Mt Assiniboine NE Ridge
Mount Assiniboine was a peak that my father frequently spoke of when I was a kid. We did the hike with him years ago, a beautiful park, iIt’s one of the crown jewels in the Canadian Rockies. The peak itself is iconic. I’d had this on my radar for a few years. Its tricky to arrange the heli schedule in, and I didn’t want to deal with the scree hike from the BC side or logistics of getting into the logging road.
I arrived in Canmore the day before, met up with my guide (who I’d skied with before great guy) the following morning and headed to the Mt Shark trailhead. There we checked in for the heli briefing and were off to the Assiniboine lodge. From here we hiked in 3 hours on the Mowser ‘highway’ a ledge system up to the hind hut, not to be taken lightly. We met a couple friendly ski patrollers at the hut (including a French couple from near Chamonix who got engaged on the summit). It’s a pretty standard alpine hut, gas stove, sink, and two levels of matts to sleep on. Was quite warm in the hut overnight, glad I only brought a 0 deg quilt.
We were up early for a 430 departure. I’m always quite slow in the mornings at altitude, but have some experience with this now so plowed along. A bit of distant smoke in the atmosphere made for quite a colorful, stunning sunrise below the red band. The bottom half of the mountain, both on ascent and descent, although not as steep/exposed is definitely the cruz for us. So much loose rock. The red band itself was fairly straightforward climbing in alpine boots. The grey band came next, quite exposed by this point. The rock higher up, as I had been promised by many who’d guided this peak, was good enough where you need it to be.
Once we approached the summit ridge the position and views are simply stunning. Looking across at the east face of the mountain with its cornices is quite a dramatic sight. We had a very relaxing break at the summit, waiting for the party behind us to congratulate them. You can basically see the entirety of the southern Rockies, as well as rogers pass and the bugaboos.
We did 4 rappels on the decent from the bolts, didn’t rap off any of the slings. The top half is certainly exposed on the decent, but quite manageable. On the bottom half the loose rock started to exhaust my legs. Luckily we had no time crunch as we had arrived in the best high pressure system of the summer. Also gave us fully dry conditions so the axe and crampons were left at the hut
We had scheduled a buffer day as to try and optimize our chances of bagging the summit. I didn’t have the energy for another alpine start the following day, so we had a 7ish departure for Sturdee. We got over the col and ascended the glacier. We got about two thirds of the way up and got crevassed out. Probably could have made it, but not great coverage and had to factor in late start and sun effect on the way down and made the decision to turn around. It was still fun to get the crampons on. We then headed over to Mt Storm for a relaxing afternoon. Enjoyed the time in the hut reading and checking out the log book from past climbers.
Some late arrivals at the hut that night, understandably so given they hiked in from Mt Shark trailhead. The following day we left at 7 again for the decent back down to Assiniboine Lodge. We were greeted by a lot of congratulatory remarks from the hikers. After a quick bite in Canmore, headed back to YYC and caught an early flight home to North Van.
Was a really memorable climb.
