Mt Victoria East Face

The South Summit is just to the right of the middle of the picture, click to enlarge for our route

With so much snow in the hills it’s tough to put down the torch, when I got the call that a strong posse was eyeing up Mt Victoria I nervously agreed to meet in Lake Louise early the next morning.

My first gig ski patrolling was at Lake Louise ski resort a number of years back where I got my first taste of the Rockies. I was keen to get out on my days off and ski many of the lines on distant peaks I could see from the ski resort.  Staring at Mt Victoria knowing people skied off it’s paired summits, left me a little bit in awe of the iconic mountain that may be one of the most photographed peaks in Canada if not the world.

Saturday morning after a less than ideal sleep I rolled out of bed at a very early 1:30 AM, kissed my pregnant wife as she looked content to sleep another 7 hours, brewed a coffee and had a light breakfast that I guess technically was more like a midnight snack.  Pulling into the parking lot I met the rest of the team Ian, Jeff and Silas.  We walked around the lake shore trail by headlamp, joking that usually there are hundreds of people milling about on a Saturday outside the Chateau.

Eagle Pk

Photo Courtesy of www.skimostoke.com

On Saturday Jeff and I made plans to climb and ski Eagle Peak at the Pass.  Conditions were near perfect on the SW face, travel was fast but firm requiring all the pointy implements in our packs; ski crampons, foot crampons, mtn axes and whippets.  Once off the top 100 ft and into the sun the corn skiing was delicious.

It’s a great time to be in the hills right now, conditions are fast and the mountains are empty.  Once the weather smartens up it’ll be time to get after it again!

Colvin below the Eagle bowl headwall

Uto and Sir Donald from the summit of Eagle

Wapta Speed Traverse 2012: Success

Pushing to the Balfour High Col

2:30 in the morning is a ridiculous time for an alarm to go off, stumbling out of bed to go skiing when the grass is green and it’s warm outside seems silly but when my alarm went off after 4 hours of sleep I was wide awake and psyched.

The idea of the Wapta Traverse done in a single push in Skimountaineering race style is something I’ve obsessed about for years.  I feel a goal like this gives the hours of training and racing a sense of purpose.  Trying to time the conditions to be just right is challenging bordering on impossible, there’s too many variables to ever guarantee success.  Snow conditions,  varying terrain, nutrition, gear, weather all need to be in order to see the mission complete.  It’s easy to not get it right.

The trip started poorly as Melanie Bernier and I skied down from the Bow Summit to Peyto Lake, navigating by headlamp and memory I attempted to cut a corner between two switch backs which ended up taking us off route skiing through a steep scrubby rocky treed section where we had to run/stumble down hill in 70 cms of isothermal snow.  It was rough going, but our stoke and caffeine levels were high enough that it

Columbia Icefields

Day 1:

After a leisurely start to the day we started the long flat slog up the Athabasca Glacier before reaching the crux of hanging seracs overhead. This was more of a steady plod than anything with some amusing moments watching other groups with crushingly heavy loads. The wrap off of the Athabasca around Snowdome was uneventful yet slow as we climbed into the thick cloud layer. We opted for the rope at this point and

2012 Ken Jones Classic

Short, sweet and the morning of... the best kind of race briefing

“Don’t break a ski” some smart ass yelled at me while I dropped into the last descent off of Lipalien peak on the larch side of Lake Louise ski area. All that was left was a couple thousand foot descent and a long ski-out around to the front side. I had a minute lead on the racers behind me and I knew the descent well enough but all I could think was “keep it together and for crissakes don’t break a ski, don’t break a ski“

The weather was great that morning, a bit of fresh snow and splitter blue skies. After a