Ice Climbing in the Canadian Rockies, Jan 4 - 10, 1999

My ice climbing trip to the Canadian Rockies seems to becoming an annual event. My friend Gene from Bellingham joined me for this years trip to the Great White North. Like last year, this year we drove my van. A scary prospect as my van has no heat at all...Toyota engineering. Last year Maurice and I became popsicles on the drive to Banff, with temperatures around -20 C for the first few days. This year proved to be milder, plus Gene and I rigged a blanket in the front of the van to keep the meager heat in the cab of the van and the cold drafts out. We drove straight through to Lake Louise on Monday, a relatively uneventful trip. We checked into Lake Louise youth hostel and were miserable in the overheated bunk room, breathing dry air, until some fun skiier types entertained us briefly. Well, on to the climbing. Day one was spent "warming up" on Louise Falls, with the Chateau as a backdrop. The first 2 pitches were fine - the first pitch brittle and the second pitch wet. Here's a shot of Gene leading p.2 (94k). We got to the cave and the crux pillar and climbed around it, looked at it, and poked it tenuously with our ice tools. It looked odd somehow, thin with a fracture at the top. It looked about hard 4, 4+. I didn't want to lead it, although it seemed to have been climbed recently. So we backed off and rapped while a hardman from Colorado made things look easy. We hiked back to the car and drove to Canmore, where we checked into the Alpine Club of Canada bunkhouse on the outskirts of town. Day two found us hiking in to Moonlight, after a climber at the bunkhouse suggested that climbing Coire Dubh Integrale might not be a great idea when it was windy, as the next day was supposed to be. No matter, into Kananaskis Country we drove. Moonlight is a fine climb with fine approach. As we roped up Barry B ("bad dog!") showed up with a few clients and his dog and happily climbed Snowline to our right. Moonlight was brittle and sustained (with Bubba and Co. roping up on the left), with two full, exciting pitches of WI4. There were a lot of V-threads on both these routes, making protection a bit easier than it otherwise might have been. On the way out we soloed Chantilly Falls, a mellow 2.

Day three found us on Coire Dubh. After some initial fumbling and stumbling in the dark, we found a trail to the base of the climb, up an ugly and nasty snow-covered scree slope. We had brought rock pro with us, but as we got to the base of the route we realized there was a whole lot of rock up there! The rock portion of the Integrale is easily longer than the ice portion. Gene led an initial WI3 step, and then I post-holed up a long boring gully to a final 25m WI2 step. Above, the rock looked uninviting. We saw the features of the route according to the topo, and the initial arch/crux bulge had no ice. The rest of the route looked kind of stupid, so we rapped and downclimbed. This limestone business is scary! The guys from Colorado would later echo my sentiments when they commented that the Canadian Rockies seem to have poor quality mixed routes, that the climbing here seems to be more inclined to fat waterfalls than technical mixed.

Day four found us driving past Stanley Headwall to Radium at dawn. Our goal for the day was Gibraltar Wall (104k), a Columbia Valley climb and something I had had my eyes on for a few years. We had left the Canmore area and ACC clubhouse (gratefully) behind for warm climbing down south. We got to Gibraltar at about 10:30, just after 2 others were heading up to the base of the wall. Gibraltar looks awesome, with lots of ice and an easy approach. The sun was out as we piled out of the van, but disappeared into a grey smog that filled the valley through the remainder of the day. I led the first pitch to the base of a steep chandeliered column, which Gene led to a bolt belay at the base of the third, crux column. I led this, with lots of screws, to a tree that opened to a final pitch of rambling WI 3. The raps off the route were well-established and easy, and we were back to the van and driving for Golden before dark.

In Golden, we hunted down a private hostel run by a nice woman named Heidi. Her two friends were hanging out there along with David Thompson, the drastically horny dog. Troy turned out to be a local ice climber and outdoor retailer, though he had sprained something over Christmas while trying on his new, one-piece ice climbing suit and was therefore unable to climb. Go figure. We ended up going out to a movie with them, Star Trek: Insurrection. Whoever did the casting job with Donna Murphy probably could have renamed the movie Star Trek: Piccard's Erection! Anyway, I thought the Borg flick was better, but this was fine.

Day Five found us sleeping in. We had decided to go to Field and do Guiness Gully, but it was difficult getting up in the morning again. After a leisurly breakfast watching Dave the Dog humping his blanket for the fifty-billionth time, we departed up Kicking Horse for Field...a rare treat - I rarely see Kicking Horse by daylight, it seems I am always driving through at night. We arrived in Field, checked the av conditions at the info center, looked at Silk Tassel, and finally made our way to Guiness. Gene led the first pitch (116k) on the heels of a solo guy from Calgary. It was hacked up and brittle, but not too bad. I led the second pitch, a short vertical column with plastic ice, and Gene led the final long pitch of ice - much easier than it looked like from the road - at about WI3+. I think Guiness is kind of a giveaway this year.

We decended down the climb and started driving. In Revelstoke, we explored around a little and ate at an Italian place with a well-meaning waitress. Then more driving towards Kamloops and home...it seems in retrospect that the trip was almost too hurried and too full...we never took a rest day and I didn't even have as much time to read and sack out as I would have liked. The weather was also uncharacteristically good, which made the whole thing suspect. The real bummer was that by the end of the day on Guiness, Gene and I were feeling casual on WI4 and strong enough to start tackling WI5. If only I had just another week!