Ethan is a really cool guy. Very chill and keen to give us the best experience possible without frightening or pushing us too far… but just far enough to get the most out of the Rocky’s.
We met in gravel carpark, signed our lives away, chatted about safety, got some climbing gear ready and then head up the trail to the start of the Via Ferrata route.
The first section was intentionally blank and hard. Basically a 30m layback using the cable and friction of your boots on the rock. It took a lot of upper body strength to muscle up thru it but then the rungs started and we got into the stride of it.
Via Ferrata it’s such a great way to get high into the cliffs with minimal gear. You just clip the metal cable and walk your way up the rungs and across the rock. I suspect whoever set these rungs in place was a little shorter than me tho. I did find myself gripping at chest height a lot which was fatiguing my arms.
Ethan was very knowledgeable about the rock types and history of it’s formation. The whole way up we were discussing the geology, why the water is so blue (powdered limestone suspended in the water) and pointing out fossilised coral sticking out of the rock face. He described climbing past the layers of rock like travelling in time, which makes so much sense. Each time you pass a change in the layers of rock, like a dark vein or a red brown vein, that is a huge 1000 year event like a huge volcano explosion or sea acidity change or rapid rise or fall in global temperatures. The environment shifted so quickly that a new material was laid down to later get compressed into rock. It’s hard to think over that length of time, but climbing over the layers you’re passing thousands of years in each step which is quite incredible.
After a while of steady climbing, we reached a downward trending traverse, which i really did not enjoy. This was too bunched up for me to be comfortable and was travelling the wrong way on the rockface. I want to be going upwards. This was where we rested for a while, tentatively hanging from our gear for a photo before the overhanging and strenuous section above.
And it was strenuous. Climbing with a bag pulling you back, and overhanging at a decent angle really put some weight into my arms. Weight I’m not used to and not being as fit as I used to be really showed. Aimi flew up, not resting once on the gear at all. I rested to get my strength back in sections. But we got up it and it was really enjoyable. Especially climbing on the petrified corals.
At the top we found a picnic bench. This was brought up here on foot by the guts who built the via ferrata. Its not something you can get to without hiking up the incredibly steep climbers trail or doing the via Ferrata. It’s just here for us and was very welcome. The perfect spot for some lightly squashed sandwiches, trail mix and the rest of our water while we enjoyed the view.
The view is what I do these crazy things for. When I can get somewhere so remote and otherwise so inaccessible that almost no other people have been there, that’s amazing. And to top it all off with a view that fills your entire width of vision, with nothing between you and the view so it looks like a huge painting, it’s just so special to be able to access places like this.
Chatting with Ethan, he’s looking to establish new routes on the mountains in the area. The huge buttress we climbed must be 2km long and only has 5 climbs on it. If this were the UK there would be hundreds of climbs on there. But here there is so much rock, new routes are available to anyone who wants to do one.
That’s a bit much for us, but tomorrow we might be doing some multipitch climbing. First tho, we need to get our RV sorted. A low pressure warning light came on for one of the back tyres. Unfortunately at the nearest petrol station the compressor hose cannot reach the tyre valve and so we are stuck with an under inflated tyre.
Borrowing the motel phoneline we called the rental hotline who are tried to find somewhere for us to take it to be fixed. Meanwhile we had a lovely dinner out at The Crossing resort restaurant. If there is one thing Americans and Canadians know how to do, its table service. All the servers were really attentive, helpful and prompt. There was one kid who was really funny and chatty who looked a little like Sideshow Bob with big frizzy hair. Him, combined with a canadian couple in their 70’s were really funny.
Eventually they agreed we could drive it slowly to Jasper to get it fixed so that’s what we will do tomorrow.
During the afternoon Aimi had gotten increasingly worse for wear. She was nursing a cold 6 for the last couple days but after the exertion of the via ferrata it has pushed her over the edge and now her cough was really bad. We therefore decided not to do the second day of climbing, which was a shame, but a long mountain day when ill would have been a terrible idea. Getting a message to Ethan he very kindly stopped in on his way home to deliver us some stickers. It was really nice to see him again as he had been a great guide and we were sorry not to be doing more tomorrow.
