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Well the last month has been a busy one. I am not sure where to begin as there is alot to type about. Lets start with the vacation to Canmore then another post about Jasper.
On May 9, I caught a ride with my friend Doug and a New Zealander (not sure of his name) to Canmore. I was on my way to meet up with Brent Peters to do some climbing. I had almost 2 weeks off so why not start in Canmore. When I got there the weather had crapped out a bit so we did not get to climb right away. We did manage a day of sport climbing on Grotto. The locals have been going off bolting this area called the Hideaway. After getting schooled on Limestone (yet again), we planned to go to the Icefields south of Jasper to climb Andromeda (right hand gully).
Picture taken May 27, 2005
We left Canmore later than we should of towards the Icefields. We saw a grizzly on the side of the road about 15 minutes north of Lake Louise. First time I have ever seen on the side of the road. EVER.
We finally got to the climbers parking lot. Nice old familiar territory. We left the parking lot at 5am and headed up the Snow Coach road to the moraine. We had patches of sun and cloud through out this. Finally got geared up and got on the glacier. I noticed the glacier was definatley smaller than the last time I was here 4 years ago with Brent (north bowl route).
As always I go first on the glacier (seeming I am the lightest), I had my fun being on the sharp end. I found one small slot (surprised I did not find more) which I stepped into. We got to the base of the route and simul-climbed the snow. We covered almost half the gully till we hit the ice. We saved alot of time doing this. As always moving together very efficiently.
When we hit the ice, I asked Brent to pitch it out. This was the 3rd time I had been climbing ice in 3 years. The first time I had been alpine climbing in almost 4 years. So I felt Brent was ok with that. After the 2nd pitch of ice, my calves were on fire. Mental note, do more calve exercises. This was when the snow had started to fall also. I started to get a little paranoid about this. Brent and I discussed this and decided that the snow was not heavy enough and to keep going (foreshadowing here folks).
On the last ice pitch, Brent disappeared around this rock corner. This is went the snow started to get worse. I was watching the spindrift clean the gully every 3-4 minutes. Most of this was caused by Brent climbing above. This last ice pitch took Brent a long time. I started to yell up. I did not hear anything except the occasional ching ching of a piton. Finally I yelled some more and Brent yelled back. The wind carried his voice (as the wind picked up along with the snow). I heard something like "bad belay".
Brent was secure and on belay. So I climbed as fast as I could. No point pissing around. I was on top rope, so I moved as fast as possible. The ice slowly disappeared and I ended up in front of 2 manky pins in some crap rubble. I barely had to bang them out. No wonder Brent took so long. I climbed past and got to the belay. At this point the snow was coming down and the mountain was breathing very rapidly. Brent was fighting spindrift and telling me that this belay was shit. It would not hold a fall at all. I looked around and found a nice slot for a red tri-cam. The temperature started to drop and I had to put on another layer. I put on my puff ball and fleece. I had 4 layers on upper body now and still was cold.
Anyway Brent proceed to head up over rock covered by a ton of snow. This pitch also took Brent some time as he had to clean alot of rock off or he could have went for a nasty ride. As Brent was fighting his way up through the blizzard, I was fighting the "every 2-minute spindrift" on my head. I had to keep warm so I was moving around alot. I forgot to tell you that Brent had ski goggles on when he left this belay. I had none or anything to protect my eyes. After hanging out for some time in the ping-pong ball I finally heard Brent yell "ON BELAY".
So again I climbed as fast as I could. Every few minutes I had to clean the snow out of my eyes. Got to the belay and Brent commented on how fast I was moving. We did not really piss around much. Brent said that there should not be that much climbing left to the ridge. He started to climb and I started the process of staying warm and cleaning my belay area from the spindrift. This kept me moving and warm. I finally heard another yell of "ON BELAAYY". So I proceed up as fast as I could climb. I noticed that the rock was disappearing and the visibilty was horrible. I could not see anything and just kept climbing. I finally got to a small pre-cornice. YAY finally the ridge. I was so happy we were on top I had a moment of extreme happiness. We topped out at 3150 meters (give or take 10).
We sat in a hole for a bit. We ate, hydrated and talked about the decent. This will be the fun part. We had to get to the middle gully Brent had climbed a week earlier. We had about 8-60 meter rappels. Brent was a bit worried about getting off the ridge and into the gully. There was some massive cornices and the new snow loading them did not help.
Brent and I proceeded down the ridge. I would keep Brent tight as he would look to see where the notch was so we could get down to the middle gulley. He finally found the gap in between 2 Cornices we could rappel through. We prepared a Snow Bollard that I would back up as Brent would rappel first.
After Brent disappeared into the ping pong ball, I started to get really cold sitting in the snow connected to the Snow Bollard. Finally the tension was released on the rope so I moved around to the front of the Bollard to setup for my rappel.
I rappeled over the edge (which was a bit airey) and down to where I saw Brent setting up the first rappel. We were in between 2 huge cornices. The wind was fierce as the spindrift and snow was just as bad. It was a full on blizzard and we were in it. Brent was ready to rappel so he went down. After he got down and the tension was off the rope, I was next. I had major issue trying to stuff to 8 mill's into the reversino with frozen gloves. Brent started to yell at me to hurry as this was taking too long. So I took off my glove and got the rope fed into the device (FINALLY). Rappeled the first 60 meters as fast and safe as possible. When I got to the next station I told Brent what happened and I had problems with the reversino (mental note, get a better device).
After 6 or so more rappels, taking off my glove to feed the device, battling the spindrift, the stress of the 2 cornices, we got to the shrund. I rappelled into it as always. This was the 3rd time with Brent this happened. Brent laughed at me.
We got our gear sorted on the glacier and headed back to the moraine. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the moraine. I am so surprised we did not find anymore holes, but there was so much new snow I guess the bridges were solid again. We had ice buildup on everything. Even more so on the screws. As we headed down the moraine to the road and then the car, the temperature increased.
Seeing the car after something like that is the best part. I kissed the car as usual and then we cracked the one Pilsner we had. Time to get to Jasper to have a few more. We did this car to car in 16.5 hours.
Part two of this vacation coming soon.
chris