On Remembrance Day, November 11, 2009 I joined Bill Kerr, Wietse Bylsma and Kelly Smith for a hike up Mount Howard in Kananaskis Country in the front ranges of the Alberta Rockies.
On Remembrance Day, November 11, 2009 I joined Bill Kerr, Wietse Bylsma and Kelly Smith for a hike up Mount Howard in Kananaskis Country in the front ranges of the Alberta Rockies.
Heart Mountain is an easy but fun scramble – and extremely popular. Since there was still no snow Jeff and I tackled this one in November 2001 and I repeated it along with Grant MacEwan again in January of 2009 as the same loop route.
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.
Rod and I set off from the Jones Naiset Cabin around 16:00 on Thursday, September 4th under a mostly cloudy sky. There was very little wind and quite a bit of snow on the surrounding peaks but we were confident we could either scramble up Wonder Peak or The Towers and return before dark. The trail up to Wonder Pass went by quickly and was an easy 200 meters of height gain out of the way.
I was pleasantly surprised when Yolande and Hanneke both said they would try hiking Nub Peak with us, I thought they might want a break after Wednesday’s grind into camp. It was later than I would have preferred for a morning start, but by 10:00 we were on the trail. The day was clearing up beautifully and I couldn’t resist some more pictures across Lake Magog on our way past it.
My annual fall scrambling / hiking trip took place from September 3rd to the 6th in 2008. Along for the ride was my brother Rod, cousin Jon and his wife Yolande (also known as George for some reason) and Hanneke, my wife. We were all pretty excited to be trying another new area (for us) of the Rockies – the Mount Assiniboine area of British Columbia.
June 14th, 2008 found me wanting to bag a peak pretty badly! The spring of 2008 has not been a very friendly one for scramblers and hikers. It’s been wet, and cold and nasty. After much deliberation, Wietse and I decided that we would head down to Waterton for the day, attempting the Lost / Anderson / Bauerman triplicate.
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.
After scrambling up Mount Norquay the night before, I found myself heading back to the mountains on Thursday, June 28 2007 with Kevin Papke.
On Friday, May 11 2007 Jason Wilcox kicked giant steps up Mount Lawson’s steep eastern slopes while Wietse and I followed him.
After hiking Mount Burke the day before we were ready for a longer day on Saturday. Wietse and I thought that we would hike Raspberry Ridge in the morning when the snow was hard and then hike Gunnery Peak in the afternoon since it looked snow free from the highway.
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, June 17 2006, Wietse Bijlsma and I attempted a traverse of Helena Ridge, Stuart Knob, Castle North and Television Peak.
Raf, Jason and I headed down to Waterton National Park on May 06, 2006 to tackle the infamous “Bears Hump” scramble route up Mount Crandell.
Foolishly I decided that if Sunwapta Peak was in shape for scrambling two weeks ago, and since it’s even higher than Tangle Ridge, I would have no problems what-so-ever on Tangle.
As I inch closer and closer to that magical 100th summit of my illustrious (!!) scrambling career that started with Ha Ling peak about 6 years ago, I am realizing how unique each and every one of those peaks has been – and at the same time how similar they start to get!
Opal Ridge North is not a grand objective by any means. As a matter of fact, in my research to see how far up the ridge I should go to ‘officially’ nab the north summit I couldn’t find two accounts that gave the same idea of the summit.
Wow. Who would’ve thought that I’d be bagging my first scramble of the year only 6 days into it?! OK – it’s not like Grizzly Peak is such a hard or worthy adversary but for a winter scramble it does very nicely thank you.
I had decided on Friday afternoon that I would post something to the web board to see if anyone would be interested in joining me for an attempt at South Kidd the next day, Saturday November 19, 2005.
October 30, 2005 found the RMB Kane Troopers attempting to bag yet another peak before winter could prevent such outings for another season. A bunch of us (9) decided to meet at the trail head, around 0830 on Saturday morning.
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.
Turtle Mountain became my first scramble of 2005 on a gorgeous spring-like Saturday morning in early March.
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.
