Entrance to Junkyards

On Feb 7th i attended my first Ice Climbing event. We went to the junkyards in Canmore, which turns out is a very common area that people generally learn this sport. The ice was light blue in a lot of the area which is considered very good ice to climb on to set ice screws. In very colder temperatures, say below -23 C people are not supposed to climb as the ice becomes brittle and more dangerous to set screws.

Our guide was Andrew Wexler, who had been climbing since 1999 and had spent quite a lot of time in South America guiding trips in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina. He had summitted Aconcogua 5 times and had just come back from a trip from Argentina on a successful summit in January of 2010. He's rated as an assistant guide for Alpine, rock and skiing on the ACMG registry. The members of the group that i car pooled with up to Canmore was Simon, an assistant professor from University of Calgary who taught Chemistry and Nanotechnology. He lived in Vancouver for quite some time and attended Simon Fraser university. He was our driver this first week and loved the mountains. Neil and Erica I had met before through the ACC Calgary section and respectively worked as a compliance officer for Bridgewater and a teaching assistant with the Calgary Board of Education at Ernest Manning. Caitlin and Nathan both attended the University of Calgary and I saw both of them at the CCC on the following Thursday coincidentally when I attended a Meetup group.

Today, we learned about anchors and the acronym SRENE
SOLID - ice must be solid
REDUNDANT - if one piece fails, the other still works
EQUALIZED - share the weight out, no slack in the system
Non-EXTENDING - If something fails, you don't drop a few feet or swing off wildly to one side

One of the most useful anchors we learned was the V-thread, which is often used to rappel and people use them as very powerful anchors if bolting stations cannot be found. A threading device to catch the prussik on the other side of the V thread is very useful which can be homemade from a coat hanger and a pair of plyers. (Reminder: to try and make one at home instead of paying $20 for one.) It stuffs into one of the ice screws for easy packing when not used. These anchors probably need longer screws to actually make so the two holes actually connect. Andrew said its quite easy if you just eyeball it with a finger and imagine the plane going through and intersecting with the already made hole. He said the V thread will actually hold about 5000 lbs so they are extremely strong. These anchors can also be used by actually feeding your entire rope through the V thread so no piece of gear needs to be sacrifced in theory. However, Neil raised a great point that if the end of the rope gets stuck on a multi-pitch route you could be very much in trouble on the descent. Sharp and new ice screws make a huge difference in cutting the ice efficiently. (I remember Wayne mentioning that you can get screws sharpened when they dull out over time which is why he just buys used screws and then ships a bunch out at the same time to be sharpened and returned via mail.)

The access point to the junkyards was the first turn off to the left after the bridge to Grassi Lakes. Its actually the entrance where Azi and I went for the Grassi Lakes trail head (not the rock climbing access point, but the one before it.) From the parking lot you head down to the gravel car path that has a gate and follow the large path until you come to a huge electical Transalta station and then head up the wooden steps. At the T intersection along the main pathway head left (which is where everyone puts on their crampons. From there about 3 minutes and then you arrive at the junkyards. Curious to see what this area looks like in the summer.)