With rain on the lower slopes of the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, Jason Hummel, Sky Sjue and myself decided to travel out to the Canadian Rockies to experience some of the most rugged peaks I’ve ever witnessed. With so many accessible peaks along the Icefields Parkway, it was hard to choose among them, but after stumbling upon Mt. Hector– an 11,000 foot peak with well over 5,000 vert of skiing, it became an easy choice.
Some of the locals thought we were crazy to attempt Mt. Hector, as many wait until the days are longer but we felt strong and thought it was worth a shot. We reached the trailhead just around sunrise, at the relatively late (for climbing) hour of 8:30 a.m. It quickly became apparent that the continental snowpack was quite different from the maritime, as a quick pole test went straight down through the snow and down to the dirt. As we skinned up through the forest, we watched the sunrise alpenglow on the peaks to the west. As expected, snow cover was low on exposed ridges, so we often transferred from skinning to bootpacking and back again.
The weather was brutally cold as we climbed onto the glaciated slopes of Mt Hector and were finally greeted by the early morning sun.
We carefully climbed the glacier, trying to minimize exposure to crevasses, as snow bridges often cannot support a climber’s weight in a continental snowpack.
As we climbed the northern face, the views to our east opened up into the vastness of the Canadian Rockies…
Once arriving near the summit of Mt. Hector, I chose to climb to a skiable subsummit while Sky and Jason went to the true high point.
We glimpsed endless possibilities as we prepared to ride down over 5000 vert of untracked champagne powder.
One by one we put our tracks down the wide open glacier as the afternoon sun started setting on the horizon.
After 6 hours of climbing, we made it back to the car in less than 1. It was just before dusk when we arrived with grins on our faces from a job well done.
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