Today my best friend/roommate climbed up Mount Yamnuska one last time before leaving for my 7th trip across Canada this year.
Mount Yamnuska (also known as Mount John Laurie) is the first mountain on the north side of the bow river valley as it exits the Canadian rockies for the foothills and prairie of Alberta. Located about 87km west from Calgary on the 1A highway. Made up of limestone & shale, standing 7,349ft tall, it is a popular ‘great scramble’. Yamnuska translates to “wall of stone”. As such, it is a growing rock climbing destination, with over 100 routes spread out across its face of all varying difficulty levels for every climber. (coordinates: 51°07’25”N 115°07’00”W)
Mount Yamnuska
After a 4 hour hike up to the top, while we were relaxing, we were met up with some company… A friendly little chipmunk, and a group of climbers. After playing with the chipmunk and chatting to the other people who made it to the top, we discovered that for the last 5 times up Yamnuska, we had been doing the trail all backwards. Opps. We thought for a change we would go around the whole loop of the mountain this time instead of turning around like we usually do, man were we wrong.
We started our backwards decent down the back face of the mountain, all was fine and well for the first 30 minutes. Across a ridge, we could see a group of people coming towards us, this of course was no problem, the problem was how they were getting across. While watching them we noticed they were holding onto a rope to scale a part of the mountain, the foot path was only about a foot wide. If you were to fall you’d be greeted by a about a hundred foot drop, only to land and continue sliding down the backside of the mountain at a 45 degree angle, until you go over another cliff a few hundred feet below. We sat and thought about the idea of continuing on or turning back. After a good 10 minutes of debating we thought it best to turn around and go back the way we came.
During our turn around we thought it would be quicker to follow another way which looked like a trail… until it cut off and all that was left was a 400ft-500ft 45 degree slope made up of loose shale and what resembled a trail that cut across about 200ft down. we were once again faced with the question, do we continue? Or turn around. Deciding to continue on (or down in this case), we didn’t realize how loose and built up the shale actually was. We started doing the crab walk down, only to realize the rock was so loose both of us couldn’t go at the same time. By taking turns we were able to get 50ft, but before we knew it we were sliding down, we made it to the lower trail in record time… or at least where the trail had been. Taking a moment to shake out all the cobwebs from the little experience, I realized that my camera was gone, somewhere in the rock slide. Searching for it, we finally found it, about half way down where we slid from. Now just to try and reach it without causing another slide. 15 minutes later, no rock slide and camera back in pocket, we were off. We were still on the top backside of the mountain and had to reach the half way point between top and bottom around the side of the mountain so we could continue down the rest of the mountain to ground level where the scooter was waiting for us.
Finally making it to the front side of the mountain, we decided to do our usual trick and take the fun fast way down. So instead of taking the z pattern trail all the way down, we went straight down the mountain side, which was another 45 degree slope and went on just into the tree line 900ft or so down. 45 minutes later we were finally back at the scooter, now only a 3 hour ride back to Calgary to drop off my buddy and continue the scooter trip east.
After arriving back into the city late last night, I decided to wait till morning to leave.
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