chris volkart mountain life: June 2011

Last weekend me and two of my co workers headed down to the Bow Valley with several objectives in mind. I met up with a friend and old school mate to climb some bigger objectives while my co workers had their eyes set on Grassi lakes! We all started out climbing the afternoon at Grassi until we fled in terror as the weather turned bad and we got rained on...until we got back to our car and the clouds parted and the sun shone down hard! After a big dinner my co workers headed to banff and I stayed in Canmore hitting the sack early (around 7pm) with my alarm set for 4am. Our plan was the climb Red shirt on mount Yamnuska, a classic route on Yam that has difficult route finding and is known to be hard for its grade, and to top it all off it has a string of accidents and even deaths that haunt it! I had climbed it before but this time I was going to be leading the hard pitches so I fell asleep with the image of the topographic map and guidebook description running through my mind! Well we woke up to rain and nasty looking clouds hanging over the mountain and decided to take the day off and relax and ready ourselves for the next days objective that was a bit bigger and with good weather promised we once again had an early night in order to rise early! Our objective was a route up a distinctive tower on Castle mountain which you see every time you drive between Banff and Lake Louise. Our objective was an alpine rock route called Eisenhower Tower and depending on how you climb the massive headwall the difficulty sits anywhere between 5.4-5.7 with no topo to really direct you on which part of the rock is which! We ended up climbing the more difficult side and definitely climbed through some sections a littler harder then 5.4! The day started a little bit off plan when good ol Tim Hortons wasnt yet serving breakfast! We collected ourselves drank our coffee and started up the climb. The approach is about 2 hours traveling at a good pace on good trail. you then gain the first bench on the mountain through a gully with easy 3rd class scrambling. The route then cross scree slopes on the bench to a small hump of rock below the headwall which involves some technical short roping and one short pitch of climbing. We moved through this fairly fast and then attacked the headwall deciding on climbing the rock on the right side of a big scree bowl (still full of snow at the moment!). The left side is the easier climbing and the original route climbed by one of original swiss guides back in 1926. The right side has more continuous and slightly harder climbing! We lost count of the pitches but i would estimate we did the headwall in at least 10 pitches and finally we pulled onto the summit plateau which was full of snow! After taking a look around at the scenery we started down the original route rappelling and downclimbing until we were eventually back down on the ground. The trail back to the truck seemed to go on forever and when the trail finally levelled out and we spotted the truck we started running and didnt stop until we were cheersing warm pilsner beers in celebration! All in all it was a great day and I would highly recommend the route keeping in mind that it is definitely a big alpine route and is demanding despite the easy grade!

Here are the pictures and thanks to Tyson for the day and the photos of me!

Tyson at the car

ME getting my stoke on

tyson moving out into some exposed terrain

tyson taking in the view

Me taking in the view

Tyson working the gully up to the first plateau

Our objective coming in to view

Short roping through the dragons back

Me starting up the first bit of climbing

Me at the belay

Climbing a pitch beside the snow bowl

At a lazy belay

Fifth class terrain

tyson at the summit

View from the top...name those peaks

Pulling the ropes on rappel

Endless climbing

summit snow field

Well its almost been a month since I was running around the US without a care in the world, but alas the time had to come when I would have to face the music and get a job...nobody said it had to be a real job though!!!! I am now hanging out in the hidden gem of a town known as Nordegg. If you head west of Red Deer until you start to see mountains closing in around you there is a secret land known as the David Thompson Corridor. The small community of Nordegg is the base camp for all sorts of mountain adventures from easy day hikes on well established trails to beautiful waterfalls, to full on alpine mixed ice and rock routes that can contend with classic alpine objectives in the more well known parks of Banff and Jasper. For those wanting something in between there are a number of well established sport and traditional climbing venues both single pitch and multi pitch! The best part though in my opinion are the endless unexplored valleys and rock walls waiting for those looking for something fresh and new! I landed a job at the local guiding company and the organization responsible for a majority of the development in the area, C.O.E. (the centre for outdoor education).

But before I get too far ahead of myself I should mention a very important event that happened in between the US and my arrival in the Nordegg area. If you look back to my first post on this blog you will remember that the theme Im trying to blog about is to follow me through my journey to become a mountain guide. Well, in the last week of may I took my first step towards this career. I took my first ACMG (www.acmg.ca) exam (the Top Rope Climbing Instructor certification), and passed with flying colours! While this doesnt allow me to guide rock climbing it does allow me to take beginners out climbing in a top rope setting!

Well this allowed me to get a job at COE for the summer where I have, and will continue taking people (mostly youth) out climbing hiking and rafting during our summer youth camps! So far my summer has been amazing out at COE (www.coe.ca) doing rafting and climbing trips with school groups. Next month we will start having groups coming out for different summer programs where participants will be participating in activities such as climbing, rafting, kayaking, caving, hiking and mountaineering. Im really stoked to combine my past experience of working at a summer camp for youth with my love of outdoor adventure sports!

Meanwhile in to prepare for our summer activities me and my co workers have been out scouting hiking routes and climbing at some of the locations we will be using this summer and while the prep work has been incredibly hard work...I find it hard to call the hiking trips we have been up to work...Anyways I have let my blog updates get a bit backlogged so I will keep descriptions of each trip brief so that this post isnt so text heavy...instead I will fill it with wonderful pictures!

So I will quickly list some things ive been up to and then post pictures from said trips!

Climbing: At various single pitch crags as well as multi pitch routes in the area.

Hiking: From day hikes to overnighters and even a three day hike deep into a beautiful lake to develop a climbing area our guests will use while hiking through the area.

Caving: My first real experience crawling squeezing and chimneying deep into the hills surrounding nordegg...definitely a unique experience.

Rafting: We have done guided trips as well as a staff trip down the saskatchewan river!

My favourite trips so far have definitely been our hike into lake of falls, one of the most beautiful areas I have ever hiked to. I highly recommend that everyone out there that likes hiking climbing or even caving gets out here...come by COE and pick up a climbing guidebook to contribute to our local bolt fund and support route development in the area. Also if any of you older youth are interested in a trip COE can certainly cater to your needs as well! Hope to see you all soon, now for the pictures!!!