Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Gentleman's Outing

 Three days in Lake Louise, and two mountains.  Above the East Face of Mt. Babel, about 2000 feet of SCARY awesomeness! 
 Nate Opp sending.......oh the rock is so good.  NOT!
 A true "adventure climb" that should not be taken lightly.  It's one of the more serious routes I have ever done 
 Looking down on the glacier fed Consolation Lakes.
 The perfect alpine attack set up: 8.9 serenity and the alpine smart belay device.  ZING POW.
 Nate on the top of Bables, we managed to free the whole route including the 5.11 crux in 8 hours.  I mention it only because of the poor rock quality.  One tends to over grip when the rock is crumbling away around the protection.  Babel was an unforgettable adventure all the way to the summit. 
 Running and gunning.... next up was the less scary but much bigger North Face of Temple Peak, aka the"Eiger of the Rockies."  We launched at 5am, approach shoes, aluminum crampons, one ax each, single set of cams, and one rope. 
 The first three grand went fast.....scrambling and snow climbing to the point where we roped up.  Nate above on the dazzling head wall of the Greenwood-Locke route.
 Max exposure looking down to the scree slopes below.  AMAZING position up there.
The final push though bottomless talus to the summit.  An 8.5 hour ascent from Annette Lake to the summit.
As Nate put it, "Lets go have a gentleman's outing."  Thanks to Nate my eyes have been opened to the potential in the Canadian Rockies.

Whit Magro
Bozeman, MT

1 comment:

how to climb said...

cool pictures. thanks for sharing.