Mt. Robson is a peak that I've
been trying to climb since 1998. By
Colorado standards it isn't very high – 12,972' above sea level – but
it's the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, and it rises an awesome 10,000' from the trailhead to the summit – more vertical relief than any peak in the "Lower 48", and on a par with the giant peaks of Alaska and the Yukon. Because of its height and position at the northern end of the range it's notorious for bad weather, and the summit is often hidden in clouds while peaks all around bask in sunshine. The climbing season is generally only a couple of weeks a year, and some years it never arrives at all. In 2005, the last time I tried the mountain, we turned around when it started snowing shortly after we set out for the summit. I came back to the Canadian Rockies in 2006 hoping to try it again but the weather in the area was so poor that we didn't even bother driving there; instead we did some climbs further south. This year, as in 2005, we attempted the mountain by the south face, the standard "easy" route. It's not the most aesthetic line on the mountain, but it has a couple of advantages: it only takes two or three days to get up and down (as opposed to five or six days for climbs such as the Kain face on the other side of the mountain); and there's a bivouac hut half-way up. On the other hand, it's quite a scary climb; there are a couple of sections where one has to traverse below overhanging seracs that are poised to collapse at any moment. My trip began with a flight to Calgary, where I arrived on August 11, 2007 and was met at the airport by my climbing partner, Mike Haponiuk. We hopped into Mike's Honda Civic and drove 500 km north to the BC Provincial Park campsite at the base of the mountain, where we spent the night. Unfortunately, the next morning we woke to overcast skies and steady drizzle. We were wondering what we should do with the day when Mike discovered that he'd left his mountaineering boots at home in Edmonton, 450 km away. So we got back in his Honda, drove to Edmonton, picked up his boots and drove back to the campsite, all in one long day. It was an inauspicious start to the trip, but fortunately things improved from there. |
I still had a few vacation days
left, but the weather forecast for the northern Rockies wasn't very
promising, so we decided to drive south to Banff and attempt Mt. Louis, a famous peak nearby. Mt. Louis is only 8,793' high but it's a freestanding rock pinnacle with no easy route to the summit. As with Mt. Robson we were attempting a route first climbed by the famous mountaineering guide Conrad Kain (he climbed Robson from the north in 1913 and the south in 1924, and Mt. Louis in 1916). Once again out trip had an inauspicious start. According to the directions in Sean Dougherty's infamous guidebook we were supposed to follow "a faint trail below the east side of Mt. Edith", so we dutifully located such a trail and were almost halfway up Mt. Edith before we realized we weren't in the right place. Eventually we turned around and found the correct trail, which turned out to be a well-used path with official Parks Canada signposts. Fortunately our detour didn't cost us more than an hour or so, so we still plenty of time to tackle Mt. Louis. |