Beautiful Lake Louise

A quick stop over to see the icon sights at Lake Louise.

We're making great time on our ride with Chris (fellow GMCer) and enjoying the first day of this trip :)

BC mountains beckon

We are about to embark on a thoroughly Canadian adventure over the next 17 days. First we fly about 3,000 km, then drive close to 300 km and settle in Golden, BC for a night. Early the next morning we meet up with the other Alpine Club of Canada's General Mountaineering Camp participants and get on a 1.5 hour drive to the heli-pad from where we are then transported by helicopter to our camp in the Sir Sandford Group. There we will spend a week honing mountain crafts, glacier travel, and set out to ascend some of the mountains including, weather permitting Sir Sandford.

Yellow = Sir Sandford.
Orange - road to Lake O'Hara
Red = Horse trail into Yoho back-country

That's week 1.

Week 2 will kick off with a hike in to Lake O'Hara to spend a day with good friends. Lake O'Hara's one of the most regulated places: strict and low limits on everything, including seats on the bus from the parking lot to the lodge at Lake O'Hara. For us the only way to get there is on foot - 11 km in and 11km out. In between we hope to get a few more alpine lake views in, and most important catch up on life and news with our friends!

After a rest day, we head off to Bear Corner Bed & Bale (!)  to meet up with Al and get ready for a 4-day trail riding excursion into Yoho National Park back-country.

There's hoping we have fine mountain weather, excellent company and all kinds of interesting, challenging and fun mountain travel in the alpine.

We'll post pics when we have reception or web access. 

Adirondacks wilderness

We just spent 3 nights in the Adirondacks, one of our all-time favourite hiking destinations. We go often and have been using the technical, demanding terrain of the High Peaks region to prepare for some of our longer trekking and mountain adventures.

This weekend, we were back to hone those skills as we are about to head of the the Alpine Club of Canada's General Mountaineering Camp. The weather was gorgeous, the hiking spectacular, the camp site awesome. In short, we had the perfect weekend.

Jan on top of Saddleback (4,515 feet).

"Precipitous down climb" on way from
Saddleback to Basin Mountain. When the
guidebook says this and adds "extreme
caution" there's a reason.

Massive new slide due to Hurricane Irene
last September. Nature is awe-inspiring in
its sheer force.

View of Basin Mountain. We summitted
it, too (4,827 feet), and then 
backtracked to Orebed camping 
via Saddleback.