Month: December 2007

We parked in a parking lot in the middle of Canmore (well, not the exact middle perhaps, but it was certainly surrounded by houses, and there were lots of people out walking their dogs and that sort of thing) and started walking up Cougar Creek.

Cougar Creek
 

Partially frozen, the walking got interesting at times; there was some falling through to lower layers of frozen creek, hardly any cougar attacks, and lots of crossing back and forth across the creek.

And this would be why it’s nice to be the lightest one in the party
 

A side fork and a couple of hours later and we were at the base of Ghoster Coaster, a WI3 route that is about 150 metres long.

Climbing in a canyon
 

Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the most interesting pitch, which was 50 metres of scrambling over driftwood that had been frozen into place. This was followed by a short ice pitch, then the top out, which was a fairly memorable bit of mixed ice/rock/dirt climbing.

Not the top out, though it gives you a good idea how windy it was in the canyon
 

After the rap down we walked out along the frozen creek by the light of the full moon, and still weren’t eaten by any cougars.