Jen and I have been trying to get to the Canadian Rockies all summer. We packed a bag of alpine gear at the beginning of the trip that has been doing nothing but taking up space, just because of the chance at some alpine ice when we got up here. We tried to drive over from Squamish a month ago, but fires in Revelstoke turned us around. Now, we have finally made it up from the south. And, for the first few days, there was no smoke.
We climbed a couple days on limestone around Canmore and visited with a few friends before heading up the Icefields Parkway to Mt Athabasca. This was the site of Jen’s first alpine climb ever back in 2013, and it seemed fitting to do another route on the peak ten years later. But, when we got there we found the entire face (and all the faces around it) to be melted out piles of rubble. A while later our friend Raph confirmed that summer alpine ice in the Rockies is a thing of the past. I guess I missed the memo.
As we drove back to the south, the world got more smokey until we were in the thick of it. We held off for one last day in Canmore to get in a few additional pitches before giving up and driving west in hopes that we could make it back to Squamish before the highways were closed. It looks like our worries were confirmed, since only a few hours after we drove through Kelowna the highway was closed behind us due to the forest fires. While we were moderately inconvenienced, a lot of people lost their homes and everything in them. To say we felt lucky in this moment was a huge understatement.
While we didn’t get to do very much in the Rockies, we did get to see some pretty incredible landscapes, some good friends, a few bears, and escape back to Squamish in one piece. We’re happy to be back on the coast, and plan to make the most of it.
