Diadem Peak, Humble Horse IV 5.7 W4

Weather: 15C Cloudy with sunny breaks. Little wind.

Peak: 3371m

Time of Departure: 0645h (Late alpine start!)

Time of Return: 0115h

Total Time: 19h30min

Approach: 8km (Gain of 1345m)

Climb: 610m

Return: 13.5km (Loss of 1955m)

Because of our late start, I had little hope of actually climbing and thought we were out for a scouting mission to get familiar with the approach to do the climb tomorrow. From the parking lot, we forded the Sunwapta River (crotch deep!) and walked up and along Diadem Creek. We reached the moraine and trended right to head up and reach the glacier. It took us five hours to reach the base of Diadem Peak. On the approach I had low expectations of actually doing the climb due to our late start. Once at the base and looking at the route we decided to give it a shot. There was a 300m snow slope that steepened up to 55 degrees as we climbed. Crossing the ‘schrund was easy with supportive snow bridging it. Our steps in the snow came to boot top and was supportive. We then roped up for the first pitch. Carsten led the first 60m pitch of mixed rock which also involved digging through a foot or two of snow. We opted to climb to the left of the suggested couloir because it was lower angled and we thought to go through it quickly. Instead the protection was scarce. Two more pitches of easy rock and little protection brought us to the first pitch of ice. This was the first alpine route where pitons were a must to help make belay stations and place as protection during the climb. The following pitch of ice was great and kicked quite steeply for a few meters. The thicker ice was about a foot wide and varied in depth up to 6 inches. Another stretch of 55 degree ice reached steeper mixed grounds. The last pitch was a fun mix of rock and ice which thinned out and topped out onto 5.7 rock. To reach the summit we opted to contour bellow a big menacing cornice and traversed onto some more rock to get around and above.

To descend we walked down to the Woolley-Diadem col and passed next to big seracs. We got off the glacier around 2230h just before darkness set in. We walked the Woolley creek drainage out towards the highway and forded the Sunwapta river once again to reach the highway. The following 6km along the highway to reach the van was dreadfully long. I’d close my eyes from time to time and walk in auto-pilot mode. An hour and a half later and we made it to the van where our sleeping bags called on us.

It was interesting to see how my mentality changed as I realized we were going to commit to the climb with a later start. Overall the climbing was great with mental challenges coming from runout sections.

The route follows the couloir directly to the top.

















Heading up the initial snow slope.























Carsten heading up the first mixed pitch.




Summit photo!




Walking towards the Woolley-Diadem col.
Mt. Alberta in the background






Mt. Athabasca, North Face III 5.4

This spring in particular hasn’t offered the best conditions for alpine climbs in the Rockies due to the higher than average snowpack which lingered around for longer. I took this time to work on rock climbing technique by sport climbing at Grassi Lakes and Grotto Canyon in Canmore. I also honed down gear placements with a few days of climbing on Yamnuska and a day out at the back of the lake at Lake Louise. The weather has been quite wet. During one of the rainy days, Erin and I made a trip out to the more arid “town” of Spillimacheen and discovered an awesome climbing crag within two and a half hours from Banff.

The shoulder season between winter and summer is finally coming to an end. Pat and I were discussing to ski tour up onto the Columbia Icefields and ski up the Twin Towers (3^rd highest peak in the Canadian Rockies). But as the weekend neared, the weather forecast didn’t look promising for the three days needed for the trip. Instead, we opted to attempt Mt. Athabasca’s North Face (3491m). We drove up Saturday night at 2000h after I finished work. After two hours of driving we parked along the Snocoach Road and slept in the van.

We were hoping for an overnight freeze when we woke up at 0200h. Unfortunately it didn’t happen; instead we were greeted with a little drizzle of rain bouncing off the van’s roof and moderate to strong gusts of wind. We didn’t mind the weather conditions as we started heading up the glacial moraine at 2030h. As we walked along I was hoping that there would be some freezing higher up to hold the snow bridges together on the glacier and the rock and snow on the north face as well. The drizzle did turn into a light snow once on the North Glacier. But there was also a thick cloud/fog cover which reduced our visibility to about 10 ft. There was only a slight crust that froze on the glacier overnight and the snow bellow it was wet and heavy. Earlier this morning I was woken up by a group who had left before us at 0145h. We followed their tracks and caught up to them a few minutes before reaching the seracs bellow the Silverhorn route. When I asked which route they were planning to do I was glad to hear them say the Silverhorn and not our intended route. Around 0500h I decided to stop for a few minutes hoping that the sunrise would soon give us a better clue of our direction since we were still navigating in the dark and the visibility was still poor. The cloud cover opened up momentarily and gave us a glimpse of Mt. Athabasca. We were nearing the seracs bellow the Silverhorn route and I took a bearing of 120 degrees with my compass assuming the cloud cover was going to roll back over us which it did. The first light of the day was starting to brighten things up around 0530h, but the snow conditions didn’t improve as we climbed higher up. We realized that the snowpack was possibly going to be similar on the North Face and called it a day. A good overnight freeze would make the climbing safer and more enjoyable. As we followed our tracks back down the North Glacier Pat tweaked his knee. His leg caught in the snow as he fell forward. He had a little hop going on since he couldn’t put too much pressure on his leg. Once past the glacier he managed the sections scree and snow quite well considering. After a little snooze in the van we drove home. The 2hr car ride gave Pat’s knee enough time to stiffen up. He was in quite a lot of pain as he hoped up the apartment stairs and determined that he probably has a slight tear in his ACL.

Time of departure: 0230h

Highest point: 2900m

Time of return: 0630h

Mt. Sir Douglas attempt, South-East Face IV, 5.6

Approach: 5:15 (Asc 953m)

Climb: 3:40 (Asc 398m) Reached 3285m

Descent: 1:20

Return: 1:35 (Asc 20m)

May 8^th, 2011

At 1030h Pat and I skied along Burstall Pass and ascended 953m up the Robertson Glacier to reach the Mt. Douglas/Robertson col (2900m) by 1545h. The sky was clear with an intense sun and the temperature was around 12C. There was a lot of sluffing on the approach bellow the Robertson Glacier from the sun radiating onto the East facing slopes by 1100h. This showed how important it was to have an early start tomorrow. The going was flat until we hit the glacier. This is where most of the elevation was gained. Clouds lingered around the mountain which made it impossible to see our intended climbing route we planned to do tomorrow. While setting up camp a break in the clouds gave us a quick glimpse. The face was quite big. The longest technical climb I planned to do so far. Seemed like we had quite a day ahead! We dug our camp against a wind lip of snow and were in bed by 1930h.



View of Mt. Sir Douglas on the left.





















 

Our camp on top of the col.



 

 

Looking at Mt. Sir Douglas from the col.



 

May 9^th, 2011

The alarm went off at 0300h. We needed an early start if we wanted to avoid falling snow and rock. A quick bite of bagel and peanut butter washed down with some coffee which was kept warm in the thermos and out of our sleeping bags we went. By the time we pulled on some warmer layers and boots it was 0400h. Everything seems to take longer when you’re winter camping. We started walking along the ridge leading to the base of the snow gully on the East face of Mt. Sir Douglas. It was obvious where the bergschrund was since it wasn’t completely covered. The crossing wasn’t too difficult. The snow in the lower wide gully was more work than I had expected. I thought that with the warmer weather. The melt/freeze of the sun would have had a bigger effect on the snow giving us a firmer surface to slog up in the morning. Instead, we occasionally had snow up to our knees. Our advance was more time and energy consuming than expected. When we reached the highest point in the gully we started trending right onto a narrow snow ledge. This is where the more technical climbing (5.6) was to start. It was now 0740h and the sun was starting to break through the clouds. It made for amazing views with us above a sea of clouds. But the intensity of the sun and the temperatures were something to worry about. The weather forecast was predicting clouds in the morning but they seemed to linger too low in the valley to cover the upper section of the peak. There was a good amount of snow pillows sitting on the rocky ledges of the face. I didn’t want to sit around too long with the sluffing we witnessed yesterday. We made the decision to bail on our attempt for the summit and returned back on our tracks. Lower down in the gully we started to see small signs of melt. At 0900h we were back at the tent. We didn’t witness too many signs of sluffing until 1025h which was when we started skiing down the Robertson Glacier. At first it was a fun ski descent on boot top snow. Although lower down we came across a hard crust that made it difficult to turn on skis. Especially with 70L packs that weighted around 50lbs. We made it back to the van for 1200h.


View of the sunrise before turning around.



Pat heading down. One step at a time.



Back at camp.

 





Skiing past some seracs higher up on the Robertson Glacier.



Fine style on nice snow. Even with a 50+lbs pack.

Mt. Willingdon (3373m), West Ridge I

May 1^st, 2011

Pat and I approached from the parking lot of Mosquito Creek to our camp (roughly 20km) beside Devon Lakes in 8hrs with 1190m of elevation gain. The majority of elevation gain came from crossing over Quartzite col. We went too far up into the cirque before climbing up to the col and found ourselves having to come down 50-70m to where we could ski down the other side. Where we originally appeared on top of the col. The terrain wasn’t skiable over the other side because of cliff bands. We could have saved ourselves the extra time and elevation gain by heading up the previous drainage. There was some moderate wind on top of col.  This wind did cause a little snow transport (cross-loading from the S-W). But the amount didn’t have us too worried of wind loaded slopes (which could be avalanche prone) for the steep descent down to the Siffleur River. From bellow we saw that an easier alternative could have been taken another 300-400m to the east. This seemed to be a better route when we would return since the risk of cornices from above seemed lesser. The sky remained clear and sunny all day with a high of about 5C.  The snow at valley bottom started to turn heavy and wet by 1100h. While arriving to our base camp destination we witnessed a size 2-3? avalanche go down the NW face of Devon Mtn around 1630h. It seemed to have been triggered by the afternoon sun. It sheered to the ground (about 2m?) and was about 200m wide. I made sure to note this and kept it in mind for tomorrow.



On top of Quartzite Col looking
onto our descent to the left.



Skiing down on beautiful snow.





... and the skiing kept going.



Views from the bottom of Quartzite Col.



A well deserved water break.
Taking advantage of not having to melt snow.





Avalanche that came down Devon mtn.



 May 2^nd, 2011

Total time: 11h45 min (Peak 3373m)

Base camp to peak: 4hrs (ascended 1106m)---------------0745h – 1145h

Peak to base camp: 1h30min (asc. 36m)--------------------1145h – 1315h

Stopped for lunch and broke down base camp-------------1315h – 1445h

Base camp to car: 5hr (asc. 524m)----------------------------1445h – 1945h

Asc: 1667m, Dsc: 2166m (500m loss from camp to car)

ZZZ... The alarm went off at 0630h. We ate our frozen bagels with peanut butter and washed them down with our pre-brewed coffee from last night. Got to love a good thermos! We changed our clothes and finished preparing our equipment for the day without much rush. The skies were clear just like yesterday. Which was a nice surprise since the forecast before leaving Banff was predicting a possibility of precipitation. The approach to the bottom of the ridge was quite fast on the frozen snow crust. There was enough snow to ski up to where the ridge steepened. We left our skis there and kept our touring boots to walk/climb up the rest of the way along the ridge. The route wasn’t very technical. We did stay conscious of cornices along the ridge though. I had brought along a short 20m rope and pitons to protect the “crux” of the route. The 5m cliff band near the top wasn’t as exposed and hard as we thought. The views from the summit were quite good although clouds were coming in from the S-E. It was quite cold up there with a moderate wind still persisting from yesterday. The descent was fast and simple. Unfortunately, the skiing wasn’t good since the snow still had a hard crust. It still beats having to hike down though! 
A bite to eat and off we went again. We broke down camp and packed our bags to head back home. The snow at camp and in the valley had already started to see the effect of the sun melt. The weather was similar to yesterday although by now a layer of thin clouds were starting to cover us. Once at Quartzite Col. We ascended the gully we had scoped out yesterday. The slope steepened quite a bit at the headwall. So we attached our skis to our packs and boot packed up the rest. I expected to struggle a lot more to get up with deep snow. But we reached the top of the Col after 1h30min. It still wasn’t a walk in the park. The Col was a blast to ski down but was the crux of the day to get up and we were glad once on top. It would of been way more convenient to have gotten over the Col in the summer when the snow has almost all disappeared. Once near the creek we followed our old tracks back to the van in good time. We enjoyed the elevation loss!

Heading out for the day.

 

The start of the ridge.



The beginning of our walk to the top.
The summit can be seen on the top right.



The final section of the ridge.




Almost there...



 






Summit photo!

Mt. Andromeda; Asteroid Alley IV, 5.9

Total time: 15h40min (Peak 3384m)      Approach: 1h45min (Asc. 570m)       
Climb: 10h15min                   Rappels: 3hr                          Return: 30min

The most challenging alpine climb I have done so far.

We had a twist to the start of our day. Pat lost the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors this morning and took up the drive to Mt. Andromeda while I tried to catch up on some extra sleep. As we approached Lake Louise Pat mentioned that he thought he saw a person standing and waving along the highway. He stopped, reversed back and sure enough there was a guy in their early 20’s standing there in a sweater. I cracked the window down to talk to him. He was stuttering from the cold and told us he had been standing there for 3 hours trying to wave a car down without luck. He explained that he had just been in an accident with his car and as he kept talking I noticed a knife handle sticking out of his pocket. He told us it was to protect himself against bears and offered to go put it back into the car. We could see that he had actually rolled the car nearly 5 times according to the marks in the snow. There was no way this was a set-up after seeing the state of the car and we offered to bring him to Lake Louise which was nearby. Once there we woke up one of his friends and made sure he understood that he needed to go to the hospital and that he shouldn’t let him fall asleep since he probably had a concussion.  Once he was taken care of we kept towards Mt. Andromeda on the Icefields parkway.



Views while approaching Mt. Andromeda.


The steeper and more technical climbs on this mountain are known to have bad rock fall danger. So choosing our day wisely was important to our safety and good health. Spring and fall are the better times to attempt this climb since the colder temperatures hold the loose rock together. We made sure the temperatures wouldn’t rise too much today. We had a daytime high of about -5C on our shaded north facing climb. It felt like winter leaving the parking lot at 0630h.  We made good time on the approach to the base of the climb with the help of our touring skis and mountaineering boot combination. We did need to take off the skis and walk for short sections of scree before reaching the glacier. We stashed our skis and kicked steps up the steep snow slope to reach our first belay in the narrowing right-hand gully for roughly 350m (roughly 5 rope lengths) with 30cm of boot penetration.




The climb following up the snow slope
and onto the chimney.







Our first belay was where the snow disappeared in exchange for steeper rock with a mix of ice. The first pitch (65m) wasn’t too strenuous and mostly rock. The second pitch (65m) was one of the best pitches I have ever climbed. It consisted of a steep chimney that was a body width. There was thin ice at the back of the chimney that took 10-16cm screws all the way. I was glad to have brought 10 short ice screws since there was little in the way of rock protection. Sections along the side walls of rock allowed good feet placements to stem off of the ice and rest. It was never desperate but still challenging. I made the third pitch (20m) quite short since Pat was exposed as he belayed bellow me. While climbing I try to keep in mind to always find a safe location to belay from. I didn’t want to accidentally injure my belayer by sending down any rocks or chunks of ice. So I belayed him up to a safer spot.



Pat nearing the steeper technical part.

The last 2 pitches were on rock with very little ice. They didn’t have any signs anyone climbing on it recently. There was much more snow mushroom formations to clean off of the rock as a result. The fourth and second last pitch was mentally the hardest. I headed up rightwards to a left facing corner which seemed to have a nice crack to place rock protection throughout but got intimidated by the steepness of the line. I was only 10m up before deciding to down climb and look towards the left-hand side of the belay for another route alternative. On the positive side I found and kept a cam which was left in the rock as I climbed down. Possibly from someone else who had also decided to back-off??? I went with the left-hand variation instead which was also in the guidebook as one of two options on this pitch. It wasn’t as steep, but in exchange more technical. The amount of snow at the start of the pitch made it hard to determine where the rock would allow me to put in protection. I cleaned off snow on the slabby rock as far as my reach would allow. After debating whether continuing on or not I found a finger sized crack to place gear into and kept on going. This pitch wasn’t quite as direct and as a result the rope drag was quite bad by the time I reached the belay 35m up where I belayed off of existing pitons. The last pitch was easier and had sunshine as a reward once on top. Being in the shade all day is the price to pay on North facing climbs.



View from the first belay stance.



We used the same stations we came up to rappel down. They consisted of pitons and fixed nuts in the rock. Unluckily, the rope tangled on a chock stone as we pulled it down after our first rappel. Not what we needed. But fortunately it wasn’t stuck too far above us so Pat belayed me up a short ways until I could untangle the rope free. The rest of the rappels went better, but I think that a single rope would have made the rappels easier even though there would have been more of them. The time spent untangling and managing the extra rope makes up for it. We slid down to our skis and followed our tracks back to the parking lot. Along the ski out I bailed pretty hard while gaining speed on a gentle slope and landed on a chunk of ice. Damn those unstable mountaineering boots!

Climbing up the lower part of the chimney.

Topping out into the sun!

Final rappels before the sun sets.

Nemesis 160m VI, WI6 (Ice Climbing)

Total time: 7h45min (Peak 2177m)

Approach: 2h50min asc. 491m

Climb: 3h25min

Rappel: 36min

Return: 55min (asc. 13m)

Pat got a flat tire on Chico (the van) two days ago while coming back from skiing Mt. Hector with some other friends. After installing the spare tire and having driven back to Banff. He noticed the spare tire was missing a bolt and there was another one that was half bent. Which means two out of the five bolts are now non functional. A friend happened to be going to Haffner Creek which was on the way to the climb we intended to do. We made plans to be picked up in Banff at 0845h. There was another car in the parking lot and there seemed to be fresh tracks heading up on skis. The ski up from the trail head was straight forward since we already had some fresh tracks to follow. It was a good call on the mountaineering boots and Fritchi Freeride binding combination since the trail was flat enough once past the starting incline. After 1h30min we came out of the trees into an open area and saw that there were two other people starting up our intended climb. We decided to hang-out under some nearby trees where we would be out of any avalanche danger to see how the other group would be doing as they climbed up. If we couldn’t get on the climb after waiting around for an hour we decided that we would start heading back. We sat around for about 30min when one of the guys yelled across to us asking if we planned to also climb. After yelling back “yeah!” he told us to come over. By the time we reached the climb they had both rappelled down. Conveniently for us, one of them had plans to be back in Canmore for 1500h and he figured they didn’t have enough time to finish the climb.

We did the climb in two long 70m pitches. I led the first on thin and bulgy ice and reached a bolted anchor to the left of the second tier. Pat led the slightly steeper second pitch on thicker blue ice. The rappel down was quick with the V-threads and bolted anchors already in place. The ski out was quick. We kept the skins on to help keep the speed under check since our mountaineering boots didn’t offer the most control. It was a great end to the ice climbing season!

Mt. Hector 3394m (Ski Mountaineering)



Boot packing up a steep scree section.



Date: April 12th, 2011

Total time: 10h 10min

Approach time: 8h (asc. 1591m)

Descent time: 2h10min

I had a a great time showing Erin, Talli, Hannes and Morten to the top of Mt. Hector today. We started skiing up the creek at 0720h (temp. -11C). We then boot packed up some old avalanche debris and kept going up the gully to where it opens up into the alpine.

We reached the toe of the glacier around 1100h and roped up.
The bottom and lower angled section of the glacier only showed a few crevasses partially open. When the glacier steepened it didn’t show any signs of crevasses and the snow was quite firm. It was even too firm in some sections. One of the guys had trouble getting a proper edge into the snow while we traversed upwards. We reached the summit (3394m) after 8hrs (temp. -7C). We left our skis behind and climbed the last 50m to the top. I chose to leave my crampons behind but found the mountaineering axe useful since the snow was quite consolidated.

We had a blue bird sky almost the whole time except for a big cloud that rolled through for the top half of the ski down. As we had seen on the way up, the snow was quite crusty on the top section of the glacier. It definitely beat having to walk down though! What made this tour even better was the 1600m descent all the way to the vehicle. There isn’t a need to take your skis off or go back into touring mode.



View of Mt. Hector from the bottom of the glacier.

The snow was starting to see the effect of the intense sun 100m above the tree line when we skied down around 1500h. The snow was starting to melt and I wouldn’t have wanted to hang around the gully and old avalanche debris towards the bottom too long. The temperature at the parking lot was hovering around 0C.

 It was a good experience “guiding” everyone along the way. I kept a good sense of what was going on in the surroundings. Also making sure the pace was good for all assured everyone had a good time!



Lunch break... nearing the top.