Day 1: Hafner. After a great warm up day at Hafner last March, it seemed like the logical place to go again, for several reasons. One, its just a great place to go warm up! Two, Summer and I had already climbed Gibraltar Wall before, but Summer had never been to Hafner. Hafner is one of the first climbing areas one gets to when driving the Southern route from the States, so it was just the right thing to do. As usual, we drove the southern route into Cranbrook and slept by the side of the road in the 4Runner. When we got to Hafner, fairly early, we got our choice of good warm up line, then top-roped some harder stuff. It was fun!
Day 2: This House Of Sky. The last time Summer and I had tried this route, we had only gotten up some of the inital steps before we encountered running water, no frozen creekbed. We took this as a sign that the route was out of shape and turned around, only to read on the Internet that someone climbed it complete the next day. So this time we were determined to climb the whole thing, regardless of what the initial steps looked like. We arrived just as another party was leaving their car for the same route, and all four of us soloed the inital ice steps to the first long WI2 step, further up the canyon. Here the other party used a running belay for the second, while we continued soloing and shortly soloed on past this group. Lower This House of Sky consists of many many short to medium length steps of WI2. Eventually you get dumped out into the upper basin, at tree line, and the nature of the climb and the temperatures(!) change dramatically. In the upper basin there are 3 to 4 different lines to take, all which meander up shallow gullys to the ridge line high above. The most obvous flow in the center is the line most typically climbed, but requires a good 20 min hike to approach the continuing ice. The temps were now very cold, with a fierce wind. Summer and I put on all we had brought, and I quickly lead the next pitch, which was a short but vertical pillar of brittle ice. I belayed at the following short step and brought Summer up, but she declined this lead and I lead again on brittle ice up the step and then a long snow slope to a belay by a rock. When Summer came up I was too cold to continue up the last pitch of WI2, which from a distance looks more impressive than it is up close. We descended back down to the entrance of this upper valley, and found the walk-off descent steeply through the trees skiers left of where the route enters the upper valley. Back to the cars in no time flat, this route is entirely soloable and very enjoyable, a great ramble! We took our camcorder up the route and got some fun shots!
Day 3: Cascade. We met Colin H and Peter H in Banff that night, and heard that they had just climbed a thin but interesting Cascade that day, and were getting ready for a go at Sea of Vapors, reportedly in WI4 shape. This (Cascade) sounded pretty interesting to me, as its one of the few routes I have looked at but never gotten up in the Banff area, so Summer and I planned to try it the next day! We got an early start and were the only party en route, doubtless because Cascade was still in very early season shape: wet, discontinuous, and thin. But Fun! The low-angled approach pitches are "there" but at best WI2, you can bypass them with little worry that you are missing anything. I lead the first steep pitch, where huge mushrooms lead to a mushroom tower. Here there was a short section where the ice was discontinuous: if you stood up on the top of the mushroom tower, you could hook your tools into the curtain above...if everything stayed in place, you could do several steep moves onto the thin ice above and continue climbing! Certainly the crux. The next pitch had much better ice but was still interesting with lots of mushrooms. Like the previous day, we took our camcorder up the sunny route and got some great shots!