Education

Another high pressure weekend this late in a hot spring could only mean one thing: Columbia Icefields Adventure. Or any other glaciated area with mountains. Or a high sheltered north face. But we chose the icefields.

I’ve been wanting to climb this route since I got to Canada and started flipping through a friend’s copy of the Book of Lies. It’s an enticing maze directly up the face of Sir Douglas, one of the few 11’000ers in Kananaskis. Unfortunately at that point I was an ice climber and that would likely mean an overnighter and swinging tools and catching shards in the face which is really just silly. There had to be a better way.

Joel and Matt both got a couple of days off and the weather was looking sublime. It’s early spring and that means couloir season, a good time to work on the technique before we start to look at the face lines of the Rockies. We tossed around a few stupid ideas before settling on ‘having a look’ at the Funnel of Death on Bow Peak.

I’ve been ski touring for only a few seasons now so still consider myself a newcomer to the sport. Unfortunately during my second season I fell in with a bad crowd and was introduced to Joel, one of the dreaded skimo racers. He skins fast and bootpacks faster and was really a poor partner for someone as unfit as me.

A couple of weeks back Joel got a heads up from one Andrew Wexler aka The Best Skier On The Mountain that he should check out Commonwealth Couloir. This was a line I’d put on my ‘never even consider’ list so I was apprehensive to say the least. Still, Joel has a winning smile and it’s hard to say no to the guy so we went up for a look.

After a successful weekend on the Parkway (see previous post) we were riding high. With news that the Whitehorn and Robson had been skied Joel and I had to channel some of that stoke and do something big (for us). We settled on the plan to head up to the recently opened Neil Colgan hut in the Valley of the Ten Peaks for a look at how things were keeping up there.

A high pressure system poked its nose in on the tail end of some snow so the weekend looked like a great time to head up to the Columbia Icefields area and have another go at the Skyladder.