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Mount Athabasca | 2011-08-27
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It was 1999, the first time I saw Mount Athabasca. I was attending a college in the State at the time, I came to visit Columbia Icefield just like other tourists. While listening to guide inside snowcoach, I thought “someday…”
Just like Pigeon Mountain which is too hardcore to be covered in scramble books, AA Col route is too hardcore to be covered in 11,000er or Selected Alpine books. Aislinn , Benther, Wil and I attempted to take this hardcore route. At 3:30 am… was it? I don’t even remember. All I know is evil Ben woke me up and evil Heather prohibited the use of stove in the morning, so I had to eat cold meal… Benther is mean o(TﾍTo)…
AA Col Approach:
From Climber’s parking lot, we followed shuttle bus road. The trail starts right at the bus station where the shelters are (roofs for tourists waiting to transfer from bus to snowcoach). It was hard to follow the trail in dark, we went on and off trail on the way up. I suggest following my descent line (red line). The trail goes SW slope of Athabasca’s NE ridge on dry rocks. If you hit glacier that means you are way off-route. There was a cliffy part to scramble up (GR843820) and after that glacier starts. You can still stay on rock at this point, but you have a choice to start glacier travel as well. Including bergschrund at the bottom of AA Col, as far as I could tell, all crevasses were nothing but small cracks.
Slope to the col wasn’t too steep (page 7-9). Despite of warmer temperature than we hoped, freeze was really good. We did use one ice screw there but it could have been avoided if we took different line. Our line happened to have a little water way. So be prepared just in case.
After reaching the col (waypoint “Cairn 5”), it was cake walk up to Silverhorn and to the summit.
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