On Saturday, October 8, Ian Hunt and I summited the North Summit of Mt. Victoria via the North Victoria/Collier Peak Col and North East Ridge. Fantastic day! I was getting very worried I would not get an 11,000’er in 2011, so this late season summit was a great gift. Of the 25 11,000 foot summits I have reached, only North Victoria and Mt. Assiniboine were not completed on my first attempt.
North Vic took me three attempts, third time the charm I guess (hopefully Assiniboine will only be 2 attempts ;-). I was very happy to reach this cool summit with my old time climber partner Ian. Although we haven’t done much the last few years, Ian was one of my mentors in my early years of alpine and water fall ice climbing; great to be out with the old guy again.
We left the Lake Louise parking lot at 6:30am, we were roped up and gaining the lower glacier at 9:30am and taking a rest at the schrund at 11:30am. The upper glacier, most of the slopes below the col, and much of the North East Ridge had knee deep powder, so trail breaking was very tough. There were isolated pockets of thin top layer wind slab, but the majority of the recent snow was very well bonded to the lower September and summer snow pack.
We gained the Collier/North Vic col by 1:30pm. Much later than we hoped, but we had a long break, discussed conditions and energy levels and then decided to give’er. We topped out on North Vic about 3:15pm. Occasional wind gusts pelted us with biting spindrift, but mostly conditions were quite nice. Short stay, and then we heading down. Nice to have buckets for the way down. We were off the glacier at 6pm.
Quick romp back to the parking lot; about 13.5 hours car to car. I think very good time concerning the huge amount of trail breaking.
Lovely, lovely day.
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