Here's an interactive photo showing our route on the mountain.
Mt. Alberta is a gorgeous, historic mountain with no easy route to the summit. The 50CC route is known as the East Face or the Japanese Route since a team of Japanese climbers made the first ascent. It is rated 5.6, but if you think “only 5.6?” then you know little about alpine climbing in the Canadian Rockies. Alberta cannot be seen from any road, and I doubt it has ever seen a one-day ascent from the car. Most parties spend at least four days on the roundtrip. In order to approach Mt. Alberta, one first has to wade across the Sunwapta River. This river isn’t very deep, but it is wide and fresh from a glacier. When we crossed it at 7:15 on Sunday morning, it was frigid and my idea of crossing in a simple water moccasin and no socks was a bad one. Blessed with sensitive feet and little tolerance for discomfort, this was a near religious experience. I say near, because there was a heck of a lot of cussing involved. It was estimated that I said twenty cuss words per braid crossing. On the return trip, I’d get smarter. I crossed in my mountain boots with my wool socks. It was also in the afternoon and the river was quite a bit warmer. It was also a bit deeper then, but the only part of me that got chilled was my calves.
After crossing the river, changing shoes, and stowing our soaked pairs in the trees, we re-shouldered our packs and trudged up the well-defined climbers’ trail leading up Woolley Creek. This trail started with a very steep climb through a moss-floored forest. Afterwards we hiked right next to, over, and sometimes in Woolley Creek. We kept our feet dry on this section, but lots of rock hopping was involved. Eventually we got to the moraine coming off of Mt. Cromwell. We hiked over endless, giant talus blocks and through numerous spider webs. On the way out, we’d read the route description better and hug the creek through this section, finding a reasonable trail.
We entered a box canyon below Mt. Woolley and Diadem Peak with huge glaciers and their ice falls above us. The mountains up here are so awe-inspiring and beautiful. We now had to make the horrific trudge up to Woolley Shoulder. When I first heard “Woolley Shoulder”, I figured it was called “Woolley” because it was covered in trees. It wasn’t. In fact, for the last three hours of this hike there is no vegetation taller than about six inches and mostly there isn’t anything growing except lichen. This is a very stark place consisting of talus everywhere. The hike to the shoulder was the most unpleasant part of the entire trip, made more so by a terrible route finding decision I made when I started up the final slope too early. As a general rule, one should follow the talus gullies and not the talus ridges, hoping to find at least some snow in the gullies.
At the Shoulder, which is really a pass between Woolley and Mt. Englehard, we met a group of eight climbers on their way out. They had stayed in the hut the night before and had just climbed the snow gully route on Mt. Woolley. They were headed back to the highway and informed us that the hut was empty. Our original plans of continuing on beyond the hut to the high bivy suffered their first blow. The final blow came after we stumbled down the talus on the opposite side and slogged across the glacier to the hut. Here a vicious case of Hut Lassitude struck down all four of us. It had taken six hours and over 4000 feet of climbing to reach the hut, and I didn’t want to carry these heavy loads any further. I proposed a one-day ascent from the hut, going as light as possible and taking advantage of nearly 18 hours of daylight. It was accepted and we lounged and slept some more. Then we ate and ate and drank in an effort to store enough fuel in our bodies for the long push the next day.
The alarm went off at 3:15 and we moved about slowly. I stayed in my bag for another fifteen minutes, as I wasn’t going to cook anything for breakfast. I just nibbled down two Pop-tarts while lying in my bunk. The previous evening the Loobster and I scoped the approach from the hut. The hut is perched on a rib of rock next to a mountain called Little Alberta. From here we had to drop down 700 vertical feet, cross the rock-strewn glacier and then start up Mt. Alberta. The previous night the Loobster and I scoped the best way to get down off the ridge upon which the hut is perched. We could have dropped down on rock slabs directly from the hut, but that would have deposited us on an ice patch of the glacier and would have involved lots of talus walking. We had decided that it was easier to head out onto the glacier immediately from the hut as the going on the snow was so easy on our bodies, at least while headed downhill, and the footing would be easier in the dark. This involved making a large semi-circle towards the Northeast Ridge of Alberta, staying on snow as much as possible.
We weaved through some crevasses, unroped, and down onto some rock slabs. We connected up snowfields whenever possible, but hiked a lot on a glacier of pure ice that was covered in a thin layer of rocks. Whenever we were careless and placed a boot on the ice itself, we slipped immediately. Making a beeline for the far left side of the East Face, we trudged up an increasingly steep snowfield. Without crampons and kicking very marginal steps, things soon got pretty dicey and I traversed back down to the talus below the snow.
Alberta is made up horizontal stratums of cliff bands interspersed with steep, loose talus slopes. We needed to get through two or three bands before we traversed far back to the right to start the roped climbing. How to do this wasn’t obvious and no guidebook or even trip report described it very well. Perhaps it is just too difficult to describe. We passed through the first cliff band via 3rd/4th class scrambling just left of the snow slope. Once through that a giant cliff loomed above us. We had assumed from the photos marking the route that we had to traverse all the way to the left skyline and probably go around the corner onto the southern exposure where we’d find a passage through this cliff.
We traversed just a bit, around the prow of the cliff and were daunted with the long talus slope and big snowfield leading way up and left. We knew our route was up and right from our location and the prospect of going so far left did not excite me. I wanted to climb up the mountain more directly. I told the others to wait a second while I scrambled up a diagonal ramp and back around the corner to the right. I climbed up a couple hundred feet and it looked like the route would go. I called down for the others to follow. I certainly hoped I hadn’t made a mistake. If we got cliffed out an hour above us, we’d have seriously impacted our chances of success.
We made continuous progress up the cliff band without having to rope up. Short, talus sections broke short, steep sections. Here the rock was layered in two to three inch plates and we all became very adept at the pinch move. We’d pinch a layer above us and step up onto the flat edges. It was fun scrambling and we gained height rapidly, eventually coming to a low 5th class chimney adjacent to a snowy couloir. We climbed up, still unroped, and crossed the top of the couloir via more steep climbing. We found a huge, elaborate rappel anchor here consisting of a section of climbing rope leading from the rappel ring fifty feet up the slope to a shiny new bolt, the only bolt we saw on the mountain. Above here was one of the only cairns on the route. Apparently climbers knock down any cairns on this route as they descend. Maybe it is part of the same brotherhood that restricts any useful information about the lower section from escaping to the general public.
We were now on the talus ledge system below the major cliff band leading to the summit ridge. This cliff band is over a thousand feet tall – taller than the popular Yamnuska cliff near Canmore. This was the meat of the route, but finding the right location to start up was difficult. The guidebooks told us to look for three bulbous buttresses of gray limestone that resemble elephant asses, complete with tails. Finding three of these things takes the creativity of interpreting Rorschach ink blots. We found one elephant’s ass and, yes, it did have a tail on it, but it took some imagination. The other two couldn’t be found by us. My son Daniel can see all sorts of things in the cloud formations, and I’m sure he could have recognized a couple more asses up here.
Traversing the ledge here was not trivial. The talus is very steep and very loose. There is also quite a bit of snow up here that needs to be avoided and all of this is above a thousand-foot cliff. We traversed looking for what we thought was another key landmark: the high bivy spot. We never found that either. Eventually, I climbed straight up the steep, loose slope and then up 65-degree, soft snow. This was a bit dicey and I slipped down a couple of times. I was headed for a fixed anchor at the base of the cliff band and as soon as I got there, I clipped in and geared up. I called down to the others to don their harnesses and I’d throw down a rope from my perch.
Soon the Loobster had joined me and put me on belay. We were planning on climbing as two teams of two. I’d pair with the Loobster. I was below a weakness in the wall and quite probably the start of our route, but I was troubled by not seeing any rappel anchors above me. The description said that the correct gully to climb would have rappel anchors at regular intervals. Since we were climbing up the easiest route to the summit, we’d also be descending the exact same path. As it turns out that wasn’t completely true. We’d retrace our steps exactly except for the first three pitches of the route and this caused us some consternation.
Not sure that I was in the right spot, I traversed a very steep snowfield to the right and then further right on steep, loose ground, trying to see what was around the corner. I came face to face with a dead vertical wall of limestone and knew no route existed up that precipice. I retreated back to the gully above our belay and started up it. I could get in a piece just before leaving the snow behind and climbing up onto steep limestone. The climbing demanded care for it was steep, loose rock with long runouts between gear placements. Just before I ran out of rope (each team climbed on a 9mm 50-meter rope), I got to a ledge with some cracks for an anchor. I brought up the Loobster. The Trashman led up, closely following the Loobster, and pointed out a six-foot arch above us on the left. We all thought, “What a prominent feature. If this is the correct start, that should at least be mentioned somewhere in print, yet it is not.” The Trashman noticed some hanging tat on the left, so on the second pitch I made a 60-foot, unprotected traverse across a rounded buttress and into the adjacent gully. I didn’t start up this gully originally since it was a waterfall at the base of the cliff band. Up higher, I could step over it and then up into a corner system with another crack for a belay anchor.
While the Loobster followed the second pitch, the Trashman climbed directly above our first belay. He reached the same ledge upon which I belayed, though much further to the right. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any anchors that would even hold body weight. As he traversed along the ledge looking for gear he rained serious rockfall down upon Homie. Thankfully, Homie could duck out of the way behind a steep wall. Finally, with purely decorative anchors but using a hopefully secure stance on the large ledge, the Trashman yelled down, “Okay, you’re on belay, but don’t fall. Ha, ha, ha.”
At the base of the roped climbing, the Trashman had said to Homie, “I don’t know if I want to lead every pitch,” and then he appended his characteristic laugh: “Ha, ha, ha” that he does when he is nervous or scared. If you didn’t know him better, you’d guess he was kidding. Homie, not nearly the technical rock climber that the Trashman is, wondered, “Then what am I doing roped to you?” Later Homie would say that he’d have been fine leading any pitch on the route, although not as quickly and efficiently as the Trashman. He’s obviously getting much more comfortable leading rock in the mountains. Homie did in fact lead a few of the easier pitches up the gully.
While I led a short, steep pitch up to the top of the prow, the Trashman traversed over to join our route. We were all pretty concerned about the lack of rappel anchors and figured we shouldn’t go up higher without confirmation we were on route. We could still get down, though, by leaving our own gear and I was reluctant to retreat.
The climbing on the third pitch was 5.6/7 and full, steep stuff. I was elated to find ten slings wrapped around the top of the pillar and equipped with a rappel ring. Homie remembered something about the rappel route not exactly following the climbing route for the lower section and our confidence grew. I followed my nose for the next four or five pitches and always found a rappel anchor from which to belay. We were definitely on route.
Rockfall on the route was an ever-present issue. We tried to minimize it, of course. I climbed as delicately as possible. I’d be in front the entire time, so I was relatively safe from rockfall, but I was acutely aware of my responsibility to the others. Another frequent and unsettling occurrence was the regular serac falls from the glacier on the North Face of North Twin. This sounded exactly like thunder whenever it occurred and I’d anxiously scan the skies for signs of a storm before realizing what it was. The view over to North Twin was staggering. What a face!
As I neared the crest of the ridge, I knew we had to start traversing to the right. We needed to cross the snow gully that led to the notch in the ridge. To this end, I led out to the right across 4th class terrain and then up to another anchor. The next pitch would be the crux of the route for me. I traversed over and looked into the couloir. It appeared to be ice and not snow. I debated about crossing right there, but decided to head up the rock a bit further. Not a minute later, the couloir was swept with tremendous rockfall. By a lucky decision, I had narrowly avoided serious injury or death. I looked down at the belay where the Loobster and Homie were watching me carefully. Homie said, “Good decision, dude.”
I climbed up a bit higher and placed two solid pieces of gear on the near side of the couloir. I then climbed down into it and found that I was right about it being ice. I tried to kick a step and my boot just bounced off without even making a dent. I could have retreated and put on my crampons, but then everyone would have to do the same. The couloir wasn’t that wide. If I could just chop some steps across it, everyone would be able to pass it quickly. I pulled out my axe and got to work.
Chopping furiously between furtive glances up the couloir, I raced against the next volley of rockfall. I was nervous and knew I was directly in the line of fire. I couldn’t linger, but I didn’t want to fall either. I made the steps big enough so that I was secure. I climbed across and up, heading for a steep weakness in the far wall. I chopped probably fifteen steps before I was across. Making the transition to rock climbing was a bit tricky and I only managed to place one small nut, which would eventually be pulled out because of the pull of the rope. After only twenty feet of exciting climbing, I emerged onto a nice ledge with yet another rappel anchor. I was so relieved.
The others followed easily, using my steps. I led one more long pitch and we had gained the summit ridge. We simul-climbed the entire ridge, most of which was pretty easy, but fabulously exposed. There was quite a bit of snow on the ridge and it was bottomless for one brief twenty foot section where I was reduced to swimming up it. There were occasional steep steps, loose slopes, and even walking along a rib of snow a foot wide with drops of 3000 feet on both sides. On this latter section, I took baby steps.
Once we had gained the ridge, we had views of even more mountains, the most striking being the view of Mt. Columbia. This incredible mountain rises up from the river valley on one side and the Columbia Icefield on the other side. The north ridge of that mountain pointed directly at us and I knew this to be a beautiful and serious route, though rated only 5.7 WI 3. I eyed the seemingly desperate traverse across the northwest face to the start of this route and shuddered.
It seemed forever until we finally got to the Step in the ridge. Here it was 25 meters down a 70-degree rock and ice slope. Typically a rope is left fixed here to facilitate return. We all dug in the snow for ten minutes in search of first a fixed anchor and then any solid cracks at all. We eventually rigged something up from two #2 Camalots, an Alien twenty feet away, and a sling. We fixed one of our ropes and I was the first one down, rappelling to the notch and then keeping myself on rappel, as a belay, while I crossed the notch and gained solid ground on the far side.
Once we were all across, we all roped together with our remaining rope and simul-climbed to the summit. We made the top in 10h40m. I was a bit concerned about running out of daylight before we found our way down the intricate descent. I was not prepared to spend the night out and desperately wanted to make it back to the hut. Once off the technical ground, it would be relatively easy to march across the talus and up the glacier. We only stayed 15 or 20 minutes on top before starting our descent. While up there we ate, rested and took some summit photos. The summit register consisted of a few small film canisters and from a quick glance at the register and the conditions on the route, we figured we had made the first ascent of the year. We also found a Japanese parasol and posed with it. What a striking contrast to this stark and dangerous place.
We traversed back to the Step and I batmanned up the line, using a prussik to protect myself. Once on top, I belayed the others up. Here we divided back into two roped teams for the tedious, but spectacular ridge traverse. We did one single-rope rappel down to a ledge. Here the anchor consisted of an old pin and a fixed hex. I put in a #2 Camalot as a back-up and waited for the others.
Time was of the essence if we were to make it down through the technical portions before it got dark. Leagues of climbers have been benighted on this descent and forced to bivy. I wasn’t prepared for that and was determined not to be one of them. Unfortunately, rappelling with four climbers is a slow process. I was anxious and chastised the Loobster and Homie for moving slowly. Homie bit back hard, going on a bit of a tirade. I remained mute and let him play it out. He argued correctly that he wasn’t moving slowly at all, but doing the necessary tasks that had to be done: re-racking the gear and giving it to Trashy in order to back-up the anchors and coiling our second rope for this first single-rope rappel. I was overly anxious and failed to think of this. Thankfully we settled down after this brief incident and continued our descent.
I leaned back on the rappel anchor, heard a “ping”, and was immediately dropped two feet. The Loobster was already grabbing at me, but I wasn’t falling any further. “What happened?” I asked. “The pin pulled!” said the Loobster. Thank goodness for backups. We ended up leaving behind a new sling at this anchor. The hex seemed good and three of us tested it. The Loobster was the last one down and he pulled the backup Camalot before coming down.
We continued down, reinforcing rappel anchors as we saw fit. We left a couple of new slings and even one big stopper. We didn’t want to take any chances of an anchor pulling. At one station we used seven or eight slings to backup the existing anchor for the first three down. The last guy down, Loobster once again, pulled the backup and retrieved all the slings. I was usually the first man down, searching for the next anchor and getting the ropes to fall. Trashy was our anchor inspector and reinforcer. Homie specialized in pulling the ropes and they never got stuck, even on the diagonal, couloir rappel. We all feared the prospect of having to re-climb a pitch to retrieve a rope.
One rap anchor had attached
to it a 20’ section of cord, clearly intended to keep the ropes from catching
on, and pulling off a large pile of rubble just under the main anchor. However this cord was sun bleached and we didn’t
use it. Instead the Trashman tried to
stabilize the rubble, since everyone was above he simply shoved the loosest
rocks off. These bounded violently down
the gully with tremendous force and noise. It was a sobering demonstration of
how dangerous rockfall was in this gully.
Fortunately our ropes did not snag the remaining rubble while pulling.
On two of the rappels, I
went clear to the end of the rope and then downclimbed (4th class
terrain) to the next anchor. I could have used an anchor much further up the
mountain, but it would have meant more rappels and I thought the downclimbing
was reasonable. No one complained and everyone was solid.
We made it back down to the talus and then reversed our path down the mountain. We did a single-rope rappel at the elaborate couloir anchor at the top of the next rock band and then we did a final double-rope rappel at the bottom of the penultimate rock band. On this last rappel, I only clipped one of the rope lines into my device. Thankfully, Trashy noticed this mistake and yelled out, “Stop!” before I could weight the anchor. We then picked our way through the last rock band and down talus to the rock-strewn glacier. It got dark then and we trudged the last 45 minutes back up to the hut, arriving at 11:15 p.m. after just over 19 hours on the move.
We got water and cooked up a bunch of noodles to eat, not getting to bed until 12:30 a.m. Despite the late night, I was up at 7:30 the next morning and heading over to greet our neighbors. Another party had arrived while we were climbing on Monday but had slept in their tent instead of the hut because they knew we’d be arriving late and would disturb their sleep. They were headed for the same route, and I gave them all the beta I could remember. Today they were just headed for the high bivy so they wouldn’t summit, if at all, until their third day out. I think this is a more typical ascent. I was a bit concerned that they only had one 60-meter lead rope and a 30-meter line to fix at the Step. That meant they could only do 30-meter rappels on the way down. One of them said to me, “I just figured it would be set up for 25-meter raps.” What did this joker think he was heading for? A sport climb? Supposedly they were experienced and we found out later that both times made the top and got back down.
We lounged around the entire morning. The weather was absolutely perfect, better than our summit day. We laid everything out to dry and there was hardly a breath of wind. This time here was maybe the best of the trip. The scary climb was over and successful, we were in the midst of awesome, beautiful, tremendous mountains, but with no agenda to go anyplace scary. We just enjoyed the views, the weather, and the company. I think we also dreaded the hike out and wanted to put it off as long as possible.
By 1 p.m. we were starting across the glacier, heading for the highway and, for Trashy and Loobster, some cold beers. We pounded up to Woolley Shoulder, only 45 minutes into the hike, and took an extended break. Apparently we still had some trouble getting motivated. Loobster had been dreading the descent but it went nicely and easily by keeping on our mountain boots and doing an extensive amount of scree surfing. This was non-trivial scree surfing because so many of the blocks were pretty large – up to basketball size and you had about twenty or thirty feet of scree moving around you. I had to be very careful so that nothing rolled up onto my ankles. We also stuck to the gullies down below and took advantage of any snow we could find. Still, it was long and arduous and I was glad to finally reach the RV. We took about 4.5 hours to hike out.