Windtower; North-East Ridge 5.4

I’ve been mostly sport climbing lately and just came back from visiting Ontario for 2 weeks. It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve been out on a bigger climb. Probably because it has been a while! The N-E ridge wasn’t our intended climb. We had bigger plans to climb the N-E face (5.10a, 570m) but had difficulties along the way. Pat was house-sitting in Canmore for the month so I came over and slept there to get a little head start closer to the climb and a few more minutes of shut eye. We left at 0530h and parked bellow the approach to the West Wind Pass. We cruised up to the top of the pass making good time (30 min). Unfortunately this was the only part of the day where we made good time. From there we fumbled around looking for the correct way down past cliff bands to reach a faint trail bellow. Before that we even stared to head towards the wrong peak West of the Windtower... Note: Study the approach information thoroughly before heading out!

With about two hours wasted from scrambling around we made it to the base of the N-E face. The guidebook does mention that a lot of parties lose a lot of time trying to find the start of the route. I found out why! The face is quite wide and there aren’t any big distinguishing features to indicate where to start. We studied it from further down and thought we had figured it out. Once up and against the face we kept walking back and forth. We tried to locate ourselves with where we were in relation to the information about the climb which we had written down. It took us another hour or so before finally thinking we had things figured out. We traversed all the way across the scree ledges and found a section of rock above which seemed close to the description of the climb. Still it wasn’t exactly the same. By now it was later than we would have liked since the climb is quite long. We decided to at least climb the corner of rock above to see if we could at least find evidence that this was the correct way. I climbed the 5.8 pitch to a ledge which seemed like the route. Although I still wasn’t totally sure this was the way. By now we had agreed that it was too late to attempt the climb. I down-climbed the pitch and we decided to climb the N-E ridge as our consolation prize.

We figured that simul-climbing most of the ridge wouldn’t be a problem and that if we needed to we could belay any more difficult sections. We didn’t need to belay any of it and reached the summit after 2hrs from the base of the ridge. That included me being lowered down a pitch to retrieve Pat’s chalk bag which he dropped onto a ledge half-way up. The walk down from the top was easy and straight forward with a good trail the whole way.

Photo's will be posted soon!