Ice climbing again?? Shocking!

The two weeks since my Tdot visit have been a flurry of activity. Work is proving to be amazing, I'm loving what I do and I love my coworkers even more...

All week I spend working hard (I actually find myself looking forward to going into work). However, its the weekends that I love the most, I giv'er hard during the week knowing that I will be rewarded by SIC climbing in the mountains come Saturday morning.

Friday our office shut down at 2:30 - we had a gift exchange thing at our favorite bar... followed by copious amounts of drinking all graciously paid for by the boss-man (thanks Dave!). I ended up leaving there around 7, I had a party I was invited to at 8 so I figured I could pass out for a wee bit... hahaha - next thing I know its 10:30 (ooops looks like I missed the party). My coworker Julie called me and convinced me to join her at a bar downtown... it doesn't take much to get me out to the bar these days. Boozin with Julie was rad - its funny how you see someone at work and then you see em out in non-work functions and they are SO different. I see Julie and I having alot of fun working together.

Anyways - next thing I know its 2am and I had to wake up at 5:30AM to go ice climbing with Grant so I bowed out and wished Jules a rockin night.

BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZ - damn waking up at 5:30 sucked... I met Grant in the cold darkness and off we went to Kananaskis (the closest mountains to Calgary). After some putz-ing around we decided to do Kidd Falls (WI 4) a tremendous alpine ice climb. For those of you that don't know an alpine ice climb is one that usually requires a LONG hike uphill in snow to get to.








Leaving the car I glanced down at my watch it read -14 degrees, which was chilly but really not so bad - I was happy to have my down jacket in my pack.

After 2 hours of hiking up the mountain we arrived at the base of the climb. Something was weird though - it was warm - bloody warm. I stripped layer after layer, next thing I know I was topless!! Topless high up on a mountain looking at a rad 250-foot piece of ice towering above us!


I led up the first long pitch, the sun had softened up the ice, it was so easy to get my tools into the ice - however placing protection proved to be a challenge. I had to chop away so much sunbaked ice to place my screws - basically we use these 17cm hollow screws as our protection... had I fallen, in theory the screws should of stopped me, the reality was the ice was so damn soft that most of my screws would of pulled if I had fallen... I felt solid though throughout the entire climb. I found myself in a trance-like mood... focusing on all that had to be done without really worrying too much about the dangerous part.



120 feet later I arrived at a rad ledge where I clipped into some bolts and screamed a big wooohooo! This was probably my most enjoyable day of ice climbing yet. I quickly took my shirt off once again and brought Grant up. This is where things went from warm and beach-like to freaking cold.



The sun dipped behind the mountain and the temp went from topless to damn cold – of course all the nice warm clothes we brought with us was down on the ground and we still had another 100+ feet of climbing to go - Brrrrrrrr. I sent Grant off to lead this pitch, by the time I joined him at the top both the ropes were frozen solid, in fact everything that was wet before (which was pretty much everything) had now turned to a ice cube. I rappelled down the frozen ropes and once on the ground ran for my thermos full of piping hot tea…

We hiked down the mountain – getting lost in the process, a few hours later we ended up at the car – tired, cold but happy as hell.