kurthicks Posted November 12, 2003 Share Posted November 12, 2003 (edited) A four day weekend means one thing to me this time of year…Canada! So, after deciding to skip class on Monday, I headed to Banff for some early season ice with my girlfriend. She’s been begging me to take her ice climbing for a few months now and it seemed like the perfect time to get her on some ice. She’ll never question why the ice is thin if she doesn’t know better, right? Maybe it was luck, but the border crossing was the easiest I’ve ever had when going through the US95 crossing. The crossing guard looked at us funny and said “don’t go falling off any ice walls” with a little snicker on his face. Awesome roads got us to Banff in 7.5 hours from Pullman. We pulled up at the hostel around 10pm and did the ever popular, and super secret, Subaru bivy right there in the lot. With no real plan of action, we headed to Grotto Falls on Saturday. Will Gadd’s site said that it’s in and climbable, which means in English that it’s about 1” thick with tons of holes and lots of running water. Any the pro was just for looks (and mental comfort of the girlfriend). After that, I TRed Mental Jewelry (M6+) with some nice locals and called it a day. Sunday started with no real plan either since I was reeling from the night at the pub. So we headed to the Parkway and looked for something to kill the day with. Bridalveil Falls looked like a good objective after heading to look at Slipstream . The bushwack downhill to the creek bottom absolutely sucks. Contrary to what the guide says, go left out of the parking lot, cross the creek and walk down that way. One rap will bring you to the creek bottom (below a nice WI3 pitch) just below Panther Falls. After being a pansy and declaring Bridal Veil Falls too hard for my ability, we found a nice little flow downstream and played on it for a while. It was after noon and we wanted to get on Lady Wilson’s Cleavage before the end of the day, so we headed back upstream past Panther Falls (unformed) and Musashi and climbed the WI3 pitch to the right of it and scrambled back to the car. We then hit up the first couple of pitches of Lady Wilson’s, which was in similar conditions to Grotto, but with mushrooms and chandelier ice, and rapped off in the dark. On Sunday, I took some friends out to the Canmore Junkyards for some climbing. Lots of running water there, especially the left side, but plenty of ice. The Scottish Gully was really thin and wet, but fun and runout. Some guide from Calgary placed a pin (on WI2 terrain) somewhere off to the right, wtf? The afternoon brought some freshies to the Junkyard and it was time to head back to Banff. On the way home today, we checked out Gibraltar Wall and the flow just south of Sandpoint. Both are climbable, but thin and wet like everything else. I wouldn’t expect the route by Sandpoint to be around much longer with these temps. All in all, it was an decent trip for this early in the season. I think I convinced the girlfriend not to worry during my future trips, but she’s not going to be coming along any time soon. It seems that ice makes her a little nervous…maybe it was the fact that it was only an inch thick? Check out the pics in the gallery Edited November 12, 2003 by wazzumountaineer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sobo Posted November 12, 2003 Share Posted November 12, 2003 Sounds like it was a fun trip with the SO. Good on ya for taking her out, mate! The little drip south of Sandpoint is called Chilco Falls, just in case anyone asks you... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurthicks Posted November 12, 2003 Author Share Posted November 12, 2003 thanks, i didn't have the guidebook handy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted November 12, 2003 Share Posted November 12, 2003 gibraltar looks like it needs to go to the eating disorder clinic and fatten-up! did you find erik's cache of green at the base from last year Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sobo Posted November 12, 2003 Share Posted November 12, 2003 Dru said: gibraltar looks like it needs to go to the eating disorder clinic and fatten-up! Yeah, I saw that too and thought the same thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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