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 (3rd 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
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