Uto Peak SW to NW Traverse

Took a few days off last week to join Ross for some climbing. We had grand ambitions with the NW Ridge of Sir Donald topping our list. Sadly the weather turned foul and put a crimp in our plans. The third week of August is notorious for bad weather.

So, instead of meeting in Rogers Pass as originally planned I drove straight through to Canmore and met up with Ross at the Canmore Castle. We had a good fester, did some long-boarding, visited Banff where Ross bought some new boots (he needed 'em), and had a swim in the hot springs under the cold pouring rain. I hadn't been there since I was a kid.

The forecast for the weekend improved and we eventually made our way back to Rogers Pass and up to the Sir Donald bivy site. When the clouds parted we had our first worrying look at Sir Donald.



Doh.

We set up camp and climbed up to the Donald-Uto col to look around. The NW Ridge was soaked and covered in snow. To our surprise there was a party on the route. We watched them for quite a while but they hardly moved an inch. We returned to camp. As we cooked and ate dinner we could see them rappelling down the west face racing against the encroaching darkness. Eventually they got down and came through the bivy site where Ross exchanged a few words with them. They were soaked to the core, freezing, and had basically had a very, very bad day. Ross said their eyes were as big as saucers.

With that in mind the next day we decided to give Sir Donald another day to dry out. Instead we opted to traverse Uto by climbing up the SW ridge and descending by the NW ridge. The weather improved throughout the day and we enjoyed ourselves. It wasn't Sir Donald but it was still good route in a much less threatening sort of way!







That's Sir Donald behind us in the last photo.

Another group that had arrived the previous night had decided to go for the NW ridge. We saw glimpses of them throughout the day but they too were moving agonizingly slowly. We lost sight of them and thought that they must have given up and rapped off.

When we got back to camp we debated going for it the next day, Sunday, but for me the momentum was lost and we decided against it. We planned to spend the night and head out the next morning.

We again had entertainment of sorts while eating dinner. The party which we assumed had bailed was still trying to get down off Sir Donald. However it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to be as lucky as the previous night's group and that they were doomed to a cold night out. We felt for them as we watched their headlights bobbing up and down along the distant ridge.

We still felt for them the next morning as we packed up and could still see them up there making their slow way down the ridge.

Cheops SE Ridge

We tried the SE Ridge on the holiday Monday with Fred and Joanne. To make a long story short...much bushwhacking, took longer than expected, and we bailed short of the summit. The worst part is that now we have to go back and do that bushwhack again!







It's quite a nice route once you gain the ridge. The final summit headwall looks a bit dodgy when you view it straight on but I'm sure it would have gone easily enough if we had had enough time to poke around a bit.




Thankfully the descent wasn't too bad. We scrambled across onto the east face and boot skied down snow patches for hundred of meters.

Abbott-Afton

Over the long weekend Martin payed us a visit and we spent most of our time in Rogers Pass. Martin, who now lives in Dundas Ontario, was on his we into the Bugaboos but had come out a few days early to see us. We had hoped to do one of the Rogers Pass classics such as the West Ridge of Tupper or Uto. Unfortunately the weather didn't really co-operate and we spent a lot of time hanging out in the campsite (which was still pretty entertaining).

We did manage to scramble up Abbott and Afton one day. This is fast becoming the iffy weather route of choice for us. Joanne and Fred joined us and we had a good time.




The most interesting part of the day was this owl that was perched low in a tree just a couple of meters from the trail.



We'd never seen an owl up close like this before. It just sat there staring at us seemingly unconcerned with our oohing and ahhing just few feet away. He craned his head around and blinked in an owly manner until we got bored. It was really cool.

Eagle Peak Traverse

We were back in Rogers Pass again this weekend to try Eagle Peak. Most of the fresh snow has melted off and it's beginning to look more summer-like in the alpine, although I think there is still more snow remaining than in previous years.

The plan was to gain the col between Avalanche and Eagle, climb the N Ridge and then descend by the SW Ridge.

We really enjoyed the route up. There was plenty of snow below the col which really helped. Under the snow is a steep scree slope which I suspect becomes more character building as the summer wears on. From the col the route is part ridge walk, part scramble, and part low 5th class climbing. We did get the rope out at one point as the ridge became steeper and less blocky near the top. Probably wasn't necessary in the end but hey, we had a rope, might as well use it.

All went well and we were on the summit by 2 o'clock. The guidebook suggested 6 hours up and we took 7. What!? Slower than guidebook time? Us? We'll have to have a word with David P. Jones about this!

So, the descent down the SW ridge...

Here's some advice: if there's someone in your life that you really, really don't like, tell them that the SW ridge is a good way to descend from Eagle Peak. 'Nuff said.

Six hours(!) after leaving the summit we arrived, very footsore, at the Illecillewaet campground. We didn't even look for the friends that we knew were camping somewhere nearby. Food. Bed.

Balu Peak SE Ridge

We planned to try the north ridge of Eagle Mountain in Rogers Pass this weekend. It was to be our first alpine climbing weekend of the summer and the route seemed like a good low-key way to start. We were already familiar with the descent route since we had checked it out last summer. However when we arrived at the pass on Friday night the mountains were looking very white from the storms which had come through the region on Thursday.



In the photo Eagle is the peak at middle right. Uto is peaking out from behind and Sir Donald looms high above from the far right. The north ridge of Eagle climbs up and right from the col in the center of the photo.

So enough about what we didn't do.

A post on the ACC Okanagan forum made us think of the SE Ridge of Balu Peak. A quick check of the guidebook and we were on our way.

We've been up Connaught Creek many times in the winter but this was our first summer trip. What a fine hike. Great trail, great views. From Balu Pass our route followed the left skyline in this photo. The col on the right is the start of the 8812 bowl.



A fine day out as they say. 3rd class scrambling over mostly solid rock.



It took us 9 hours including a short nap at Balu Pass. There were a couple of guys skiing up there and it looked pretty good. Only 4 months to go until the season starts again :)

Glacier Circle Hut

Brenda hasn't written for the blog since the Little Sifton Traverse. Take it away Brenda...

The Glacier Circle Hut is an historic and seldom-visited hut. It was built in the early 1900's, and sits in a hanging valley beside the Dawson Range, a stunning group of 11,000' peaks.

The fastest access to the hut is over the Illecillewaet Glacier. The guidebook gives 10-12 hours to get to the hut, so we started off at 6:30 on Saturday morning. We hiked for three hours with skis on our packs in order to get to the snow - a heavy three hours, tottering top-heavy over first the trail, then rocks, then finally snow. We were moving slowly, and concerned about making it to the hut in reasonable time. We got to the toe of the glacier, had lunch, and put our skis on for the 10km slog across the flat nevé.





There is a magical window of time during which the hut is accessible to average mortals such as ourselves. In the winter, the days are so short that we would have to leave well before breakfast in order to arrive at the hut in daylight. And with fresh winter snow on the neve, breaking trail for that long distance would be hard. In midsummer and fall, the melting snow reveals the crevasses on the glacier, and walking roped across the whole glacier would be exhausting and long. In the spring, the consolidated snow makes for fast travel on skis, days are long, and the hut moves several hours closer to the highway.

We made quick time across the glacier, and the ski was thoroughly enjoyable. We ran across the tracks of a bear who had loped across the neve from the Asulkan side across to the Beaver Valley. I bet he made good time.



At its south end, the Illecillewaet drops off into the Glacier Circle. We were able to make a few turns on the last tongue of snow before abandoning our skis and staggering down the rocks into the valley floor.





The hut itself is notoriously difficult to find. Stories abound of people spending the night out because they couldn't find the hut, then waking up to discover they were sleeping not 100 feet away. I had programmed the location into my GPS to avoid such a fate.

Fred decided that he wanted the experience of discovering the hut by himself, so he took off ahead. Andrew and I were more interested in the experience of boot-removal, so I took the GPS and forged straight at the co-ordinates. We were so tired that we didn't bother to find a trail through the woods - we bashed forward through ponds, rivers, over logs, and through brush, anxious only to arrive. Which we did, a full half hour before Fred, and a half hour within the 12 hour time limit given by the guidebook.

The hut itself is beautiful, and the surroundings nothing short of spectacular. The Deville Glacier, two kilometers away, spills over a cliff and spends the afternoon hurling school-bus-sized chunks of ice off into the valley, and the thunder echoes all around the Cirque.





Sunday was spent relaxing and exploring our new surroundings. We planned to go for a short stroll after breakfast. Then we discovered a family of mice, and our stroll started late. We walked to the top of a small hill. We had a swim in the lake at the end of the valley. Then we realized that we had almost missed lunchtime, so we walked back to the cabin. We had lunch, and met the porcupine who lives next-door to the hut. Then it was naptime, then glacier-watching time, then suppertime, then bedtime. It was a great day.

On Monday we got up early, tidied the hut, and started back to Rogers Pass. The trip was uneventful, and four hours faster than the trip in - downhill most of the way, and we were glad to have skis. We had the increasingly familiar surreal feeling of getting back to the hiking trail wearing our huge packs with skis strapped on, amongst the hikers wearing summer clothes and tiny fashionable day-packs. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we got back to the car.

distance: 16 km each way
elevation at Rogers Pass: 1350m
elevation at Glacier Circle: 1850m
elevation at high point on Neve: 2700m
species spied: grizzly bear*, porcupine, nuthatch, common butterwort (carnivorous!), herd of unidentified ungulates, frog, deer mice
*Do not worry, the grizzly bear was very far away. Good eyes Fred.

Lots more photos here of the porcupine, the mice, and Fred's sun burned knees.

Dome Glacier

Perhaps the last outing of the season? We'll see. We've been skiing for seven months now. There wasn't much snow in the Asulkan parking lot on Saturday morning. There still is lots of snow of course. But it's getting to that stage where you wonder if the 200 meters of good skiing you find at the end of five hours of slogging is really worth the effort. Still, as always, it's just good to be out.

Our destination for the day was the Dome Glacier. It's on the opposite side of the Asulkan Valley from that pitch on Young's Peak that we skied last weekend. It also faces mostly north so we hoped there would still be some dry snow once we got high enough. The Dome Glacier is on the sky line straight above Brenda here.



Fred suggested a short cut. We followed like lambs to the slaughter. 752 million groin-busting kick turns later we broke out of the trees and onto the open slopes beneath the dome.



We came across a small tree in the middle of nowhere that had been adorned with prayer flags. It was really strange. Strange that the prayer flags were there in the first place of course but also that of all the possible routes which we could have taken in this vast expanse of snow and trees we happened upon this one little tree that someone else had already chosen to adorn with prayer flags. It was nice.



A rare photo of me! Free-pivot tele bindings rule. Mount Castor in the background.



We topped out on a feature called The Cleaver which is a rocky rib that separates the remnants of the Asulkan Glacier from the Dome Glacier. It was tempting to scope out the Dome-Rampart col for a future trip but the motivation wasn't quite there for another 20 minutes of climbing. It was hot.

The skins came off and down we went. The snow was really nice for about 300 meters. Just on the edge of soft. Then all of a sudden it transitioned into sloppy wet goo and wham! The faceplants were thick and furious. I captured Steve on video hitting the deck as though he'd been shot.

The farther down we descended the nastier the snow became. Where it was steep we could deliberately set off small sluffs that slowly oozed downhill. Occasionally one would gather enough momentum to develop into a full blown wet snow avalanche. We'd hear it crash down noisily down into the valley a few minutes later.

At the end of the day we were visited by a curious pine marten. He was darn cute. I'd only ever seen martens before in huts where they are much less cute and much more noisy. This fella entertained us for a few minutes by climbing around in a tree and peering at us from only a few meters away. He then nonchalantly bounded away.

If this was indeed the end of the season then it was a nice way to end it.

Young's Peak Traverse

Huzzah! We've wanted to do this one for ages.

The traverse goes up the Illecillewaet drainage and onto the Illecillewaet glacier, up Young's Peak, and then descends the 'Seven Steps of Paradise' into the Asulkan Valley. Guidebook time is 8-10 hours. Probably within our powers -- just!

The forecast for Saturday was brilliant. We spent Friday night at the Asulkan parking lot and made an early start the next morning. It was a stunning day. Blue skies, no wind, fresh snow.



We'd never been as far across the glacier as we were planning to go today. Navigation would be a challenge if the visibility deteriorated. There was also some concern about a possible cornice which we may have to tunnel through (we'd brought ice axes for the purpose) and also the super steep and often icy slope right off the summit.

So it was with a spirit of adventure that we made our way towards the Illecillewaet. However we're not the fastest climbers around. It wasn't long before another couple caught up with us. We chatted and discovered that they also had the traverse in mind. After they had passed us we both felt a little deflated. That spirit of adventure that we'd started out with was somewhat diminished knowing that there would be others only a short distance ahead of us doing exactly the same route. In many ways the decision making would be out of our hands. There would be a track in the snow ahead of us pointing out where to go and which slopes were safe. Stuff like that.

Anyway we plodded on but it wasn't long before we grew to appreciate having them ahead of us. The higher we climbed the deeper the snow became and the tougher the trail breaking became. Actually we only imagined how difficult the trail breaking got -- we weren't doing any. It looked rough! They went on and on for hours. We caught an occasional sight of them in the distance.

The views opened up and we began to see some of the other places we've skied this winter. This is the route on Video Peak that we skied in March.

 

The Illecillewaet glacier is a rolling sea of ice and snow that disappears into the horizon on all sides. I couldn't imagine trying to do this traverse in bad visibility. It would be so easy to get turned around. Our friend, Steve, who has accompanied us on many of the trips that we've written about this year, once spent three days and nights on the Illecillewaet struggling to find his way home in a storm. Shudder.

Eventually we got our first look at the ridge that would lead us up Young's Peak.

 

It was at this point that we noticed that the other party had turned around and they were now coming back towards us. Doh. Perhaps there was no way through.

When we met them on the track they told us that they'd done the traverse before but that today the cornice looked bigger and nastier and that the upper ridge looked too icy. After hearing this we didn't think much of our own chances but we thought we'd at least go check it out for ourselves. They wished us luck and we went our separate ways.

It was a bit odd but it was the best outcome for Brenda and myself. They had done all of the tedious trail breaking across the glacier and then left us to our own devices for the more interesting bits at the end.

We descended a short way and then re-ascended onto the ridge. Getting past the cornice was no problem in the end so we didn't need the ice axes. Would have been cool to tunnel up through a cornice though! We made a steep and narrow track upwards along the ridge trying to avoid the cornice on one side and the steep west face on the other side.



The top seemed just minutes away but every time we looked up it didn't seem to be any closer. Brenda, all 105lbs of her, broke trail all the way up the ridge. Finally we topped out at around 2 o'clock.



I can't believe I posted that photo. I look like I've just been hit on the head. Brenda looks like a seagull shat on her nose. We were pooped.

Now what? We thought again how diabolical it would be up here in bad visibility. It helped that we'd scoped out the route from the Asulkan side many times before but it still wasn't completely obvious where to go. We headed towards this wind role and peered over the edge.



We knew what we were looking for but the convex slope made it really difficult to see what was below us. There was a party climbing upwards from the Asulkan hut and we must have looked comical as we zig-zagged back and forth craning our necks. To them it was obvious what was below us but we couldn't see a thing.

Soon we got our bearings. We made a good long examination of the slope. It looked fantastic but it didn't exactly instill us with confidence. It was cross-loaded by the prevailing winds and there were 30-40cms of dense storm snow that had now been in the sun for a couple of hours.

However we decided it was okay and after only half-jokingly mumbling to Brenda "If it goes, be quick", I dropped in.

Yee-haw! It was fabulous skiing. After the first few turns my thoughts changed from worrying about the snow stability to concentrating on not providing a crowd-pleasing crash for the gawkers below! The slope is foreshortened in this photo and doesn't look all that steep. Brenda's track is on the left. She wins the award for kicking off the bigger sluff (and getting the biggest cheer from those below).



 

Feeling pretty chuffed about the whole thing we decided to try something else new and descended behind the Pterodactyl rather than past the Asulkan hut. Again, fabulous skiing. It's thrilling to be skiing down through unfamiliar terrain, not quite knowing what you'll find next. (To which I should add "in good light".) The Asulkan hut is at center right of this photo. The Pterodactyl is the feature between the hut and our descent route.



Looking back up at the route from the Asulkan Valley.



The always cool GPS track in Google Earth.



And, finally, it was 9 hours car to car (inside guidebook time!) and 1770 meters of climbing on the day.

What's on for next weekend...anyone up for a ski?

Icefall Lodge

I think this was my 9th hut trip with these guys over the past 10 years. I wouldn't miss it for anything.















A helicopter-centric video (there wasn't much ski footage) and
some more photos.