I had such a good time ice climbing in the Canadian Rockies five years ago that I wanted to go again the next year. I and my friend Steve had climbed Louise Falls, Professor Falls, cragged at Haffner Creek, and then did Carlsberg Column with another friend.



But later that year I had a series of injuries and had to start all over again from the bottom, not really knowing if I'd recover enough to lead ice or even be able to climb it. I still have some strength and balance issues, but after leading routes on the Bard-Harrington and Main Walls in Lee Vining Canyon last March I wanted to return to Canada this year.

On the last Thursday in January we flew into Calgary, drove to Canmore and there spent the night at the Alpine Club of Canada's hostel / clubhouse. Except for the now-defunct Bison Willy's in Cody I'd never done the hostel thing, so it was a bit new to me. Steve had been spending time in the summer up there, so he had the whole thing dialed.

Friday morning we headed out to Kananaskis Country and hiked out to the base of Moonlight & Snowline, both classic WI4's. It was chilly and windy in the morning, and with the California drought neither of us had much opportunity to get cold-acclimatized. A party was starting up Snowline, so I took the first pitch of Moonlight.


The route had seen a lot of traffic, fortunately for me :) I took advantage of the multiple hooks and steps, and belayed in the cave. Steve came up, and bribed me into leading the second pitch with a packet of Cheezies, that most excellent Canadian snack !



I launched up it, and found the crux to be well-hooked, making it not so hard as it appeared; a nice way to ease back into Canadian WI4's. I pulled onto a nice flat ledge, then realized the difficulties weren't quite over ..



The left side was steeper and more sustained, and I hung on a screw wondering if I could make it before realizing that traversing right would make things easier. Which I did :) I headed up to a tree at the top of the route and brought up Steve. The tree had a rappel setup, and our two 60m's got us to a v-thread which brought us back to terra firma.

It was mid-afternoon, and the hike back to the car took a while. At that time of year in Alberta there is less than ten hours of daylight, so we drove up to Lake Louise and spent the night at the hostel, which has a nice restaurant.

In the morning we drove up the Icefields Parkway to the Weeping Wall.


Road conditions were a bit snowy, so I drove slowly. On the way, Steve pointed out many of the local mountains and interesting summer routes. We should have gotten an earlier start in retrospect, but oh well. I think we started climbing around 11am ? (doh !)


Steve was having a lot of fun digging for pro on the first pitch. I took the second pitch and headed up to cave, where I found a convenient set of bolts and rap anchors.


It was pretty cool to look down hundreds of feet from here and see the Icefields Parkway below .. kind of like a winter version of Stately Pleasure Dome I guess.



I brought Steve up and he took the third pitch, traversing out right of the cave, up a steep pitch that felt more like WI4+ to us.



Parts of it were kind of moist -- gear got wet, and then froze up. I took the last pitch.


This pitch had its soggy moments too; at one point I paused to hang on a screw because my glasses were getting fogged. The ropes were getting that "wet, but refrozen" feeling, making belaying from the top interesting. We traversed over to the tree on the right and rapped off. Three rappels got us to the ground just as darkness fell. Whew !

Back in Lake Louise, we decided the next day to play around on mixed stuff at Haffner Creek.


We naively threw a toprope down on a route that looked, um, maybe doable :) After looking at the book later it turned out to be M7 =:-O and needless to say we did a lot of hanging. We had a lot of company that day, and some locals took a ride on our toprope, making it look easy -




Oh man, that was hard ! Next we threw a rope down a slightly easier route, which had some nice handjams, followed by some wild stemming onto a WI5 pillar.



The locals were friendly and gave us some helpful tips, and we took a couple of laps on the pillar.

We were both pumped silly, and kinda sore. Back at the hostel in Lake Louise I was so tired I slept for hours afterwards.

We decided to take a rest / cool-down day on Monday since we were flying out the next day, and went to the Canmore Junkyards. A guide and his clients were already there, so we did a little exploring.



This area reminds me of Lee Vining Canyon a bit, since it has a hydro power station and a pipeline nearby from a higher lake. One difference is that the pipeline is nowhere near the ice. There was a lot of low-angled ice in the area to play on.


The ice seemed to get a lot of traffic, and temps were warming up, so the ice was stepped-out and plastic.


I decided to lead a WI3+ staircase as my last Canada route. We headed back to the ACC clubhouse and packed our gear for our flights home, and thought about how soon we could return.