Hello family and friends,
Firstly, thank you so much for signing up! I didn’t expect to have almost 90!! people sign up for this so I have just a little bit of pressure to do a good job writing and be accountable :)
It’s been quite a whirlwind of a week. From moving to Canmore and into the hostel to getting acquainted with my new course mates and of course packed schedule with intensive daily outings.
I think I am still slowly processing the whole move and getting into a rhythm here. It has been incredible to hear the words of encouragement and wishes from all of you when I shared my plans. It has helped me go through the transition with a lot more confidence and I am grateful for that and I hope I have some cool stories and pictures to share over the next few months!
So after over two months of contemplation, planning, discussion, moving and adjusting, I found myself in the midst of 10 young and jolly guys who made me feel old at my ripe old age of 29! But they all seem to have come to the course with a great attitude to learn and grow which has been fantastic and within a few short days the initial awkward tension has dissipated already.
The Yamnuska semester cohort stands safely 2 m (or 1 hockey stick apart). (Clockwise starting at the top left) Yours truly, Joel, Aidan, Mike, Pat, Nick (not the guide), Luke, Ben, Noah and Will.
Me hanging out at the Junkyards
Canmore is a picturesque town and the Yamnuska (Yam) office is obviously also located in a picturesque spot. After initial introductions with the Yam guides, Nick and James, we started off our 3 day initial tryst with ice climbing. Nick, the lead guide for this section, is a 60 year old Scottish man who can put all the young guns to shame when it comes to climbing. He is full of jokes and a great instructor. And James, I think has found inner peace which he exudes by both climbing fluidly and speaking with an earnest calmness. The perfect guides for the first section!
Luckily I have ice climbed before and it allowed me to keep up with the rest of the crew and to ease into the daily exercise regimen which had sadly fallen to the wayside due to COVID. For the first two days we headed up to this place called the Junkyards.
This is a popular ice crag near Canmore with some nice low angle ice to get acquainted. Being the shutterbug that I am, I ended up taking some pretty neat shots of our time up at the Junkyards. Being a photographer in the Canadian rockies is probably the easiest job in the world. Taking stunning shots barely takes any effort and literally anyone can appear to be a pro. It is an absolute treat!
While I enjoy taking landscape pictures, it has been nice to switch up to try and get some shots of people doing cool things like ice climbing.
Hiking up to the Junkyards
Nick our legendary guide
James in blue being calm and some of the boys listening for wisdom
Nick looking down onto beautiful Bow Valley from the Junkyards
Luke climbing in our epic playground
Eventually the instructors felt confident enough of our skills to test us on some slightly steeper terrain in a place called Wedge Smear. We got on our way at the crack of dawn at 6.45 am and got climbing by around 9 or 10 am. The entire crew did a solid job climbing.
I was able to climb a route next to Joel and get a sweet shot of him climbing
Mt Kid (above) across the valley from us avalanched right as we started climbing early in the morning. Even though the avalanche was not huge (and we were totally safe and far away from it), it was extremely loud with an unmistakably loud rumble that strikes fear in alpinists. A good prelude to our AST 1 course I suppose.
Today was our AST 1 course, classroom day which allowed us to all recover from our exertion over the last few days. Still feeling pretty great so really looking forward to the next week which consists of more ice climbing and focussing on some larger and steeper routes in more exposed terrain. Stay tuned for an update!
I would love to hear what you thought about my writing and experience and if there is anything that you would like me to write about.
Have a safe and fun week ahead!
– G