chris volkart mountain life: From every negative you can find a positive

If you talk to someone who knows me well they will probably say im a climber first off, everything else second. Well in that case my frostbitten toes spelled doom for me. Ice season was winding down to a close in kamloops and without any more ski courses I pulled the pin and headed back to Nordegg to see if I could help out around the lodge and maybe squeeze in some ice despite my broken toes.

After an epic drive from kamloops to golden that lasted a brutal 9 hours and four major accidents we settled in a friends house for the night before finishing the drive to Nordegg. My co worker Robyn had been hanging out in golden for the past two days to drive me and a fellow classmate out to Nordegg for a little gathering of ice climbers over the weekend. Well to my dismay it was alot colder back in the rockies and I feared for my toes. Our first day we headed to a favourite stomping ground of mine called wet willy's. It was alot bigger than when I had last climbed it in January and I opted to lead straight of the couch after a month of minimal climbing. The brittle ice and featureless nature of the ice made for stiffer climbing then usual but I was impressed that I still had it in me (I guess the swimming paid off!)! And as for my toes? Well things seemed to be working out down there and I was able to keep them warm all day!

The next day we woke up early and after several delays began hiking up into a deep canyon to check out a couple climbs tucked deep between Mount Elliot and Mount Ernest Ross. The approach starts with a pleasant walk up a creek and we were lucky that there was a buff trail leading all the way. Once you reach the opening of the canyon its helmets and crampons on! We climbed a few short easy ice steps as we worked our way deeper and deeper into the canyon with massive 100m high walls on either side. There has been some talk of the potential for great sport climbing and after walking in I can see what all the fuss is about, this canyon would compare to any other sport climbing area in the rockies! After a couple hours a huge wall of ice came into view. Lovely parting gifts (the name of the climb), though not steep had some really cool features and I was excited to start climbing, any climbing is good climbing in my mind! We hiked a little further where the canyon pinches off leaving a six foot wide strip of ice leading deep into the upper reaches of the canyon called End of the Line. This piece of ice was really aesthetic but having a group of six we decided to set up a top rope on the first pitch of this climb and leave the upper pitches for another day! We split up and I helped Robyn rack up for lovely parting gifts while another fellow by the name of Grier started leading end of the line. While everyone was getting started on the ice I started running laps on a steep snow slope to keep my toes warm, after a few laps Justin (you may remember him from a past blog post about mount abraham) came by and asked if I wanted to have a look what was above the snow gully I was climbing. We started climbing up and found a small little chunk of ice. I quickly started up but after one of my pick holes started spurting water i decided it was too wet and climbed back down. We headed up a snow gully until we got out of the canyon and got a view of the lesser seen sides of Mount Elliot and Mount Ernest Ross. Me and Justin talked about potential climbs we might want to do this summer and then headed back down to see how Robyns lead was going.

Well the ice was extremely brittle and after losing all feeling in her hands Robyn decided to bail and wait for a warmer day. I decided my feet were feeling warm and I should take advantage of that and climb some ICE!!! I took the rest of the rack and started climbing. The ice was extremely brittle and after having huge chunks of ice pop off all the way up I put in an anchor and lowered down. Everyone took turns top roping the two climbs we had up and I had to put some lovin' back into my feet. Everyone was starting to get cold and Justing Kat and Andy had to head back to golden that afternoon so after everyone took one more burn and I climbed through the back of the curtain on Lovely Parting Gifts we started walking back down the beautiful canyon.

Now im settling back to living at COE and writing my final papers for school. I hope to get a bit more ice climbing in this season and am looking towards the summer and my rock climbing season which should start at the end of march if everything goes well! For the time here are the photos from our day going up Peskett canyon! The days are getting longer and the ice is fat!!! Come visit me for some climbing!

heres the photos: