Mountain Magic The Sequel Part 2!

Panorama view from top of Big Sister

Top of the world

In perhaps the most random turn of events since...late August (my life seems at times like an endless array of random occurrence) I ended up on the top of a mountain again yesterday. Within a 30 hour period I ended up spending 12 hours on mountains, incredible, this is how it happened. On Sunday after the Grotto Mountain adventure I ended up working at the Oval as the supervisor on schedule never showed and because I need every dollar I can get. I was still bursting with energy from the day's events and after telling my tale of high adventure to my coworker Shona at the front desk and observing the proposed near summer temperatures forecast for the coming day it was decided that another trip to the mountain playground around Canmore was in order. That evening I searched the interweb for a suitable destination and came up with Big Sister. According to the guide this mountain is higher than any of the others I have recently summited at over 2900m and as the tallest of the very distinct Three Sisters visible from Canmore it seemed like a solid destination. Only hours after returning home from Canmore I was back on the #1 heading west for more time in the high alpine. Big Sister is best attempted from the backside which meant a 20 km drive along gravel roads to the Spray Lakes dam. This is the first hike this year were the city would not be visible from the slopes and made for an incredible sense of remoteness and adventure. From the brief reports I had read the summit was best reached by a ridge on the left side of a substantial gully system and with this as our only guide we hit the trail and started upwards. the lower part of the mountain was similar to the day before in steepness and challenge, but it quickly proved to be more than we had bargained for. Within half an hour the trail disappeared into a mass of rock and some trees. We decided to veer left and started scrambling up steep rock faces in hoped of finding the trail again eventually and attempting to stay on the ridge. Once we broke the tree line, maintaining the ridge became increasingly difficult and with the steep open faces we were climbing on all fours for long stretches at a time. I felt like I should have been wearing climbing shoes, had some ropes and maybe a helmet for falling rocks, but instead I had running shoes, a backpack with now useless bamboo ski poles strapped on my back and bleeding hands. Once we neared the top the wind was significant and warranted only a brief stop for some quick pictures no time to even fear the trip down again. The true summit was not much further up, but the consensus between my compatriot and I was that the final pitch was far to steep and exposed to make for any sort of safe and responsible action. We then pointed our toes downhill and started the incredibly slow descent to try and find a decent warm spot for a bite of lunch. Although we both maintained that time was irrelevant on this adventure I can almost guarantee that picking our way down this monster took twice as long as the scramble on the way up. Going up we had simply set a pace and climbed without looking back or down, with no perception of what we were actually getting our selves into. At times I had looked back and felt some serious fear creep through me, but dismissed it and pressed on as my hiking partner seemed virtually fearless. The way back don was an entirely different story as the mountain was fully visible between our feet. The ridge we had climbed up was impossible to attempt going down as it had involved some seriously sections that blurred the distinction between scrambling and rock climbing substantially. So instead we decided that the best plan of action was the one side of the scree, boulder and snow gully. All I can say was that it was loose, incredibly steep and breathtaking beyond that majestic views. After lunch on a sheltered face we thought we had the worst behind us as we were hovering just above the relative comfort of the tree line. This was not the case. We took to the ridge again in an attempt to find the trail we had come up on, but this led to significant challenges. At one point as I was leading I found myself on a line were I had to drop myself off a 3 meter high ledge. With a solid hand hold I gripped it for all I was worth and found myself dangling with Spray Lakes beneath me. I dropped myself down onto another steep slope and resumed the decent, writing this doesn't do it justice it was incredible. Shona didn't like the look of the maneuver and opted for a safer route. Turns out that this was the story of our decent. We would come across a dangerous section which seemed the only viable option and then once we had cleaned it would discover other routes that were not quite so deep into the danger zone. To make a long story shorter we never found our original trail, or we did but thought another way was easier. The trail would disappear into a mess of rock and steeps and we would resume danger zone defiance once again. After over 6 hours on the mountain we finally found our way back to the car and after a quick wash up in the icy freshness of lower Spray Lake hit the road back to town after what turned out to be the absolute highlight of anything I have ever experienced in a mountain setting.

The best way down.

These alpine adventures are becoming steadily more daring and thrilling. As long as the weather holds this coming Sunday will see me once again head west to another day of feeling alive.Follow the ridge just left of the center gully... if you want to scare yourself Into the Sunset