Alpine Lifestyle in the Canadian Rockies: 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!