Bugaboos, Banff, Roger's Pass: Avoiding Grizzly Bears and Crevasses

8/13/14

Flight from Maine to Seattle: 11 hours

Drive from Seattle-Tacoma Int'l Airport to Brisco: 11 hours

Time crossing border: 45 seconds

Parking lot to hut: 2:00 (3pm departure; minus 15 chatting with friends headed down)

To Appleby campground: 30 (2:15 total hiking time with 75 lb. pack!)

Camp setup and registering: 30

Jog and scramble up east post spire: 15

Jog down: 10

Thoughts: I'm really happy to be here. The mountains are beautiful with their mangled moraines, desultory cols and icy lagunas. The distance beckons me forth and I'm happy to respond, with the days light fading softly away.  Hiking up, somehow my pack was huge and heavy. Based on my experience with packs from 0-90 pounds for long, arduous hikes, and my frequent lifting of 50 pound packs for work, I think I carried 75 pounds up.  Made me feel out of shape, which is better locuted as the same shape only with greater volume and or density.  People are friendly here. Sam and Ryan from Alabama lent me their guidebook. Pat from Massachusetts gave me lots of good tips, tricks and general beta as it's changed over the last two weeks with the col's snow melting and dissipating the bergschrund to the extent that the upper portion is a 60 degree ice wall and warmth loosens awaiting rocks. Accordingly I plan to circumnavigate snow patch via the Kain Hut snow fields, talus and then gear up for Vowell Glacier approach to Pidgeon Spire's West Ridge.  

As an afternoon delight after arriving, Sam suggested I take a scramble up Eastpost Spire.  What a great recommendation!  Sam thought my jaunt up and down Eastpost Spire was quick (25 min), which is reassuring since I'm just getting back into pushing myself. With Friday and Saturdays forecast being such extreme rain, the pressure to have a great day tomorrow and head out before it gets awful is heightened  There exists the possibility of checking out Banff and or Lake Louise; perhaps the weather there is better. And also, Logan Jamison said his Uncle Paul Bell in Brisco was throwing a party Saturday night. That sounds nice, too.

8/14/14
8:45 depart camp
8:55 Kain hut
9:25 base of lower snow patch after talus detour
9:30 transition to axes and crampons
10:00 level with snow patch
10:30 base of Pidgeon
10:53 end of snow
11:00 transition back to climb and snack and hydrate
11:10 start up climb! 
11:40 up
11:45 done with photos; heading down!
12:00 would be down but dropped camera; took me 45 minutes to try getting it out of a tight fit then I had to scramble down, get my ice ax, and come back to reach it!
12:44 putting on pants and harness to traverse and descend to Snowpatch for the Snowpatch-Pidgeon raps; went with shoes only, to glissade faster
1:12 at rappels
1:15 rapping! 
1:30 after third rappel join two teams of two (Aaron and Steve father-son duo from CO and Mexican and Spaniard), which slowed me down but was nice socially.  If you can make them out, there are three people descending the glacier on the snow ridge line, south of Pidgeon Spire in the photo below. 
2:45 back at camp (6 hrs camp to camp); rain starting now.
5:50 dehydrated after awaking from nap; rain stopped; hydrating
6:45 listening to music.
7:08 weighing options. I know I'd like to return to climb Beckey-Chouinard, etc.  I don't know how much I'll accomplish alone (Read: this trip). Perhaps the Kain Route. With the col unstable, everything takes longer; with no partner and bad weather, not much else can be climbed. Better perhaps to check out Banff. I do want to climb Kain. That's still possible Monday after climbing back up Sunday. 

10:30 done socializing and sharing/pawning off carrots so I won't have to carry them down! Looks like mass exodus tomorrow. Bunch are headed to Golden for wifi and river house pub. There is a hot spring near the town I forget the name of now [Editor's Note: Radium], but I believe it begins with an r and has two words. Banff should be cool. Maybe I can swing through there.

Two great tricks for mountain speed: Tic Tacs keep you going until you really are at a transition to access water in your pack or at a stream by tricking your salivating self into thinking you are hydrated.  Mini Speed Stick helps keep any chaffing at bay so you can run in those crampons and jog up scrambles!

P.S. Dude who helped me left car at 9am and was back at Kain Hut at 1 pm. He wanted to do Mt. Robinson. Need to look that up.

Rain since I've been back at camp; it's 4:40 now. Followed tracks today that looked like Wolverine had been dragging his knuckles.  The system was good; I could've a) left rope behind and b) hiked around instead - would've been quicker anyhow and lighter to boot.  Still went pretty quickly. Tent bound on vacation!  Required rest! Still really happy that I started 5 hours after everyone and got back first. I guess that's the experience toll.

P.S. The entire trip thus far I've had "girl let me love you! And I will love you, until you learn...to love yourself [repeat]" playing in my head over and over!

8/16 & 8/17

Plans were scrapped for both the La Hing or Ha Ling climb and the Sir Donald group enchantment, which I was - and remain - very excited about.

Yesterday Ruari woke up late. We had watermelon and granola for breakfast, quickly followed by fruit and toast - his necessities as a kiwi. We then strike out for a 5.10c crack in Banff called Tourist Attraction right above a creek and along a tourist path. It was pumpy and awesome; and Ruari styled it.

Today, contrary to tidings of the forecasts we received, after a massive pasta dinner with ice cream and meat pie we drove 3 hours to weathery Rogers Pass, pulled off the highway and set up tent across from the enshrouded, invisible Mt. MacDonald. We woke up early at 3am and decided to delay our start so we could see upon arriving after the approach if indeed we were on the right track.  You see, there is no trail up the couloir we are going to take, and thanks to it being summer, in the place of a snowy couloir there are gnarly creek beds with occasional snow bridges waiting to collapse, and steep scree walls if you prefer the densely forested rib/ridgeline.  Needless to say, we made our way up the maze of different couloirs, escaping the dangerous and otherwise non-preferred parts of the creek, hooting and hollering in the fog so that the grizzly bears may hear us, take heed, and turn heel!  My two hopes for the day were that we saw no grizzlies and it didn't rain.  The fog did not lift. We carried on, still yelling like madmen in the woods.  We came across some grizzly poo a few days old.  Then about half an hour later and maybe 1000 feet higher, we came across the digging marks of a grizzly - and this was very recent, maybe within half an hour; the upturned dirt was bone dry whereas every little bit of vegetation we'd been grabbing to help take steps higher and every inch of ground everywhere else was as wet as could be. We had the shoes and pants to prove it. So, we continued calling our way up after sharing a look of concern.  The higher we went, the thicker the fog. There was a breeze for a while but that too subsided, leaving the fog hanging. As we arrived at what we believed to be the base of the route, we voted to take a rest to see if the weather would improve. We didn't want to bail yet and we didn't want to risk climbing if it'd rain on us and then we'd be bailing and leaving gear. So we waited, but nothing really changed. After half an hour of discussing our options and whereabouts, we decided we might as well go on up seeing as how it'd be rather slow going back whence we came owing to the paths severity, and about 400m (1300 feet) of the way up the climb was an escape ledge to a ridge to a crest to a trail down 1 kilometer (5/8 mile) from our car. So we started up. No sooner had we rounded a corner and Ruori found fresh grizzly excrement. Oh Pooh Bear poo. We didn't hesitate a bit, but to shake hands and turn down. Rather happy to be heading down we were, too. The couloir we had gone up had very little left of it between two ribs of rock, which to us suggested that if it wasn't already, the bear would soon feel - and be - trapped by us.  Secondly, the visibility was still very poor so we couldn't see a bear if it blindsided us.  Three and a half hours later we were driving an hour back to Golden and then off to grab a drink and burger at Riverside Pub before parting ways.

I'm now in the Bugaboos parking lot with my attack bag packed for a big last day in the Bugaboos.

8/18

slept in! feeling rested after car sleep!
940 leave lot fast
1040 Kain hut don't stop
11:03 lace up crampons (Snowpatch) keep going; pass three montana folks from alaska now!  jogging with crampons is awesome!
1215 Pidgeon behind go
1245 base of bugaboo cram food bam
100 hydrated packed for ascent push legs
207 high point; crowd descending; don't want to climb past soloing. Nor do I want to rap behind. Turning back.
305 down at base of bugaboo water stream; crampons water and march!!! running on glacier
In the last picture, there should be three people descending the glacier roped up.

430 back at Kain hut; headed down to lot!!! Bye bugsie!!!! hooting and hollering!
504 down!!!!
510 on road - drive 50k of dirt: go!
618 off dirt road! Wowed!
715 have pizza from Radium and beginning drive to Seattle!  Rams think they're people in Radium and try to use to the crosswalk, much to the chagrin of citizens in cars.

5am pull into Seattle and sleep in car!

6am wake up, run for 6 miles in city!  legs feeling sunburnt but fresh!