TrogdortheBurninator Posted January 2, 2006 Posted January 2, 2006 (edited) Climb: The Least Ambitious Rockies Ice Trip Ever-Various Date of Climb: 1/1/2006 Trip Report: Sam had to do ten minutes of work on Tuesday afternoon, so we basically couldn't do anything until wednesday. We spent most of tuesday looking for cheap tickets to southern california and debating other trip options. I was basically deadset on Banff or J-Tree, but sam didnt want to buy plane tickets for j-tree. Sam hadnt ice climbed outside of big four, so she was pretty apprehensive about driving 12 hours just to get freaked out. We were itching to take a camping trip in our new van, so we figured if nothing else it would be a nice road trip. Temperatures were perfect for camping in the van and comfortable for climbing. We had no specific objectives except to introduce Sam to ice climbing in the most comfortable manner possible. We stopped in lake louise the first night because we were sick of driving. The next morning we go going at a very leisurely pace and headed to the canmore junkyard. The ice was fatter than anything I had ever climbed. We started on an easy WI 2 flow on the right of the main seep. We then climbed a fun 50m wi 2-3 Sam enjoyed it a lot! We went to dinner at the grizzly paw and enjoyed their fine food and good beer sampler. Afterwards we went looking for a campsite in canmore. While trying to find an open campground and supposedly appearing suspicous we were approached by a mounty. After managing to avoid a ticket for no proof of insurance, the mounty suggested we find a parking lot a keep a low profile. We found a spot and sat down to watch a movie. The next day we got off to another late start and after one wrong approach start made our way to grotto falls. The trail to grotto falls is super popular with hikers, and makes an interesting diversion in and of itself. The right side of grotto falls was super wet and it took a lot of convincing to get Sam to climb it. We decided to just go up to the first set of bolts so that Sam could TR instead of feeling pressured to follow. The starting pillar was pretty kicked out, but still fun. After Sam TRed and I took another lap, some nice canadians let me TR my first "real" mixed route. I got pumped as hell and fell once, overall thought it was an awesome route. I had no idea how fun mixed climbs could be. Friday night we drove back to Lake Louise to make some westward progress. Saturday morning we headed up to Louise falls, fully expecting to see hordes of other climbers. We arrived and were pleasently surprised to see only one other party on the route. We only intended to climb one pitch, and Sam still wasnt comfortable with falling ice, so we climbed a fun double stepped variation on the right side of the cliff. There was a rotten layer of ice making the climbing pretty challenging. This was drastically different from the awesome blue hero ice in the middle of the flow. This climb finally got sam to stop telling me how easy ice climbing was. After rapping from a v-thread i spent some time traversing the bottom of the falls which was pretty fun too. When we got back to the car we hit the road and and drove to revelstoke where we spent the new year sleeping in our van in a dark parking lot by the river. This morning we woke up and finished the drive back to seattle. And the best part of the trip was..... Sam really likes ice climbing a lot! Plus, now we both want to move to Canmore. BTW the rockies are really pretty in winter Approach Notes: Mostly easy driving except our windshield washer pump is broken so we had to use a spray bottle out the driver side window to clean the windshield Edited January 2, 2006 by TrogdortheBurninator Quote
CPOly Posted January 2, 2006 Posted January 2, 2006 Great trip! Sounds like you both had a blast. My favorite type of TR. Nice van too, looks comfy. Quote
kurthicks Posted January 2, 2006 Posted January 2, 2006 Sweet stuff Jason. glad that Sam likes ice! I'm on my way up there this morning. Quote
Chad_A Posted January 2, 2006 Posted January 2, 2006 Nice! Well, that tells me what the conditions are there Glad you guys had a good time. Maybe I can have Sam talk to my g/f Megan. She likes the idea of ice climbing, she just can't get swing down (yet). Quote
catbirdseat Posted January 10, 2006 Posted January 10, 2006 You done good laddie. The important thing is Sam is sold on ice. Quote
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