Trip Report - Gap Peak

I hope you all had a good Easter long weekend. Mine involved scrambling a mountain and drinking beers. Protip: The order in which you do those activities directly correlates to your summit success rate. We spent Saturday drinking Turmeric IPA's, Pear Saisons, Triple IPA's, and Milkshake Sour IPA's from Eighty Eight Brewing. As such, I was not really motivated to get up Easter Sunday to bag a peak. But I knew I would feel terrible about wasting a four day long weekend, so dragged myself out of bed regardless, to take a steep hike up Gap Peak in the Canmore Corridor/ Bow Valley area. The original plan was to give Anita a weekend reprieve, and do a relatively short repeat mountain like the East End of Rundle. But as we got near Canmore, Gap Peak looked relatively snow free, so we carpe'd that diem instead.

The hike wasn't overly difficult, or long by any means, but it did encompass a wide variety of terrain and scrambling which made it rather interesting throughout. And the scrambling along the summit ridge, under bright blue skies and mostly calm winds, was something epic.

At one point, another couple would pass us by and asked if I was planning to camp overnight on the mountain. I guess she found my rather large pack to be overkill for this trail. She wasn't entirely wrong... I've been using the larger pack for months to carry extra layers and winter gear in case something goes wrong and we're stuck bivvying mountainside. But maybe it's time to move to my smaller summer pack now that the threat of death by freezing has become secondary to death by hungry bear... or Angry Anita. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯






Mt. McGillivray, perfectly framed in the trees on our way up.


Steep.


We found a cool little rock window 3/4 of the way up.




Yours truly, with my giant pack.




Some more steep scrambling.






A rare photo of us together on the false summit.


Summit Brew: Maui Brewing Company Big Swell IPA.

Trip Report - Anklebiter Ridge

Our trek up Anklebiter Ridge on Saturday wasn't particularly pleasant. The wind howled, the sun was hidden all day, and there was a surprising amount of snow as we got near the top. But despite the conditions, there was a lot of interesting scrambling throughout the route. Sure, we probably could have bypassed all of it by just finding a hiking trail up, but where's the adventure in that? I only had a mild heart attack as I watched Anita slip on a steep slope on our way back down, but fortunately it wasn't on a dangerous or exposed dropoff.

This minor peak features 840m of elevation gain, and probably doesn't rank high on people's lists during the summer, but for an early season objective, the scrambling opportunities are quite fun. Check out the photos to see Anita practicing her skills.

Also, tomorrow is election day in Alberta. If you haven't already, make sure you get out to vote. Because if you don't vote, you can't bitch. And we all know that everyone has something to bitch about when it comes to the Government, regardless of your political stripes.


Looking back at the lengthy ridge, as we neared the summit.




Anita searching out a route to scramble/ climb up.




It got a little wintery about 3/4 of the way up.


















Summit Brew: 1919 Belgian Style Pale Ale by Little Brown Jug brewing. Kind of meh...


His and hers packs.