Bottom of north glacier to AA col: 1hr 20min (asc. 685m)
Time for Pat to reach summit and back to AA col: 50min
AA col to parking: 1hr50min (asc. 30m)
Total time: 5hrs (Total asc. 1275m)
Pat and I arrived at the Icefields information center yesterday evening and planned to climb the North face of Mt. Athabasca. While cooking dinner in the parking lot a storm quickly swept over us and the surrounding mountains. The forecast also called for chances of a storm tomorrow afternoon. We talked it over and decided to wake up at 0400h and make up our mind then to climb or not depending on the weather. At 0400h we woke up to the sound of a howling wind and a slight drizzle on the roof of the van. It was enough to convince us not to head out right away. We woke up at 0900h with slightly improving weather. The later hour meant that attempting the more technical and time consuming North face was out of the question. Instead we went out to do the mellower North Glacier route up the mountain. We left the van at 0945h and walked up a path dusted with snow to the toe of the north glacier. There were dark clouds and a light snowfall that lasted all day with moderate gusts of wind. Travel on the glacier wasn’t too bad since there wasn’t enough snow lower down to hide any crevasses. As we reached higher ground we encountered fresh boot top snow (about 20cm). This slowed down our pace somewhat but didn’t cause any concerns. We reached the Andromeda/Athabasca (AA) col in good time but the weather still seemed unsettled with dark grey clouds surrounding us. I had reached the summit of Mt. Athabasca before but this was Pat’s first time. There wasn’t any risk or technical climbing left to reach the summit which was only another 200-300m above. I waited for him at the col while he went to the summit. He passed by two other guys along his way to the summit who had left at 0600h and quickly made it back to find me. We continued with our plan to go down the AA col instead of going back the same way we came up to make things more interesting. The col dropped us onto the AA glacier which we descended to reach the van by 1445h. Unfortunately, I forgot to put a memory card in the camera during the climb. So I don’t have any photos during the climb and I had to lug around useless weight! We would have rather climbed the classic North face on Athabasca today. Although the more casual outing we had today was a good time.
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| View of the Athabasca Glacier. |
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| View of the Athabasca Glacier and the oncoming storm. |
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| Mt. Athabasca |
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| Mt. Athabasca with the oncoming storm. |
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| Mt. Athabasca and the North Glacier route outlined in red. |
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