assiniaboine in a push

ASSINIABOINE IN A PUSH

2:00A.M., September 27, 2012, -5 degrees Celsius, Mt. Shark trail head, Kananaskis Country, Alberta, over 28km from Mt. Assiniaboine, (3618m).  I was nervous.  It was far.

My body was still shaking from a week long party binge in Banff, and I was tired. Not the best time to go for Assiniaboine car to car, but I didn’t have anything better to do.  I knew I couldn’t run the distance, so I planned to mountain bike to Assiniboine pass – which isn’t allowed by parks.

I had woken up in a freezer, the cap of my truck being encrusted in ice crystals, which slowly melted and dripped on me as I ate breakfast. A frosty bike seat welcomed me as I started off in the crisp night air, hands quickly froze. Hours passed as I rolled through the black of night, surrounded only by an all too small globe of light emitted by my nearly inadequate headlamp.  The sun rose as I stashed my bike and finished my way up to the pass.  The mountain soon came into view, a soaring peak caked in ice and snow.  The North East Ridge appeared drastically harder than the modest grade of III 5.5 would suggest.

 

 

 

Fresh snow over rock slowed progress, but I work steadily upwards. With strap-on crampons on my hiking boots, and one mountaineering axe I climbed up the crux, ice covered, rock band of brittle limestone. The entire ridge was stimulating, the East Face on my left dropping impossibly far below. After 4 hours of climbing I stood on the summit, the highest point within hundreds of kilometers; I could see to the Bugaboos, Mt Sir Donald, and the Bow Valley.  A helicopter flew around me for a while, and it seemed to take a lot of time for me to convince him that I wasn’t in trouble; standing there as I was, at 5 P.M., with a bicycle helmet on, solo on a peak that was completely out of season.  I made it back to the car, 20 hours after I had left it in those early morning hours.