Ice Climbing in Grotto Canyon

The night before Feb 14th, I made sure this time my harness was packed and also attached some climbing gear; 4 draws, 3 ice screws (2x22; 1x19), 1 cordellette, 1 prussik, 4 lockers.

Checked the weather forecast for Nakiska(since i thought we were heading to King's Creek) and Canmore just to get an average for the area. Glad I checked out Canmore because we ended up going to Grotto instead. Simon, during the week had sent me an email for a request that I drive my truck this week so I was ready to drive and tried to make sure I slept a little earlier for the next day. Since the weather was supposed to be pretty warm (above 0 deg C), I didn't really pack that many layers. I purchased the First Ascent 850 down fill made by Eddie Bauer since it was 30% off and has a life time warranty. The advertising brochure for the First Ascent line in great as they tested all the gear on Everest and the down jacket goes up to 26,000 ft. Since i doubt i'll ever bring the jacket up to that height i figured it should do the job. Its also machine washable which means its a waterproof down jacket implying that is a harderproof shell around the down. I refunded the Reflex jacket at MEC since it was actually 800 fill down and not waterproof. Even the color was way nicer i figured the EB jacket was much better in the long run. $278 for the reflex vs. 255 for the EB; no brainer. So anyways, I left EB jacket at home since i doubted i would need it.

I used the double plastic scarpas instead this week instead of the Phantom 8000s since i also wanted to try to see how they would do for ice climbing. I've only used them for mountaineering and at Aconcagua and the wear and tear on them are really starting to show. Hannah's birthday was also the night before so we had to jet early but I didn't end up having to stop by the 24 hour Subway in downtown after we dropped off Jayde because Hannah was nice enough to let me pack some leftover from the bibimbap meal.

Arrived at the parking area in Valley Ridge around 7 AM and everyone was there already and Neil yelled out that i was driving so I let everyone know it was goign to be around 10 bucks each if we went to Canmore doubled back to King's Creek and then came home, since when i looked up on the web its about 40 km on highway 40 and back again to King's Creek so altogether it would be about 150 km which is about a half a tank of gas. Everyone was cool with that although SImon gave me 7 bucks after i mentioned that which wasn't cool; but he did say let him know if it was too little.

This week was similar to last week as the air was very foggy on the way out, and again it cleared up at Scott Lake Hill. I filled up at Petro-Canada right passed Cochrane with Premium this time. We got to Canmore around 8:10 am after missing a turn to the right towards the coffee shop. When we arrived, Tim, Caitlin and Nathan were already there (the last two had spent a night in Canmore so they were literally staying across the street). Tim decided we were headed to Grotto Canyon and to follow him east and passed the entrance to canmore that we came in (over the bridge). We headed onto the 1A and then when we came to the parking lot (which was east of the power plant), we went towards a different section of Grotto Canyon (happened to be the same direction we went with the Alpine club). After trekking for about 1.5 hours there and back we realized we came to the incorrect area. Neil, since he wasn't much of a scrambler was stressed, upset and frustrated at the guide for leading us over dangerous terrain. We ended up rapping down the area that looked like an old water fall and then headed back to the parking area and towards the plant in the opposite direciton. When he arrived at a frozen creek we placed our crampons on and then walked upstream of the creek. There were 3000 yr old pictographs we could see on the sides of the canyon along with 5.10 to 5.13 bolted sport routes all along the canyon. Nathan and Caitlin had been here before and mentioned that most of the creek was dried up in the summer so your rope doesn't necessarily get all wet when trying to climb this area. We all found out Caitlin was an Archeology major and mentioned that one of the pictographs were supposed to be warriors and then a the drawing of a tomb on its side was a carcass. When the water is not frozen over the land is about 5 feet below so the pictographs wouldn've been overhead if we were there during the summer. Although the terrain would've been difficult to ascertain given that the change in physical geographic structures are impossible to know with absolute certainty.

We hiked up about a km more along the ice; some parts were melted through about 3 inches and were already starting to form puddles as the weather was about 3 to 5 C. When we arrived to the location of a couple of mixed climbing routes; a route called Him and Hers, Tim set up 3 top ropes and we ended up climbing those 3 for most of the day. Since we arrived later than we otherwise should have we tried to spend more time climbing then eating. This resulted in me being really fatigued by the time we got home.

Celebrated with Claudia when we got home. She was sweet to buy all the groceries during the day especially after her 16 km run that morning with her running partner in Edworthy. She stopped by the Sunterra market on her way home and picked up some fresh wild salmon, French white wine called Gerard Bertrand 2006 from the South of France, pesto, mixed lettuce, some fresh grape tomatoes and mushrooms. We ended up cooking dinner on V day since its so stupidly crowded at restaurants that day.