Trip Report - Mt. Elpoca East Ridge

I can’t find the words to describe how beautiful this minor ridge in the Highwood Pass was this past weekend. Even despite the cold biting 60 - 80km wind gusts, and some steep postholing en route to gaining the ridge crest, we agreed it was a super fun adventure. Check out the photos to see some of the interesting terrain we got to tromp around in.

Traversing this steep snow slope just below the ridge crest was probably the crux of the day.


































Eighty Eight Brewing Co's Hydration Station Hazy Pale Ale with Electrolytes. Almost too cold to finish, but still super yummy.

Blue skies, beers, and ... a buttplug

This weekend's summit adventure featured bright blue skies, beers, and ... a buttplug? More on that in a second. We took advantage of the still relatively snow-free conditions, and headed up Porcupine Ridge in Kananaskis. The approach to the summit was a relatively straight forward, but interesting hike with some minor bits of scrambling. Once at the summit, there was an interesting looking extension off to the south, that involved crossing a really narrow exposed ridge. Naturally, I couldn't help myself, so went to investigate. Thinking about the most difficult scrambles we've done over the years, this ridge was probably the most exposed one I've crossed yet. See the photos, and decide for yourself whether you'd have the cajones to cross it.

Anyways, back to the buttplug story. A dude we follow on Instagram has been putting up unofficial summit register containers on various peaks in the Rockies, and they usually contain a notebook, a mickey of Fireball cinammon whisky, a magnum condom, and some other random odds and sods. Well this particular summit box had those, plus a tube of pre-rolls (joints), and what appeared to be a gently used buttplug. Call me immature, but we guffawed for a lot longer than we should have. All in all, this was an awesome outing.

That little red dot in the middle of the spine is me, gingerly making my way back down. (photo taken by Keith)


This is what the ridge looked like from a highpoint to the east of the summit.


The ridge was thin, with steep drop offs to either side. With the intermittent wind gusts, I sat to take in the views before slowly making my way back across to safety. (photo taken by Keith)


This is what it looked like from my vantage point, as I was making my way back across.


The low winter sun created some beautiful flaring around Keith.




Looking towards the summit.










Summit brew: Snake Lake Brewing Company's Brighter Horizons Tropical Pale Ale.










We saw one other character decide to climb the tower. He made it to the top, which is more than I could say. I opted to turn around just below where he is in this photo, knowing that ascending this section would mean having to downclimb it after.








And finally... here's the aforementioned butt plug. Pro hiking tip: always bring sanitizer for mountain adventures. You never know what you may end up coming into contact with.

I had a brain fart... AKA the story of how we spent our anniversary apart

Sunday was our 12th wedding anniversary. But due to a scheduling error (and by that, I mean I had a brain fart, and rescheduled a previously postponed climb up Mt. Athabasca to this day), we didn't celebrate it together. As it turned out, at around 3:45am that morning Anita and I were respectively doing the following:

• Her: at home, playing a marathon session of Tetris, and finally deciding to call it a night
• Me: on the road (and had been since 2:45am) to the trailhead parking lot

Mt. Athabasca is an alpine mountaineering objective in the Icefields Parkway (with an alpine start time of 4:15am at the trailhead), so I stayed overnight in Lake Louise to shave a couple hours off the drive that morning. Pro tip: when you need to get up at 2:00am to drive 2 hours and then mountain for 10 hours, it is not in your best interest to stay up late in your hotel watching documentaries like "Searching for the Abominable Snowman" on the National Geographic channel. (For those who are curious, they didn't find him)

The route up the mountain itself was interesting, involving a couple hours of hiking by moonlight, before strapping on the crampons, harnesses, and roping up for some technical glacier travel. As we got to the AA Col (the saddle between Mt. Athabasca and Mt. Andromeda), we hit thick cloud cover rolling in, with howling wind, snow, and zero visibility all the way to the summit. Despite the weather getting real nasty above the 3000m mark, and a complete lack of summit views, it was a pretty cool adventure to summit another one of the 11,000'ers of the Rockies.

After a couple hours of hiking in darkness, the sun finally rose and we could see the glacial terrain we were entering.








Visibility started to deteriorate.




On the summit ridge... you can't actually see, but directly on our left is a steep drop down the North Athabasca Glacier. A slip here would be bad news.




At the summit, 3480m above sea level. Searching for any signs of clearing weather...


Our guide thought we were crazy when we broke out the summit beers. But it was rather cold and windy, and we had a technical descent left, so we opted to save them for later.








The Icefall section of the Andromeda Glacier.


It's hard to tell scale from here, but the Icefall is hundreds of meters tall.




Andromeda glacier on the left, Athabasca Glacier in the distance.




A trilobyte fossil. My first time seeing one of these in the wild.


Summit Brew (back at the parking lot): Fitsimmons and Cold Garden collaboration - Mango Fandango White Tea Wheat Ale. Mt. Athabasca is the peak covered in clouds directly to the right of the beer.