Mountain Magic The Sequel

Backside with traverse from false summit from the far left to were we stood half an hour later on the summit.

View of Canmore from Grotto Mountain false summit

This Sunday I found myself back in the Rockies for another alpine adventure with a solid crew of cyclists. This time we were going to take a look at Grotto Mountain which we had observed the week before as being a potentially good hike. From the Alpine Club of Canada clubhouse we began the ascent. The weather was incredible yet again, barely a whisper of wind and nearly 20 degrees on the lower slopes. Compared to last week this trail was far more demanding, offering relentless steeps and plenty of loose trail to fight for traction on. With a bamboo xc ski pole from the garage I was able to ascend with relative ease and as a group we set an at times fierce tempo to reach the summit. We broke the tree line relatively early on this mountain and soon realized that our objective at over 2700m altitude was significantly higher than last weeks ascent of Lady MacDonald. Coming up to the first false summit we stopped briefly on the exposed ridge to enjoy a meal with a panorama, near 360 degree view of the Canmore valley and the seemingly endless ranges to our north. We then proceeded to traverse the ridge to the true summit. To me this was the highlight of the day with the breathtaking views on either side, rugged trail and baking sunshine. Once at the true summit we decided to attempt to make the day a loop rather than go back the way we came which led to a very long and demanding scramble down a steep bouldered slope until we could finally traverse across a few scree sections and duck into the wooded slopes again. Although we could easily have thought that the majority of excitement was already behind us we found the polar opposite awaited us. The way this mountain works a number of promising routes down through the trees end in shear cliffs with several hundred meter drops. With Phil at the helm we would continuously end up just above these drops and then have to climb back up and traverse further in an attempt to find a better route. We finally stumbled upon what you could possibly classify as a trail, to me it looked more like a series of rock slides clearing the trees. Grabbing onto tiny fir trees, half sliding, half falling down the slopes with oncoming cliffs, and a steep drop into a giant gulley on the right this was definitely the furthest into the danger zone we had come in the last week. The rush and sense of freedom and being alive was incredible picking our way down that mountain. I am sure I could have been more in the moment, but I was feeling the signs of dehydration after 5 hours of hiking and the only thing I could think about was getting fluids at the earliest convenience store in town. What a day. More to come I was sure, I just didn't realize how soon...

Westward from Grotto Mountain