To the Rockies

Mum and Dad returned and we went to collect them from the airport in a colossus of a hire car with all our stuff (including my bike) in the back. Then we drove towards the Rockies hearing tales of the amazing bear watching trip.

We overnighted in Kamloops then drove to the village of Field in Yoho Valley National Park, where we arrived at our cabin in the afternoon and set off for a short walk whilst the sun was still up. The Hidden Lake that we walked to was almost completely dried up, but it was a good climb and we saw some bear prints and moose (or maybe elk) prints in the lake bed.

Vancouver with Faye

Mum and Dad flew off to Bella Coola for some wild bear watching and we were left to the city for four days.

We went to the incredible museum of anthropology, ate a lot of amazing food, drank a lot of delicious cocktails and did some shopping. We had a super time but were ready for the mountains by the end of it!

Vancouver with the family

The day after my mountaineering course, I got the bus back to Vancouver with all my bags to meet my family! It was Christmas last time all four of us were together, so we had a noisy, chatty reunion in a bistro before heading to a flat downtown to unpack.

We spent two days exploring the city together. I introduced them to MEC, Canada's outdoors store mecca, and we spent half a day just in there! We went to see the Capilano dam and fish hatchery, ate a lot of amazing food and did the locally famous Grouse Grind. The Grind is a very steep walk up Grouse Mountain in the north of the city. I was told it takes around an hour for normal people and 45 minutes for fit people. It took the four of us an hour and three quarters!! We were dripping with sweat when we got to the top and panted our way into the cafe for lunch. But we were rewarded at the top, not by the views as it was foggy, but by a long sighting of the two resident grizzly bears in an enclosure (they were orphaned and raised in captivity). Then we saw a falconry show of local birds, which was fascinating. 

Mountaineering: Hike out

On the last day, we woke to yet more sunshine and another cloudless sky and after a relaxed breakfast, I learned to build rock anchors before we packed up all our kit.

Having eaten four days of food and packed more effectively, the bag felt better than it did on the way in! I was more comfortable in my big boots too, so our hike out was much quicker.

We went south over a bouldery moraine then met a hiking trail by a little lake. Oh how blissfully easy it is to hike on a trail! And the heather meadows and small trees were beautiful. We got a great view of the buttress we'd climbed the day before, then we had to start to readjust to life around other people. There were a lot of day hikers out and we even met an 83 year old man on the trail, which was awesome. I hope to be hiking in the sub alpine when I'm 83 too!

Back to the gondola, into Whistler village and to a quiet cafe for a burger and milkshake in the shady garden - ahh, so nice.

See the row of three buttresses, centre photo? We climbed the one on the left.

Pics

On Blackcomb peak and our campsite in the evening

Mountaineering: Rock climb

The next morning the alarms went off at 4.30am and Andrew's words of advice going around in my head helped me worm myself out of my cosy cocoon. "Nothing guarantees success in the mountains like a pre-dawn start."

The stars were beautiful, the whole milky way on display in the absence of the moon. We forced down some breakfast then set off up the boulders, headlamp lights bobbing along in the darkness.

It was cold but we were warm by the time we'd hiked up to the col and turned to see an orange glow building in the sky to the east as some birds filled the valley with their echoing squalks. Now light enough to see without our torches, we went down the ominously named Body Bag Bowl, over more boulders with rocky slopes to either side and a dim view of the mountains ahead. The glow of sunrise was behind us, so we watched the world be lit up from behind. The sky above the mountains turned pinky red in a long band on the horizon, making it look as though the whole world had a halo. Then the sunlight spilled over onto the mountain tops, bathing rock and ice in pink-golden light. Long shadows appeared and moved over the landscape as the sun rose quickly in the sky. We were in the cool shadow of Blackcomb peak all morning but the views of the sun drenched world were spectacular! 

Once we had hiked down into the valley and around the side of the mountain, we were at the base of Blackcomb peak and started making our way up its talus slopes (that's more boulders) to get to the base of the rock climb, where we stopped for second breakfast. The buttress we were going up looked cool from the bottom and we set off with Andrew in front, stopping on ledges on the way up. The rock was really solid and nice to climb and you could see down on either side to the couloirs below - enough of a view to make your heart flutter but not enough to be terrifying! 

The buttress brought us onto a beautiful sunny ledge near the top and we stopped for a snack and a rest in the sunshine, oggling the incredible views and feeling very lucky indeed for the fabulous weather! Two blokes passed us here on a trail run / rock climb, the only other people we saw in the area the whole time.

Then we had to shimmy up through a little chimney and walk out onto the summit for a full 360 view in the hot sun and not a breath of wind! It was only 10am, so we hung out at the top for a while, reluctant to leave the views behind. 

The walk from the summit back to camp was only an hour over boulders and we had lunch and then napped for a few hours before an afternoon session of rock skills, where I learned how to ascend a rope using two smaller ropes (prussiks) and descend safely by repelling. 

Another sunset dinner and a cup of tea as the moon got brighter, then it was bedtime. 

(See if you can spot the Black Tusk in the panorama - looks pretty gnarly, can't believe Dave and I went up it!)

Mountaineering: Snow skills

The next morning we didn't get up until 8am and after breakfast, we packed our day bags and set off to find some snow and ice to learn some skills. 

We hiked back up over the boulders to the col, then set off along a ridge with awesome views of our valley and the mountains beyond. There were a few clouds on the peaks along the horizon, but the sun was shining and it was a glorious day. It was a fun scramble over the ridge and when we got to the end, we were rewarded with a view of the Spearhead Glacier in all its terrifying glory - a great expanse of ice and snow with incredible crevasses, dips in the surface where there are hidden crevasses,  rockfall zones and overhanging lips of snow.

We scrambled up Spearhead Mountain and had lunch with a view before heading to a small, safe snow patch to practice skills on.

I learned about glacier travel, snow anchors, ice anchors, crevass rescue and how to arrest a fall. The latter was loads of fun - we hiked to the top and slid down, stopping with our ice axes at the bottom (woohoo!).

Then soaking wet, we hiked back to camp, which was starting to feel more like home.