Banff. This trip is finally coming to fruition. Sara and I met Adam and Kristen in Columbus with the plan to fly from there to Toronto, and on to Calgary. Starting off with airport beers always tees you up for success, so that's just what we did at Eddie George's bar and grill. We arrived into Calgary after 1 in the morning, waited for our bigs, picked up our rental car, then took off towards Harvie Heights just outside of Banff. Since it was May we were still just early for peak season, and the snow was coming down ever so slightly. Just before 3 am we pulled off the highway, and a moose walked right behind our car as we came to a stop, making our Nissan crossover feel more minuscule then ever before.
Pulling into the complex where we had our AirBnB booked, I found the condo and went up to the door. To my surprise it was missing the lockbox I was expecting to be there with the key inside. I tried giving a call to the host, but at 3 am they didn't immediately pickup (to no surprise). As I'm struggling to figure out what I'm doing wrong, he calls back and lets me know the dates I booked started this coming evening, not the night in which we landed. With the flight coming in after midnight I failed to book our reservation for the appropriate nights. Fuuuuuuuuck.
While we're sitting with 4 people stuffed in the rental car and my mind drifting towards thoughts of us sleeping there, I ask "Is there any way you'd be able to help us out sir?". That pause was the longest I can remember in a while. A sigh is followed by "let me see what I can do". It turns out he had another unit in the same complex where someone had checked out earlier that day. We hopped on that immediately, expressed our thanks, and crashed.
With the snow continuing to fall throughout the night and the temperature being sub optimal for climbing, we enjoyed brunch in Banff and then hiked around Lake Louise, only slight sad the tea house and everything else in the area remained boarded up.
The only actual purpose for this longer intro was to give you enough time to forget JB and Alex drove from Columbus (again, Potrero style) and met us in Harvie Heights. With the whole crew present and at the condo, we scoped out a couple routes in Canmore to kick off our Banff climbing experience, from here on out known as the BCE.
To initiate our BCE, Sara, Kristen and I start up Sharknado whilst JB, Adam, and Alex start up Hot Fuzz on the other side of the roof. These reside within the Canmore area at Whiteman's Pond, with a beautiful view looking out over Ha Ling Peak.
With our fingers only slightly bloody and Kristen and Adam getting used to their first multi-pitch exposure we had a few brews in Banff and planned for the next day. Easy climbing, tall, close proximity to where we're staying: enter Rundlehorn (affectionately known as Grundlehorn by some of the group).
The route is a low angle 11 pitch 5.5, it ticks all the boxes so we get going. We showed up to a party on the first pitch, but no one else was waiting so we racked up while they progressed.
We ended up letting the group get near the top of the second before leading up, as this would be good terrain for us to try linking pitches. The climbing is pretty easy (enough to the point where two people were soloing the route on our way up, and making it look pretty casual) and linking pitches allowed us to play the hurry up and wait game. We'd let the group in front of us climb 2 pitches, we'd link those two and wait for the them to progress the next two. After the initial 4 or 5 pitches you pull over a slight "headwall" and have more vertical climbing up to the top of the route.
JB and Alex were on their way up as we were wrapping down, so we all managed to squeeze together for a photo on top of pitch 8. From there we slowly rapped down, as it goes with 4 people which gave JB and Alex the opportunity to simul-rap and get to the ground pretty much at the same time we did.
After Sharknado and Rundlehorn, Sara had come to the conclusion she was pretty set on Canada climbing, so she dropped us off across the Bow River and while we took the approach up to Aftonroe she hiked around the area scoping out the wildlife. When we got up to the wall, there was a group near the top of the first pitch and another waiting to get started. So we established our place in line and waited for everyone to move on. In Potrero we never had to deal with more than one other party on the wall, but I guess that's what we get for being late to the game. Aftonroe is a 9 pitch 5.7, but with parties on nearly every pitch the way up and down, we ended up bailing after 7 pitches just because there was no way for us to move any quicker.
I had a seen a photo looking up the face of Achilles Spire, which was the original spark that brought this trip together. Although we didn't have the opportunity to get on the spire while we were there, it'll remain in the "to do" list for the future.
Go Packers.