I have debated the difference between fashion and style and I always remember what I read in Action Now! magazine back in the eighties: “don’t be stylish, be the style”. Anyway, this post is about doing a mountain in a style that is worth repeating and I think we came close to doing that this past weekend.

Mount Columbia May 2013

In 2008 we climbed Mount Columbia during the full moon of May (16 – 17). We left the parking lot when the thermometer told us it was freezing and the moon was up: about 10:30 pm. We planned to move at night, with the light of the moon and when it was cold. We surmised that by moving at night the the travel would be fast and cool, as opposed to travel during the day when the snow would be sloppy (or isothermic) and the heat and sun unbearable. If you “bivied” and recovered during the heat of the day you would need a lot less sleeping gear and you could melt warm snow, stretching fuel. Anyway we wound up at the base of Columbia at 5 am. We carried a light megamid, but I was talked out of my XGK for some kind of cartridge pocket rocket. Well this was not the right way to go. We never used the tent or sleeping bags/pads and it took us three hours to barely melt a litre of water each. And it was starting to get hot again. We resumed moving again at 8 am and dropped our skis below the bergschrund soon after. We topped out around noon and plunged step back to our skis, taking another two hours. We started back to the car and made it in about 25 hours total from when we started the night before.

This was not good style. We were severely spent and it took a while to fully recover. I don’t like to get that dehydrated and deep-drawn fatigued. I don’t think it’s that good for you. We also didn’t ski the line from the summit. I pledged a would go back one day when the time was right and ski it. We did that this past weekend, the 4th and 5th of may.

This time we woke from the upper parking lot where Brewster maintains a ghetto for their monstrosity snow machines that pollute the place like no tomorrow. Welcome to the national park. (At least no one can buy a chopper ride to any of this, but the logging roads you can see from the summit up the Bush arm are disturbing.) Anyway, we woke at 4 am and — like I told the guys that cleaned the monstrosities I would — I drove back down to the lower parking lot (absolutely full that Friday night) and locked the gate (cheers guys). With the packs and skis at the ghetto I walked back up the road in my ski boots and we left at about 5:45 am. I always try for a full moon but this time our window came during a waning crescent that rose at almost 4 am. Not going to be much help.

The Athabasca glacier is as full as I can ever remember and we made good time to our bivy just above the trench. I tried to build a snow shelter like I was taught during my Outdoor Pursuits days, but the snow was not really dense enough, so we open bivied in a hole. The hardest part of this was trying to stay out of the sun. It’s so strange how quickly the days become too long.

The next morning we again woke at 4 am and were moving by the time the sun rose at 5:50. Travel was fast and we were at the bergschrund at about 8 am. We used crampons to boot up the east ridge, using the more dense snow that the party on Saturday ascended. (The only other group on Columbia that weekend and with all the cars in the parking lot I was astonished to see only them on the entire icefield the whole time we were out. Weather windows like this don’t just happen every day, so what is every one doing? Rock climbing, that’s what, and when it’s November they will want to ski. Will people ever learn?) We were on the summit at 11:30 and waited for the snow to soften. The ski back down was much faster than post holing and while the snow was not fantastic it was fully skiable. I estimated the slope angle to be close to 40 degrees at its steepest. This is a big slope and I found it quite exhilarating.
If we found patients with axillary, abdominal mass, to find the sildenafil 100mg tab primary lesion, we found kidney cancer. Just like other people, I was raised by order levitra Filipino parents with a mixture of culture and discipline. There are ED medications available such as Kamagra tablets or cheap soft cialis medicines can make you feel useless and ashamed. One can feel any of the side effects are not likely to occur if the anti-erectile dysfunction drug is taken according to your doctor’s recommendations to stay safe and well. pharmacy cialis

Blue Line: Ascent
Red Line: Descent

We were back at the bivy at around 2 pm. We used the rest of our fuel to fully rehydrate and recover so that we could get out before the sun set at a little after 9 pm. We started moving again around 4:30 pm and the slog across the ice cap was slow, but the sun was not so intense at this time. The descent down the Athabasca glacier was terrible with what looked like at least 30 people having skied it in the heat of the afternoon when it was about a large slurpee cup deep of soft corn. By the time we hit it, it was a re-frozed mess (why are all these people skiing the glacier, I think a Yam class was happening or something).

The guys that let us camp at the upper Brewster ghetto had just arrived when I did at about 7:30. They gave me a ride back to my van in the lower parking lot and I drove up to retrieve my partners and gear. This time it was about 37.5 hours car to car, but done in a style worth repeating.