Hello friends,
Writing this last newsletter has been on my to-do list for a while now. After the course, I stuck around in western Canada for about a month to do some exploring. Climbing and exploring independently after the course was the highlight of my sabbatical with some real epic adventures. Patrick was the only other course mate who stuck around in Canmore and became my default partner for most of the adventures.
Exploring bow valley
Unfortunately for us the weather was fairly finicky for the majority of my time in the rockies and that was forcing a good number of rest days on us which was was good in retrospect. But Pat and I had a few tricks up our sleeves. Carl our guide from the rock climbing section of the course taught us about Venturi tunnels which is a concept in thermodynamics that applies to weather systems. Essentially, when the weather comes from the west in Canmore, the mountains funnel the rolling weather into smaller passages which concentrate the precipitation and triggers bad weather around there. However as the systems roll through Canmore onto the open plains on the east of the mountains, the constrictions ease to larger passages leading to better weather. So depending on where the weather rolls in from, you can decide which direction to go for some climbing.
As a result, we were able to extract more climbing than we would have ideally by playing the weather systems a bit. Pat and I were able to get on Grey waves which was an old school 5.8 multi pitch climb on goat mountain. We also got on a mixed sport climb called keel haul wall going at 5.6 which was also super fun. We had a pretty close encounter with a mountain goat at the summit which felt like it could have gone either way. Something was not right with that goat, or it didn’t like us for some reason. Not entirely sure. We also snuck in a climb on the Kanga crag and climb Godzilla in some really windy and almost scary conditions. All good though!
After some weather tricks we also managed to get on Beautiful century which was a hard 5.10a on the back of a pretty stellar lead from Patrick. We also dealt with some pouring rain while climbing which was fairly unnerving. Feeling pretty confident in our skills and reading some beta from mountain project we felt that we were ready for some bigger objectives like Achilles Spire. Ben, Pat, Brandon (Pat’s friend) and I decided to make a day adventure and tick that one off.
Achilles Spire
Achilles spire turned out to be an absolute epic of an adventure, to the point where you question why you do this and who decided that this was a fun thing to do. We started off bright and early, driving up from Calgary around 4 am to reach the approach hike around 6ish. We met up with Pat and Brandon there. After about a 2.5 hour hike, and some sketchy snow field traverses, we ended up at the base of the climb. Another 30 mins of aimless searching passed before we actually found the first bolt and it wasn’t until 10 am that we started climbing proper. The climbing was absolutely stellar with an amazingly exposed position very very high up. Really fun climbing led to a top out at around 9500 ft with some amazing views of Mt Hector, Mt Andromache and Little Hector as well as the rest of the valley, the ice field parkway and the car even! We started the first of our 13 rappels around 4 pm which was extremely late by any of our pre-trip calculations, however, we just had to get on with it. After some really sketchy situations with the first rappel we got into the groove taking about 20 mins per rappel (4 people rapping off of a single rope). Since the route traversed quite a bit, we couldn’t link rappels and that basically led to us taking about 4.5 hours to get back down to the base. At that point it was around 10pm and despite the summer sun staying longer than typical, we were now hiking out in the dark. Being in bear country, I was absolutely scared and hiking out as fast as I possibly could. After some route finding shenanigans and going off route multiple times, we made it out to the car around 1 am. It was an absolute ridiculous epic with lots of lessons to be learned. Among them is to not trust beta from people in Canmore (as a town filled with the most olympians in Canada, the fitness levels are especially skewed).
Amazingly exposed positioning
At the top!
Views of the valley, the highway and our car!
Contemplating our way down
Squamish
Over the course of the rock climbing section, I had become quite fascinated with the idea of climbing in Squamish. Squamish, about 40 mins north of Vancouver, is a town located near The Chief, which is a massive granite mountain. While not exactly very tall, it boasts of some of the best granite climbing on the west coast of Canada. Pat and I drove down to meet up with our other course mate Aidan who was working there on the gondola. Our time there coincided with the extreme heat wave that swept the west coast of north america and we were forced to explore other stuff in the area.
One of the adventures that we went on was the river of golden dreams. It was supposed to be a lazy and chill float down the calm river but as usual for our crew, it turned out to be another epic where intentions were questioned. We miscalculated a lot of things, but among the things that we miscalculated the most was not anticipating that the heat wave had caused the river flow to be much more elevated than usual. Additionally, because it was glacier melt, the water was freezing. We also ended up taking inflatables on the river when they recommended not using those. Mistakes were made. We ended up barely crossing under the bridge because of the river flow, puncturing the float and swimming in the ice cold water to get back to the car. We also got some help along the way to fix our floatey, which as crucial to us making it back. Another unexpected epic. Our first climb in Squamish was Skywalker. A really cool and hard 5.8 which climbed a steep corner on pitch 2 to an exposed but safe traverse pitch which gives the climb its name. Solid climbing throughout. Right before the traverse pitch was a nice little message for us at the anchor station - “May the force be with you”. Loved this climb.
We also met up with Joel to climb Banana Peel during the week. A fun route with easy climbing and easy gear belays off of trees and some bolted gear anchors. We saw a soloist on this climb run by us :)
On the advice of a climber we met on banana peel, we decided to climb diedre which is a harder 5.8 climb on the Apron of the Chief, right next to Banana peel. Amazing climbing, I took my first gear fall here and did some insane run out climbing which is probably the most scared that I have been in my life.
All in all, we spent a great week in Squamish climbing some really cool stuff and having side adventures like going to lakes to cool off and doing some cliff jumping and swimming as well.
Back to Canmore and end of the trip
While in Squamish, I had figured out my job situation back in NYC and it was time to say goodbye to western Canada for a bit. However, there was still a few days remaining and with the weather being decent, Pat and I decided to take a stab at a fairly easy but supposedly fun climb called Gooseberry on Tunnel mountain. It was a fun mixed route - mostly bolted except for the last pitch which required some placements and required some runout climbing. It was a really good position and some really interesting climbing - perfect cruiser to finish off the trip and nice way to say goodbye. We wowed some tourists at the top before running down the mountain and back home to Canmore/Calgary.
I spent the last day or two staying with my grand dad’s friend in Calgary. They were amazing hosts and I really enjoyed my time with them. I am also super thankful that I could stay with them and after many months being kind of a transient, it was nice to have a home for a bit.
– G