Bow Falls

Route: Bow Falls - 60m, IV, WI3-4
Location: Icefields Parkway
Fun Factor: 5 out of 5. The full adventure - skiing, climbing, avalanche terrain, cornices, wild weather. Bring your mountain head.

We skied up to the route, over Bow Lake, in perfect conditions. A slight breeze from the South West, and clear sunny skies. Bow Falls is the wide, fat flow on the left hand side of the cirque


The access slopes looked a little suspect - hard wind slabs. We skirted around the worst of them, and belayed across the rest.


Half way up the route, the wind picked up from the West, sending torrents of snow off the Wapta Icefield down on top of us. I climbed the last 5 metres by feel, as I couldn't see anything with the spindrift driving into my face. Part of the cornice to our right collapsed as Dan climbed up, sending tonnes of ice and snow down. The mountains put on a good show for us that day.


We rapped the route in gale force winds, shivering uncontrollably and covered in frozen snow. It was great fun!!!

The Professor Falls

Route: The Professor Falls - 280m, III, WI4
Location: Mount Rundle, Banff National Park
Fun Factor: 5 out of 5
Photos: Dan

The route tumbles down for 5 pitches:



It's a 7.5km walk from the parking lot, so a mountain bike with slick tyres and no brakes makes things much quicker:


The ice is fat, blue and never ending - 5 pitches of awesome:)

The Canadian Rockies Weight Loss Program

I weighed myself just before coming over here in February - a whopping 74kg (well, heavy for me anyway). After 8 days climbing ice and 4 days back-country skiing and eating as much food as possibly, I'm down to 70kg.

Could freezing your ass off and running around the mountains be the "next thing" in weight loss programs? Ha Ha Ha!!!


Brent on pitch 1 of Nemesis. We walked, swam and crawled up snow for 3 hours on Wednesday, sometimes chest deep, to get to the base of this mega-route:


The avalanche hazard was listed as "Moderate" last Thursday, but we suspected otherwise after the 30cm of new snow sheared off this creek bed when we skied up to it: