Banff National Park

I took a few months off in the summer of 2009 and spent many good days with my family and extended family. Towards the end of the summer I realized that my time off was coming to an end and I should take a week to climb some peaks and spend some time alone to ponder life and my future.

There are a few mountains that having been hanging around on my 'to-do' list ever since I first laid eyes on them or read someone else's trip report on ascending them. Some are really obvious like Mount Columbia or Mount Vaux, while others have just triggered something in me that makes me really want to stand on their summit.

On Good Friday, April 22, 2011 I took my brother in law, Mike up his very first Rockies peak. He chose to attempt his first peak on alpine touring gear, which I thought was very admirable considering you can't really find a more physically challenging way to climb a mountain than with huge skis and boots attached to your feet! :-)

What a fantastic day in the hills! That about sums up my Mount Olive (and St. Nicholas) outing. After spending a fun but bone chilling day out on the Wapta 3 weekends ago in our Mount Gordon trip, this was just a great way to see the other side to ski mountaineering.

Finding myself with a free weekend in the summer is a very rare occurrence, so when it happened on the weekend of August 7, 8 and 9 I arranged a 3 peak extravaganza! The first summit would be a solo effort so I chose something without a lot of difficulties and a short approach, Observation Peak.

My brother, Rod, decided that he needed some exercise this fall so he flew down from Winnipeg for some peak bagging fun on Thursday September 13 2007. After looking at the weather forecast I decided that we should try something with a fabulous view. We settled on Nigel Peak with an option of also doing Mount Wilcox if we had the energy.

After finding a summit register on top of Hooge Peak we were re-energized to find another on Monchy. In the words of the original ascent party;

These two summits are really two points on one long ridge and should not be considered two separate summits. [Journal reference CAJ 32-16]

On Wednesday, September 17 2008 the crazy Pol (Raf K) and I decided that the beautiful weather had to be taken advantage of. We wanted two things. Scenery and scenery. We got them both.

On Saturday, July 22 2006 Wietse and I scrambled up Little Hector and Mount Andromache along the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park.