.
On Saturday, September 30 2006, Sonny, Wietse and I hooked up to scramble Mount Yukness in Yoho National Park. The timing was impeccable.
Jon and I woke up around 06:00 on Friday morning and set off for Mount Putnik to the northeast of our camp. I had done a lot of thinking on the route and had come to the conclusion that if we got lucky we should be able to bag the summit from the Three Isle Lake campground.
On the third day we got up early and continued up and across Northover Ridge before descending into the Three Isle Creek valley towards Three Isle Lake. On the way we decided to bag McHarg and Worthington.
If you’re doing Sarrail as a day trip from the Upper Kananaskis Parking lot, you are in for a fairly long day. The hiking and scrambling are fairly easy though, so it’s doable for fit and fast parties.
On Friday, June 02 2006, Wietse and I hiked to the summit of Mount Bourgeau in Banff National Park.
On Saturday, March 25 2006 I headed down to K-country to do a front range scramble. One mountain that I’ve wanted to do for a while already was Mount Lorette.
Turtle Mountain became my first scramble of 2005 on a gorgeous spring-like Saturday morning in early March.
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 July 10 2004, Wes, Ed and I headed up the Centennial Ridge trail with Mount Collembola, not Mount Allan, being our objective.
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.
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.
This was a surprising scramble. It was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. My sister was out for a few days and being from Manitoba she has never climbed a mountain before.
Mount Sparrowhawk was my first mountain ‘nemesis’. It’s funny looking back, because now I realize it’s only a fairly easy hike that can be done in under 5 hours round trip.
In the spring of 1999 we went with a group from the office. At the time I thought that this was one of the only peaks that you could do without ropes and climbing gear.
