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

Bow Hut Remembrance Weekend

After our trip into the Bow Hut 3 years ago for Remembrance Day, I was pretty convinced it was never going to happen again. Last time, we had to hike in with our skis on our backs the entire way in and out from the hut along the summer trail. It really wasn't that fun. But, when Kyle saw Alex's post about heading back up there, it just seemed like the right thing to do (funny enough, we actually met Alex on the original Bow Hut trip as the result of a very similar facebook post). To our surprise, we were able to ski right across Bow Lake and ski all the way to the hut along the winter trail that follows the canyon. It made for a much more enjoyable approach.

Touring up the recently frozen canyon. The winter route is in

Grizzly Peak Shoulder Season Scramble

What do you do in the shoulder season? Go scrambling! Kyle and I invited ourselves along with Em, Trev and Owen for a great day out in the mountains. We met at the petro-can at the crack of 9:15 (significantly earlier than Emily's original plan of 10:30) and piled into the Subaru to hit the road. As we drove towards the mountains, they looked very snowy, and our original plan of trying the Middle Sister in Canmore seemed like a bad idea. Kyle frantically searched the scrambling book for something short and easy that we could do in the snow and still make it back to Calgary for Owen's plans at five. We settled on Grizzly Peak just before we hit the highway 40 turnoff (just in time). It is a 7km easy scramble just before the highway 40/Spray Lakes Road intersection. It has 900m of elevation gain and none of us had done it before. It ticked all the boxes.

View of Mt. Packenham and Mount Hood with lots of wind off the ridge

Fall Climbing and Hiking on the Coast

A few weeks ago, Kyle and I spent a week on the coast, hanging out with my family and our friends. We got to do a few days of climbing in Squamish, went for a hike up to Brew Lake with my family and went to a wedding. It was a great trip!

Kyle on Joe's Crack (5.9) at Pixie Corner

The Ultimate Everything - Upper Echelon Finish (16 pitches, 5.9)

The Ultimate Everything is a 10 pitch trad route on Echelon Wall that starts above the apron and makes its way to the top of the second summit of the Chief. Most pitches are in the 5.8 to 5.9 range with the final pitch being 5.10. Kyle was feeling really solid after a good season of climbing and a great warm up day at the crag, but wasn't very excited about leading the crux at the end of 17 pitches of climbing. To avoid that last 5.10 pitch, we opted to finish the route on the final two pitches of Upper Echelon, which go at 5.8.

Dotted red shows Ultimate Everything. We climbed St. Vitus Dance to the right of south gully then followed memorial crack up the apron

The Harrison Hut and Meager Creek Hot Springs

How much activity and how little sleep can one fit into a single weekend? I feel like I have tested this theory on a few occasions in the past and our trip to Meager Creek Hot Springs was no different.

The Harrison Hut

East Ridge of Edith Cavell

This is my 5th summer living in Alberta. In that time, I have climbed a lot of classic rockies routes but what Kyle and I have not been able to do is summit one of the 11,000 ft peaks in the rockies. It is not for lack of trying. In the spring of 2014, we made an attempt on Mt. Joffre on skis. Wind loading on the upper slopes made us reconsider and we turned back at the base of the final face. In 2015, we made it to the ridge of Mt. Victoria after post-holing for hours up the glacier, but turned around due to treacherous snow-covered rock, sketchy sun-warmed faces and fatigue. Last year, we made it half way up Mt. Temple but were once again thwarted by recent snowfall that had us tunneling through waist-deep drifts. This year, we decided to try Mt. Edith Cavell (Grade III 5.3) in Jasper National Park.

The upper half of the East Ridge of Edith Cavell on the left side of the photo