 |
| Cherring Sherpa and Richard descending Mount Fay |
Anxiety and Ambition
I've been drawn to the mountains since before I can remember. There are few greater pleasures than moving through wild places, on foot or on skis. I crave “big country,” where the world feels satisfyingly large, as Wendell Berry might say. But the big country is scary. I’m not so much afraid of heights as afraid of falling. And so my mountain life has been a continual struggle between fear and desire, between summits and valleys. I pretty much retired from climbing at age eighteen, when I realized I didn’t much enjoy being scared. Hiking, and then backpacking, and then backcountry skiing, was good enough. But that love of high, steep places was dormant, not absent, and three or so years ago I did a bit of rock climbing on a whim. My body may be weaker now that I’m in my fifties, but it seemed my mind was a bit stronger. Anyway, the balance had shifted, and the joy of climbing outweighed my fear. So I’ve recently climbed in the Gunks, and in
the Alps, and back “home” in Colorado (although I’ve lived in New England for two decades). But I hadn’t climbed in favorite place on Earth, the
Canadian Rockies. And I’d never really tried classic mountaineering, where the fancy technical climbing is but a small part of the experience of climbing big mountains.
And so I signed up for a six-day mountaineering trip, called “
Lake Louise Classics” by Yamnuska Mountain Adventures, who organized the trip and provided the guides. There were five guides and ten client. Interestingly, the guides were a more diverse bunch than the clients. Cherring Sherpa is from Nepal, and has climbed Everest seven times. Larry Shiu is from Taiwan. Richard Howes is an Australian living in Germany. Mike Caswell and Darren Vonk were the token Canadians. My fellow clients were mostly from Canada, so “Right on!” and “For sure!” punctuated most conversations. Jack, Dana, and Morgan were from the most adventurous family ever, and arrived with Morgan’s friend Lauren and family friend Larry. Sasha and Tommy had recently climbed Rainier. Vlad would soon prove the strongest of us all. Richard was the only other American, and a jazz musician to boot. We would have much to talk about.
Day One: Dirtaineering
Our first day was devoted to getting to the Abbot Pass Hut, our base for the next two days of climbing. Gear was sorted out, carpools arranged, and we drove from Canmore to the parking area below Lake O’Hara in Yoho National Park. We had reservations on the bus that takes people up the eleven-kilometer road to the trailhead at Lake O’Hara itself, so we didn’t want to miss our bus!
Then all we had to do was walk. We took good trails around the lake, then started climbing past a series of smaller lakes to the spectacular Lake Oesa. Here the route got steeper and more exposed, sneaking around some small cliffs. From here on we wore our helmets. The trail was sometimes steep, and we were carrying all our climbing gear, sleeping bags, three days of food, and a rope.
 |
| Climbing rubble high above Lake Oesa |
And then came the main event—a long scree gully that led to Abbot Pass. The Rockies, being well-named, produce an ocean of rocks, large and small. The rocks slowly, or quickly, drift down the hill. Sometimes we walked on a house of cards, except the cards were two-hundred-pound boulders, precariouly perched. There was bare, loose dirt so steep a boot would barely stick. And there was the scree—smaller rocks, like climbing a mountain of marbles: stepping up you’d push the whole pile of rocks down, and seemingly end up lower than you started. Balance was always precarious. A few times I had to follow exactly the footsteps of a guide to get through an especially tricky patch.
But what a reward for our thousand meters of elevation gain! I can’t express the setting of the hut, stone walls built on the narrowest of ridges, improbably suspended between the mountain and the void, rock built on top of air. To the East the “Death Trap” drops down to Lake Louise. To the West is our nasty, steep gully. Looming to the South is Mount Lefroy, ice gullies starting from nearly the hut. To the North are the buttresses and towers of Mount Victoria. Even walking to the outhouse felt exposed, and the constant wind didn’t help. But at least the hut was cozy, warmed by the woodstove (the wood arrives by helicopter).
 |
| Abbot Pass Hut |
Day Two: Fear
 |
| The Face of Fear. Early morning at Abbot Pass hut before attempting Mt. Lefroy |
Before dawn, I’m climbing up steep talus as fast as I can by the light of a headlamp. Half of what I step on moves. The wind is howling. I feel weak, awkward, out of balance. And then I hear what sounds like a freight train, and then the sound of rocks smashing into one another. A hundred-pound rock just rocketed down the snow gully we were about to climb. The first guide yells, “I’m pulling the plug. Go down!” We turn and scramble down the uncertain ground. I’m thinking about pulling the plug on this whole trip. I’m not strong enough, not brave enough, too crippled by my own fears.
We get back to the relative safety of the hut around dawn. But the respite is only five minutes. The guides re-organize their gear, shifting objectives from Mount Lefroy, which warned us off with that rockfall, to Mount Victoria, towering over the other side of the hut. There’s not quite enough time to tell the guides I want to quit, and soon we’re roped up and scrambling up the other side.
On Mount Victoria, the climbing is never hard and never easy. But it’s always insecure—loose rock everywhere—and very exposed. We’re more used to having sky above us than below us. This is new to me—three of us tied together on a rope, but mostly moving together, depending on the guide’s skill to stop a slip before it becomes a fall. I don’t doubt our guide Larry’s skill, and my ropemate Vlad is strong and solid. But I am full of doubt. I acutely feel the altitude, the exposure. I am afraid of falling. I am afraid I’m not good enough, not strong enough.
 |
| Sun on the glacier below Mount Victoria |
 |
| Apprentice alpine guide Larry Shiu |
 |
| On Mount Victoria; Mount Lefroy in the background, partially in the clouds |
But this setting is so amazing. We weave our way up through this crumbling, wind-blasted cathedral of stone.
 |
| Larry on a cliff band on Mount Victoria |
A bigger cliff requires some anchors and belaying, but mostly involves sneaking around the corner. The slice of earth gets narrower and narrower; there is more and more sky around us. We reach the top of the ridge, and the earth falls away on every side, a sidewalk in the sky. My focus is very selective—my world is where I put my feet, and I try to avoid thinking about all that empty space below me. But in spite of the magnificence, I still don’t feel good. And finally I have to tell Larry and Vlad that I’ve had enough. I’m in tears, feeling bad for letting Vlad down, as he now has to go back too. And for a long time I continue to feel weak and scared, as going down is harder than going up, fighting gravity to stay on the mountain. And then the weather gets more interesting. The clouds lower, and is it really snowing in August? We see icicles dripping off the cliffs. Patches of ice on the rocks. And soon the rocks have a thin, slippery layer of snow.
Going down is mostly waiting, as another team had turned back earlier, and are descending slowly. Their guide Richard is the soul of patience. It’s cold waiting, minus three celsius, the wind still blowing.
 |
| Descending Mount Victoria |
We sometimes get glimpses of the hut, impossibly seeming straight beneath us, like seeing a house from a plane. We keep moving, it doesn’t seem any closer. Sometimes we have to climb down little cliffs, reaching blindly for footholds, clinging to the rock with gloved hands. In a few places we’re lowered on the rope by Larry.
 |
| Looking down at the Abbot Pass Hut (center, tiny) |
But progress is made, the hut is closer, I joke that I won’t feel like we’ll make it until I’m walking past the outhouse.
And, something like seven hours after we left, we made it back to the hut. What a relief! Disappointed as I was to let down Vlad, and to not get to the top, I knew I made the right decision. As the snow accumulated, it was getting harder and harder to move, and I just didn’t have enough reserves on that day. Part of it was just that so much was new to me—real mountaineering terrain, all the loose rock, short roping with three people, and so on. So much to absorb.
 |
| Snow at Abbot Pass |
The other three teams on the mountain didn’t come back for many, many hours. They were out for twelve hours or more, and everyone came back shattered. A hard day for all. And the weather meant that there were no views from the summit, just a quick moment inside the clouds.
Day Three. Eclipse.
 |
| Abbot Pass Hut in front of the lower slopes of Mount Victoria |
After our adventures on Mount Victoria, it was time to go to town for a night, and prepare for part two. Vlad, Mike, and Larry headed out at 3AM to climb Victoria and descend the Huber Ledges to Lake O’Hara, while the rest of us slept in, had bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns for breakfast, and then started down the notorious gully. But this wasn’t as bad as I feared. For the first time on the trip I felt reasonably competent, and managed to walk down the hill relatively under control.
 |
| Cherring Sherpa descending the scree from Abbot Pass towards Lake Oesa. Note he’s wearing running shoes instead of boots. |
But the day seemed to get darker rather than lighter—it was the solar eclipse! What a place to experience it. It was only 70 or 80% of totality, but it was still wonderful to see the moon mostly obscuring the sun, admist the clouds and the mountains.
 |
| Lake Oesa |
It was a relief to get back to Lake Oesa, have some snacks, and then hike the Yukeness Ledges back to Lake O'hara.
While waiting for the bus, I had the famous carrot cake and a coke. Yummy!
 |
| The green token lets us ride the bus back to the highway! |
We drove back to the Hostel in Lake Louise, had showers, did laundry, organized gear, and had non-dehydrated food. Hooray!
Day Four. Every Kind of Terrain.
Again we were up early, for the challenge of day four was to get a parking spot at Moraine Lake, the trailhead to access the Neil Colgan hut, the highest habitable structure in Canada. Getting to the hut is literally a walk in the park, but with every kind of “walking” imaginable. A kilometer or two on trails leads to a stream crossing on slippery logs, hiking up big talus fields, and climbing numerous cliff bands, ranging from relatively simple to quite hard and long. And then there was a glacier! This was quite the logistical challenge with fourteen people, what with packs to haul up the steepest bits.
 |
| Mike crosses the stream |
I think the guides were having fun—it’s not common for so many to be working together, and they schemed and plotted and set up some ingenious systems to move all of us up through these cliff bands.
 |
| Climbing one of the cliff bands |
 |
| Attached to the mountain |
For the largest cliff band, the guides set up one rope to belay up the clients, and another to haul the packs. When we climbed up, we then clipped into a fixed rope, via-feratta style, and traversed another thirty meters to a large ledge. After that was only a short, easy pitch of climbing to get on the glacier.
 |
| Hauling packs up the largest cliff band |
 |
| Climbing the largest cliff band |
 |
| Richard showing off |
 |
Via Ferrata
|
 |
| The toe of the glacier |
 |
| The Neil Colgan Hut, elevation 2950m. |
Day Five. On top of the world.
This was the storybook day of mountaineering, up well before dawn, putting on crampons on the deck of the hut, marching across the glacier by headlamp, climbing up the big snow slope at dawn, and then up and down the rock ridge, scrambling and climbing, on what turned into a perfect day, with seemingly all the mountains in the world around and below us. The rock ridge led to a glacier on top of the mountain, and then the final walk up to the summit of Mt. Fay, 3234 meters, one of the famous “Ten Peaks” above Moraine Lake, but sadly not one of the peaks that was on the Canadian $20 bill.
 |
| Sunrise |
 |
| Snow climbing on Mount Fay |
 |
| Mount Fay’s shadow. You can see some climbers on a ridge just to the right of the shade line. |
 |
| Cherring Sherpa leads the way |
Oh, what joy to be on that summit, to have come so far, to see those mountains in every direction, Mt. Temple and its huge East Ridge, Assiniboine, the Goodsirs, Bident and Quadra, Hungabee, Lefroy, the Bugaboos, on and on. Turquoise lakes far below, a glacier plummeting down the north face of our mountain—there can be few more spectacular places on earth.
 |
| Richard, Cherring, and Dave on the summit. Photo courtesy Richard Boales. |
 |
| Climbers approach the summit of Mount Fay |
Of course, it was a long way down, every step requiring concentration, lots of downclimbing, a few lowers, and then we all gathered at the top of the snow slope to rappel down the 120m to the base of the glacier and relative safety. Then a quick walk on the glacier back to the hut. Sadly, my stomach was cramping badly, and most of the afternoon was spent trying to recover.
 |
| Walking across the glacier back to the Neil Colgan Hut |
Day Six. What Goes Up…
 |
| A team descending Mount Little |
Most folks went to climb Mt. Little on the last morning, but all my circuits were overloaded, so I opted to sleep in, feeling slightly justified by the incoming storms and lightning. But all the adventurous folks made it, and soon the whole gang was walking down the glacier, jumping across small crevasses. The weather never really decided what it was doing, although we had enough rain to make the quartzite more slippery than the literal ice we'd just crossed. But we kept going down, with a long lower/rappel down the big cliff band, more hiking down the talus, more short roping, more lowers, more downclimbing…
 |
| Descending the largest cliff band. Look closely for the climber in red. |
I was on a rope with Mike and Larry, and we reached the top of the very last cliffband. Mike lowered us both to the base, then rappelled down and left his rope for the other groups. Waiting at the bottom, we heard a bit of commotion, and a very shaken client soon appeared. Something went wrong with the lower, and what was routine became a “near miss.”
And that was it—we had a long, steep descent ahead of us, but it was just hiking. And joy and relief were mixed with sadness and concern, and the incident served as a powerful reminder that mountaineering is a high-stakes activity.
 |
| Mount Fay is directly above my head |
Afterword
Ten days later, and already the fear is receding, and dreams of future trips are starting to take shape. Thank you Richard, Cherring, Larry, Mike, Darren, and Patrick for watching over us. Thanks to Richard, Vlad, Sasha, Tommy, Dana, Jack, Morgan, Lauren, and Larry for being great company. And how lucky we are to live in a world with the Canadian Rockies!
Comments