This article was written a few weeks after a mountaineering trip in July 2012.
Sitting here in my apartment on busy Queen Street in downtown Toronto, with traffic whizzing by and bar-goers hooting and hollering outside my window, it’s hard to believe that just weeks ago I was standing on the summit of Mt. Forbes with four other members of the Toronto Section of the Alpine Club of Canada, taking in an incredible vista and feeling as though we were on top of the world.
Which we kind of were. At 3,612 metres, Forbes is the highest peak in Banff National Park, and the successful summit bid was the highlight of the section’s summer mountaineering trip for a number of us.
Fourteen of us joined the trip this year, flying to Calgary, then making our way to Golden, B.C., where we caught a “high clearance vehicle” – a.k.a. a bus -- into the mountains. From Golden we travelled for several hours along twisty alpine logging roads until we reached our rally point to await the helicopter that would shuttle us into the Lyells region in the high alpine –- a well-kept secret that holds six of the country’s 54 11,000-foot summits.
Once we arrived, we began to separate into two groups. One group would spend the first five nights at the Lyells Hut (2,860m), close to the five mountains that make up the Lyells range. The other group would start at the Mons Hut, slightly lower at 2,370 metres of elevation but closer to the coveted Mt. Forbes -– the highest peak in Banff National Park and the objective that obsessed many of us.
After the first five days, our groups would switch huts, making for a total of 10 days in the mountains, with numerous potential summits for each group to bag.
My group, under the guidance of trip organizer Rob LeBlanc, won the coin toss that determined who would head to the Lyells hut first. Everyone generally felt that the group that stayed at the Mons hut during the second half of their trip would be better acclimatized and would therefore have the best chance at reaching the summit. As it turns out, this was entirely the case -- the major summits were bagged later in the week by both teams, largely due to the weather.
Our group was happy about the result, but as Alex Perel, the leader of the other group pointed out, weather and timing were the unpredictable X-factors that would inevitably determine success or failure on Forbes.
At the muster point we met our experienced, talented, and sometimes helpfully bossy cooks – Monique and Darcie.
Monique immediately took charge, dividing up the teams, gear, and giving us specific instructions on how to manage the helicopter arrivals and drop-offs. There is no arguing with “Mo”, and why would you want to? She holds the keys to feast and famine.
And then we were gone, heading up the valley and into the mountains, climbing hundreds of feet of elevation and looking down on old, fissured, crevasse-riddled glaciers spawning powerful waterfalls. Untouched snowy bowls, massive rock faces -- we were truly in the Rocky Mountains now, and the adventure was underway.
Within minutes the helicopter was circling in on the Lyells hut, a lonely tin box perched awkwardly on the shoulder of Christian peak at 2,860 metres. We had been warned it was “winter up there,” and that was no exaggeration. The temperature was about 15 degrees cooler than it had been on the launch pad, and the chopper landed on snow. We went from shorts and T-shirts below, to post-holing our way in thigh-deep snow as we hauled gear from the chopper to the cabin.
But after months of planning and days of travel, we had finally arrived, and it felt great to be in the mountains, taking in our first far-off views of Forbes as it towered above the other mountains in the distance.
We could only hope that our friends in Alex’s group would get a shot at the summit and as many other peaks as they hoped to climb before we swapped huts.
The next day, our first full day in the mountains, we ate a big breakfast then geared up and headed out. Our plan was to rope-up and hike to a steep snow slope behind the hut to practice self-arrest techniques, crampon skills and glacier travel.
After some sliding around, getting comfortable with our mountaineering axes and crampons, we continued on up Christian peak, following Rob as he kicked steps up a steep slope, then went over-the-top into an area we dubbed “The Sauna” -- a natural half-pipe carved out of the glacier where the temperature went up dramatically. Not only that, but The Sauna was a terrific terrain trap for rockfall and debris. To add to the misery, as a descent route it does not reveal itself as a dead end, as members of Team Eh! would discover to their exhausted chagrin only a few days later.
Like most of the Lyells, Christian looked a lot easier than it actually was. From a distance you could convince yourself it was a quick 30 minutes up and 20 down, but the scale is different up there. What looks close could be two hours away. What looks far off could require a long day’s hiking.
But we were fresh and eager, and soon we were at the top of our first summit -- and the only summit of the trip that all the members of Team Huh? reached together, at the same time. Christian, or Lyell #5, was a fantastic first objective at 3,390 metres that left us feeling like our group was gelling well and was ready to bag a bunch more summits!
On the way back down, we decided to rappel down the steepest section. Jon Newman and Rafael, however, decided to glissade. We quickly realized, watching Jon gain speed at a frightening rate for a few moments, that the snow masked a layer of ice that made for less than ideal glissading. (A few days later, that snow was mostly melted and the massive sheet of sheer ice was revealed.)
On July 29, our third day in the mountains, Team Huh? had its first alpine start. Waking up at 4 a.m. was painful, but the reward made it well worth it -- the alpenglow created a blue and pink aura that framed the mountains and set the stage for an epic day as we hit the glacier.
We crossed some crevasses and had our first brush with the dangers of glacier travel as we headed toward a massive snowfield that served as a super-highway to the base of the Lyells, which we could see clearly ahead of us, beckoning us onward. This was one of those instances where an estimated hour or so turned into three or four hours of hard slogging, just to get to the base.
But eventually we made it, our two rope teams regrouping at the bottom to make a push for the summit. Though we could see all five Lyells, it was #1, #2 and #3 that were our objectives -- three 11,000 footers in one day! We managed to achieve the first two with no major problems, but things got dicey as we approached Lyell #3. Weather started to move in, and between breaks in the clouds we could see a nasty-looking bergschrund that would need to be negotiated, just below the summit of #3.
Onward! We did it, beating the weather, surpassing the bergschrund (and gaping snow cave we had to carefully climb around -- upon which Rafael Kolodziejczyk executed his first lead!) to reach the summit, and turn around to head home as the weather quickly deteriorated.
Little did we know, the ominous weather approaching would quickly deliver a blast of rain, hail and lightning that would chase us for several hours, making for a miserable and scary trip home.
But once we were all safe in our cozy cabin, and the scotch and boxed wine was being passed around and stories swapped, all agreed it was an epic day, climbing three peaks with elevations of 3,507 metres, 3,514 metres and 3,511 all in one day, and we wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
The next day at the Lyells hut was mostly rained out, though a few of us managed to get on the glacier to practice walking on steep ice in crampons (more later on why that came in handy!), building snow and ice anchors and using ice screws.
Finally, on our last day at the Lyells hut we did some exploring around Lens, a peak of 3,150 metres, but were unable to find a route to the mountain’s well-defended summit by our turnaround time, which was inflexible since this was transfer day to the Mons hut. The same schedule led Team Eh to have a “rest day” on Division Peak, the highlight of which was an attempt to cut down a cornice, in the name of sport.
Finally, after a stressful couple of hours of packing, and some weather-related delays, we heard the far off ‘whoosh whoosh’ of a helicopter approaching, and the transfer was underway –- a rushed ‘hello’ to our friends from Team Eh! as they unloaded, and we were once again in the air, heading towards the elusive Forbes peak that had been taunting us for so long.
Though the huts are only about 500 metres apart in terms of elevation, the difference is immediately noticeable. The Mons hut is warmer, there’s a melt-water creek passing by the cabin and a picturesque turquoise tarn just below the hut. And it’s easier to breathe –- which is good, because we were up for our biggest challenge yet.
The next day, Aug. 2, 2012, Team Huh was caught in a blizzard. We had planned a reconnaissance day, with the goal of walking in the direction of Forbes to suss out whether we could use a rumoured couloir as a sort of back-door shortcut to a ridge that would drop us directly at the base of the northwest face.
We got within sight of the couloir, barely, when a blizzard suddenly socked us in during our lunch break. It was instant whiteout conditions, and we all put our hoods up to wait it out miserably, detached in our own worlds.
That was when Mo, our cook and a true self-described Kootenay mountain girl, busted out her emergency tarp and rigged up a shelter that managed to keep all eight of us out of the snow and in close proximity. She also broke out her collection of jokes, ranging from inappropriate to all-out filthy, which kept us laughing during the storm.
The next day the weather was bad in the morning, so for Team Huh? a Forbes attempt was out of the question. This opened the door to climb Mons, the peak directly between the hut and Forbes. Once again, a deceptively easy-looking climb quickly became a challenging one, complete with patches of bare, exposed ice that required us to “poon up” and get in lots of unexpected practice with the mountaineering axes. Jon even had to cut steps. But once again the entire group reached the summit under bluebird skies, meaning we had another summit (3,083m) to add to the list.
Finally, on our second-to-last day, the weather looked like it was going to be perfect, and we decided to plan a 2 a.m. wake-up call for the five team members making a summit push, with a 3 a.m. start time planned.
At 2 a.m. the sky was filled with stars, and we knew it was now or never. So after a hearty breakfast, the five of us set out on a single rope, first climbing the toe of the Mons glacier in front of our hut which eventually led to the West Glacier, which was the approach that would lead us to our mystery couloir. We had been told “it goes,” but hadn’t gotten close enough to see for ourselves, and others had told us Forbes was only possible with a bivy at the base -- something we weren’t prepared to do, and frankly refused to believe.
Under a full moon with no need for headlamps, walking on a perfectly frozen glacier, we made good time, but still trudged four-and-a-half hours at a brisk “Rob LeBlanc trot” before we could finally get a good look at the so-called short-cut couloir. What we saw was intimidating. Roughly 100 metres high, with bare ice at the bottom, loose scrabbly rock in the middle and another section of terrifyingly steep ice at the top.
We put our crampons on, got our mountaineering axes out and short-roped. And then it was time to go, with Rob leading, placing ice screws wherever he could (which wasn’t all that often).
Instead of a direct line, we had to execute constant switchbacks in order to avoid kicking rocks down on the climbers directly below us. It was a sketchy, intense climb, but there was nowhere to go but up, and the glimpses of daylight at the top of the couloir kept us motivated -- along with ample amounts of sheer terror.
When the group finally crested the ridge we had an easy line to drop down to the base of Forbes, where we took our first break while we tried to chart a path up the exposed, steep face.
Jon Newman had climbed Forbes 15 years earlier, and had taken a route that required a long slog up the face, before finally traversing to the ridge just below the summit. Other members of the Toronto Section on a previous trip had chosen a route that got them onto the north ridge, which they then took to the summit before descending the west ridge.
Rob chose a hybrid route somewhere between the two, switchbacking directly up the northwest face before finally heading to the west ridge just below some exposed rock.
We set out behind him, as he began kicking steps in what was perfect, packable snow for a good portion of the ascent. At a certain point, however, that beautiful snow gave out and we found ourselves traversing on thinly-covered ice with nothing but a couple of ice screws between us and a spectacular drop down the northwest face.
Eventually, our horizontal ice climbing transitioned to vertical climbing, as we tackled a steep portion of bare ice in order to avoid loose, steep rock on the right which led down to a dangerously steep gully.
Finally, after a short but exposed high-altitude free climb on a rock step, we were on the summit ridge -- a steep, snowy slab that took us to the summit of the highest peak in Banff National Park.
It was awesome. Bluebird day, a great team, an incredible view and nothing left to do but get home safely.
Of course, that turned out to be an epic mission. Instead of following our shortcut couloir, which would have required an impossible rappel, we took the classic North Glacier route home. Unfortunately, that required us to find a way across a raging torrent at the toe of the Mons Glacier, where it met the North Glacier. When Jon came this way a decade-and-a-half ago it was a solid ice bridge, but the glacier had receded significantly and we spent close to two hours in an exhausting search for a route, before we finally found a place where it was possible to cross the river and get onto the glacier for the long -- and slushy -- slog home.
After a 3 a.m. start, we arrived back at the hut at 9:15 p.m., more than 18 hours after setting out, but with our objective accomplished -- and the best surprise of the day, cold beer that Jon and Alexandra Welsh had secretly stashed for just such an occasion.
Beer never tasted so good.
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