Mt.Athabasca
On July 1st, Myself and Matt Perdeoux drove up the ice fields parkway to the Columbia Ice-fields Centre where we made camp to ascend MT Athabasca’s Silver-horn route the next day.
After our arrival we made our beds in the back of my Subaru wagon and set an alarm for 1 am.
After a short sleepless night, we rose to the alarm clock, grabbed our packs from the front of the car and began the approach trail to the beginning of the glacier. Matt and I were both very stoked and filled with energy as we ascended the trail. Once we arrived at the glacier, the northern lights began to dance behind us, we stopped and watched periodically as we geared up to begin the glacier walk to the bottom of the Silver Horn.
Matt lead the charge up the first half of the glacier, making a good trail and line through some small crevasses. After about an hour, we swopped positions and I lead the rest of the way to the bottom of the Horn. The snow was deep and we were post-holing up to our knees. Once we hit the bottom, we stopped for a quick snack, then Matt took the lead roll up the first half of the Silver horn. As we ascended the steep snowy pitch, the sun began to come up over the mountains behind us, turning the sky red. Once I took over the lead roll, my calves began to burn and I had to dig deep to kick good foot steps as Matt was doing for me. Reaching the never ending horizon, we reached the top of the horn and could see the ridge leading to the summit of Mt. Athabasca. We stopped for a short snack than continued for another half hour along a beautiful snowy ridge that lead directly to the summit. At 7 am, we reached the top, took some phots and enjoyed the view from the top of our first 11,000 foot peak in the Canadian Rockies. What an unreal day.
