I arrived in Edmonton and began my drive to the Jasper National park. It was supposed to be a 4 hour drive to my skidoo and a 6 hour drive to my lodge. Thanks to global warming (sarcasm…on the west coast, the east coast had record cold weather and loads of snow!!), there was not enough snow to skidoo. I drove directly to the lodge. It was a 7 hour drive in total. The road was VERY bumpy thanks to truckers and construction workers. This is a national park, but they decided to run a oil pipeline straight through the park! It was disgusting. The side of the road was dug up and really demolished.
Back to my adventure, enough of my rant. After driving up a few thousand feet up a muddy mountain, I arrived at my lodge. Wow. It was amazing, just perfect for me! It even had a stockpile of wood outside!
After a great night, I slept in. I couldn’t help it. I was too comfortable at that lodge and I could sleep next to that woodstove all day! However, I got my butt out of bed and started my climb. I never made it to the top (~12000ft), but I did get to around 10,059ft (verified by gps). The glacier was too soft and I did slip a few times. One of the slips really hurt my wrist and that just took too much of my energy to keep going. The climb was not too hard, I never had any straight climbs or inverted angles, it was just a wall of ice. My normal camera was out of service, luckily I got a great shot from my cellphone camera.
Will I go again? HELL YES. When? I have no idea. Will I persue a higher peak? Probably not. I enjoyed this type of climb and will seek out other climbs like it. Mt Rainier, here I come again!
