Off-Roading in the Ghost

Sometimes driving in the Ghost is easy, and sometimes you spend all day winching yourself out of snow drifts. In early December, Kyle and I made an attempt to drive out to This House of Sky for a day of ice climbing. We left before dawn and drove out to Waiparous. It was icy and slow going. By  the time we hit the turn off, we had a feeling it might be a slow drive into the North Ghost.

Driving out to the Ghost

Urs Hole

What do you do when you find yourself very jet-lagged but unexpectedly available on a sunny Friday in November? Go ice-climbing obviously! Upon our return from overseas adventures, it didn't take us long to embrace the Canadian winter that had arrived while we were away. Urs Hole was a perfect early season objective thanks to the short approach and mellow grade (WI2). The 5 pitch route meanders its way up a deep canyon that collects the avalanche debris from Cascade Mountain's huge alpine bowls. As a result, it is only really climbed in the early season before much snow has fallen. With this years early ice formation and low snow in the alpine, it was a good opportunity to give this gem a go.

Looking up the drainage from the parking area

The Ghost - Orient Point and Valley of the Birds

The driving access to the North Ghost opened this weekend. To celebrate, we set up camp at the bottom of the Big Hill and spent two days ice climbing. Kyle and I met Connor early Saturday morning to make our way into the Ghost with the trailer. We had to chain up for a few icy hills on the TransAlta road but made it in without any issue. We dropped the trailer then drove to Orient Point where we were able to get Kyle's truck all the way to the top of the road. The drive was an experience on its own. That was the steepest road I have every been on as a passenger! Kyle made it seem easy but it was exciting.

Orient Point ice (L to R: The Joker, Hooker, Candle in the Wind, Candlestick Maker)

Cline River Gallery Ice Climbing - David Thompson Highway

Cline River Gallery: "the approach is as difficult to describe as the climbs are to find," - Cyril Shokoples. Well, it would help if the description started you off in the right direction... We spent about an hour wandering around on a mossy hillside in search of ice before backtracking. Ignoring the directions from the Jo Josephson book that sent us left up a hill, the opposite way from the river and any sort of ice, we found a set of bootprints that we decided to follow. Shortly after we saw a party of climbers far below us who actually knew where they were going, which was lucky because I don't think we would have found the climbs otherwise, even though we were very close. We descended a steep hill and arrived at the climbs, making a mental note to not go back the way we had come. We returned the following day on the trail that we found on our hike out (read on for approach instructions).

Taking a nice mossy detour up the "hill to the left with a faint draw"

Cascade Falls Ice Climb WI 3

After a great time at the Night of Lies in Canmore on Friday night, we were psyched to get on some ice. The plan was to go cragging at Bear Spirit with Tiff and Kevin, but we had also tossed the idea of Cascade (WI 3) around so we pulled over to check it out on the way by. I was so excited and really wanted to climb it. This is such a prominent route that I check out every time I drive through Banff, but there have been so many times when conditions were not quite right with its southern exposure and overhead avalanche hazard. On Saturday however, there wasn't too much snow in the bowls above, it was cool and overcast without too much sun or snow in the forecast, and to top it all off, there was nobody on the route! Needless to say, we decided to go for it. 

Looking up at Cascade Falls from the airstrip

This House of Sky WI 3 (The Ghost Wilderness Area)

This weekend, we ventured into the Ghost to climb This House of Sky. The road conditions had significantly improved from posts I saw earlier in the week and we were able to get all the way to THOS in the North Ghost without any issues in Kyle's truck. The warm temperatures in the last few days had melted all the drifted snow, but the river in the valley was still frozen solid. It was smooth driving most of the way, but with more melting we may be seeing some ice shelves forming. One spot that might become an issue soon is the bridge at the start of the TA road. There is flooding across the road in that area and some nasty holes in the ice below the flowing water. It didn't cause us any problems but may be getting worse with time.

THOS is such a fun climb. It follows a narrow canyon for many short pitches of WI 2/WI 3 ice up to a large amphitheatre. From there, you can choose to continue upward for a few more pitches of more difficult ice. We were able to solo most of the ice in the canyon, although we put up a rope on some of the longer pitches. There are bolted stations at the top of all the pitches in the canyon, which makes it really easy to move quickly both on the ascent and the rappels. This was my second time on the route and it was even more fun this time around!

Brett on his way up the first ice flow on This House of Sky

The Valley of the Birds

Brett and I have been making plans to go the the Ghost together since we met 2.5 years ago. Finally we actually took some initiative to make it happen! We got off to a slow start. I had forgot the cooler of smokies and beer for after the climb so we had to stop in Cochrane for groceries on the way out of town. Unfortunately, the stores didn't open until 8 and we arrived at 7:45. This made it an obvious choice to stop for cinnamon buns at the Coffee Traders Cafe. Yum!

Fueling up with coffee and cinnamon buns before we head into the Ghost

Cal-Cheak Ice Climbing

We arrived in Whistler after 15 hours of bad road conditions, semi trucks in the ditch and slow traffic. Kyle and I were exhausted and opted to take a rest day at my parents house and do some Christmas prep. We had a week and a half ahead of us to ski and spend time with my family and it was nice to have a bit of downtime. By about noon, Kyle was already bored of sitting around and started doing some reading about ice climbing in the area. We had brought all our ice gear in hopes that Shannon Falls would be frozen after all the cold weather that the coast had been getting. Unfortunately it was not in climbing shape. What Kyle did find however, was a flow close to the house that had been successfully climbed in the last few days.

Angela was eager to try ice climbing and was very excited to come along. After driving all of 10 minutes from home to the Cal-Cheak turn-off (7 mins south of Function Junction), we stopped at Whistler Bungee to ask if they knew where the ice was. We could see a route down in the canyon but it looked difficult to access and the staff at the Bungee place seemed skeptical that it was climbable. They also seemed to think that we were a bit nuts to be going ice climbing in the first place. We drove back along the Cal-Cheak road to where we had seen a car parked on our way in. When we arrived, the owners of the vehicle were getting a boost and were able to tell us how to access the climbing. There was a trail entering the forest beside a flat-deck trailer and a mini van that were parked off the side of the road (very buried in snow). The trail made its way up into steeper terrain on the opposite side of the road as the river. We followed the trail for less than 10 minutes before we came across ice. This was the shortest approach ever!

Kyle starts up the Cal-Cheak flow

Shades of Beauty (WI 4)

As it was recently pointed out, the blog has been pretty quiet recently. I know I have not been out in the mountains nearly enough recently, but sometimes other aspects of life have to come first. The good thing is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and a whole bunch of sweet adventures heading our way soon!

Paul starts up Pitch 1 (Phil Photo)

Ghoster Coaster

I have been wanting to climb with Brett for a long time, so when he suggested Ghoster Coaster, I was double stoked! I have wanted to try that route for a while. We invited a few extra people to join us, knowing quite well that it would make the day a bit more of a faff. In a surprising turn of events, we slept through our alarm and were awakened by a phone call from Charlie wondering where we were. As we scrambled to get out the door, the friends we had invited went ahead without us, and Alan had to meet everyone without us there. Despite oversleeping and my headache from a bit too much wine the night before, we arrived at the climb to find Charlie and Alan working on the first pitch of ice. 

One of the lower pitches on the route

This House of Sky

We left Calgary at 6am headed for the Ghost. Because the days are so short, that meant that we spent most of the off-roading in the dark. Luckily, there was a really good road already broken through the snow, which made route finding a breeze. We stopped to check out some of the open water, but Kyle's truck had no issues with any of the creek crossings.

Scoping out the river crossing in the dark

Ice Climbing - Rogan's Gully and Junkyards

David and Tyler came to visit me in Calgary! We had a really fun weekend, although we did none of the activities that we had planned for. High avalanche danger and very unseasonably warm temperatures prevented us from getting out backcountry skiing so Kyle and I took them out ice climbing for their first time. We picked Rogan's Gully because Kyle and I had done the route before and the overhead hazard isn't as bad as some of the other climbs in the area. We were pretty cautious though, and turned around when we encountered avalanche debris in the gully about 3/4 of the way up the route.

It felt like spring on the approach

Beowulf (WI 4) and Grotto Canyon - Ice Review (sort of)

The annual ACC Ice Review took place this past weekend. Its amazing to think that I only tried ice climbing for the first time at this event last year. It is amazing what can change in a year! As an unofficial trip for this years Ice Review, Kyle, Alex, Cat and I decided to go into the Ghost Wilderness Area to climb Beowulf (WI 4, 6 pitches, 450m). Road reports were not optimistic, and neither were trip reports from the week prior, but nonetheless we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best as we rolled out of Calgary at 6:30 am. I had woken up feeling terrible so was only semi-conscious for most of the drive to the Ghost access road. I was not going to let a cold stop me from climbing, so I put on all my layers and snuggled up with a blanket and pillow in the backseat. Once we arrived at the big hill, it was too exciting (and rough) to continue dozing and I stared out the window eagerly at this amazing area that I had only heard stories about as the sun slowly rose.

An amazing sunrise welcomes us into the Ghost

Bozeman Ice Climbing Festival

December has been a crazy month filled with exams and rad road trips. It started off with a trip to Bozeman Montana for the Ice Climbing Festival after Kyle won a facebook contest for a 3 night stay in Bozeman and 2 days of ice climbing clinics for two. I guess people actually do win those things! Despite being up to my ears in school work, I wasn't going to let Kyle take anyone but me. A few emails later, I had switched my schedule around and we were able to leave Friday morning to drive down for the weekend. I wasn't a fun road trip partner as I had to study most of the way, but it meant that we were able to enjoy the festivities together once we arrived. We pulled into the Lewis and Clark Motel (a bit of a crazy place full of strange antique furniture) around 7 and were able to get over to Emerson Lawn to watch the women's and men's World Cup speed climbing finals. It had been really warm that week and into the double digits that day so the event was held on a plywood wall which was interesting, but it didn't seem to phase the athletes who were able to scale it in mere seconds.

We got up early Saturday morning to drive out to Hyalite Canyon, the local ice climbing epicentre. Here we met our guide for the day and the rest of the people in our clinic. There was a big turn-out and groups dispersed all over the valley for the day. We had a bit of a hike to get to the Mummy-Scepter area where we spent the whole day.

Our first look at the Mummy/Scepter climbing area

Coire Dubh/Integral WI3/5.7

 Kyle, Liam and I took advantage of the Chinook that we were having  (6 degrees in Canmore!) to go out and climb one of the easier mixed multi-pitch routes in the area, Coire-Dubh/Integral. The Coire-Dubh part is 3 pitches of ice and snow and the Integral is two pitches of rock with lots of snow in between. The whole route was about 700m of elevation gain. We were told to get an early start, unfortunately for us it was also the night of the time change. 5am came too quickly (since it was actually 4am), but we were the only ones in the parking lot when we arrived.

Alpine start (which felt way worse with the time change)

Rogan's Gully (Groundhog Day) Trip Report

We got up at 5am to meet Liam at the Cascade Falls parking lot for 7. It was -19 when we got there... By the time we had finished faffing at the cars, the sky was beginning to brighten and headlamps were not necessary for the rest of the day.

Gearing up in the dark

Ice Climbing - ACC Ice Review Jan 11/12

With less than optimal snow conditions in the Rockies, what better activity to take up than ice climbing?? We managed to secure a spot on the ACC Ice Review in a beginner group where we met up with some experienced ice climbers who were willing to literally "show us the ropes". We started the day nice and early in the Grassi Lakes parking lot and walked in to the Junkyards climbing area to get our first taste of ice. The approach was amazingly short and within minutes we were strapping on our crampons and gearing up. The guides set up some top ropes for us newbies and basically gave us free reign to try out the tools on a variety of pitches ranging from really easy to getting vertical!

Kyle practicing his technique