Yamnuska -- June 28, 2009

There's something about Yamnuska that keeps you coming back. Even when you're driving down the highway for the hundredth time, the looming rock face at the entrance to the Rockies is riveting.. no matter how many times you've looked before.

Yamnuska is always about the trail not taken to me. While we'd always known how little of Yamnuska we'd actually seen, on a late fall hike we saw how easy it could be to go to the next level. After waiting through a long winter and late spring, we were ready to see more.

Approaching the rock face:



Around the backside of Yamnuska, in the new (to us) unexplored part of Yamnuska. The trails here are not for the unsteady!





View from the top!



Might be one of the few photos that made my stomach nervous even taking it!



Imagine living up here...(I imagine the hikers drop enough goodies to make it worth while).



Nat and I did not go to the top. Sometimes on the mountain you can feel when things are not lining up well. The trail both up and down was full of loose rock -- probably a result of the recent thaw. Nat's water bottle took a long drop from one of the ledges we peered over. The mountain was busy -- nothing unusual for a Saturday afternoon, but somehow it was unsettling.

We decided to head down, and soon after, well.... I fell.

Fell sounds much more dramatic than it was. It was more like a slide. The ground and rocks beneath my feet started sliding and before I knew it I was heading down the gentle (thankfully!) slope of the backside. Other than a fairly brief flip where I was vaguely aware I was in mid air, there wasn't much to it except my brain saying "Don't land on your head! Don't land on your head!". Upon landing face down and continuing the slide, the mantra changed to "Dig your hands and feet in, grab something, you can't slide all the way to the bottom!". Which is what I did.

My pants were ruined. My brand-new first time out water bottle had a major gash in it. Some kind soul retrieved my poles from further down the slope. My hands were gashed up and there was a lot of blood running down my right leg, but I was fine. My head was fine, my back was fine and I could walk.

Which is more than I can probably say for Nat's poor heart. She had to watch all of this unfold.

Amazingly enough a doctor had seen the entire thing and kindly brought us over to his blanket so he could patch me up.



Safety tip -- out of about 4 first aid kits brought by the group, only Nat's contained the all-important iodine. Check your kits, and don't assume it's there. It will come in handy.

Another great safety tip -- the doctor recommended a bath with baking soda when I got home. I did exactly that and it did an amazing job cleaning out the cuts and scrapes -- even one that was extremely deep. They all healed without a scar -- save for the very deep one, where the skin was completely removed from a pinkie nail's worth area -- and a few weeks later you couldn't even tell I'd tried to slide down a mountain....

Yamnuska is still riveting when I drive by... maybe even moreso.

Yamnuska -- March 15, 2008

After Sunday's gorgeous hike up Yamnuska, D and I thought we'd give it a try on Saturday. After all, a week of gorgeous weather could only mean the trails would be in ever *better* shape, right?

Not so much. Temperatures dropped below zero the night before (we even had snow in the city), and all the lovely melting snow solidified into the dreaded ice. Not to mention the weather that Saturday was bizarre.

The hike started out well enough -- it was early afternoon, and it had warmed up enough that all the mud at the lower part of the hike was positively mushy. It wasn't long before our Yak-Traks were caked in mud and sliding all over our shoes. Off they came.

Naturally, as trail got steeper, the snow became more and more prevalent, as did the ice. There was a stretch about 1/3 of the way up where I don't think we let go of the trees once, for fear of sliding back downhill. But once through there, we hit a bare (and dry) section that lasted the majority of the hike.

But the skies remained grey and overcast:




On Sunday, once N and I hit the treeline, or troubles appeared to be over -- the snow at the top was deep and crispy, typical March snow without any worry of ice. What a difference six days makes! D and I encountered even more ice as we approached the summit, and once again resorted to clinging to trees to navigate the icy patches.

This was a relatively bare patch near the treeline, can you spot the ice:



We're not ones to back down from a challenge, but about 10-15 minutes from the summit we decided to turn around for safety reasons. The approach to the rockface might be the steepest part of the climb. It wasn't as icy as some stretches down below, but thanks to the steeper incline, any footholds were much less secure and the white ice underneath the snow was treacherous.

It had already taken 2.5 hours to make it to this point... usually we're at the rockface in under 2 hours.

At the top, the sun was beating down on us, and it felt like it could be 7-8 C easily. Much different from the grey skies we saw on the way up the mountain. However, when the weather turned, it turned quickly. First the temperature of the wind seemed to drop by 10 degrees in minutes, and became very reminiscent of certain gusts down Portage Ave in Winnipeg. Strangely enough, the hike down seemed less icy (the ice had melted a little perhaps), and we made it through the extremely icy parts quickly. Just in time too... just after we made it past the last of the really bad ice, a snow storm came out of nowhere.



Weird.

We didn't make it to the rockface, but it's certainly a hike we won't be forgetting for a long time!

Yamnuska -- March 9, 2008

The weather here has been ridiculously warm. While the eastern part of the country (and continent) suffer through countless snowstorms and arctic temperatures, we've hardly seen any snow and the thermometer has only dipped to the truly chilly for a handful of days.

When it does snow, it's usually thick wet late spring type snow, which causes problems on its own through avalanches. Even the warm weather has its price.

I didn't appreciate the weather until my trip to Winnipeg. I just kept thinking it would end eventually and we'd go back to the cold -- this nice weather was just a tease. A weekend in Winnipeg made me appreciate the gift of chinooks and the unseasonably warm weather. This past week it's been warmer here than in Arkansas.

It was with this renewed enthusiasm N and I picked Yamnuska as our Sunday hike. Enough with the make-do hikes until the weather improves! The sun is shining, the snow exists only in tiny little patches, if at all. To the mountains!

This is the Yamnuska that greeted us in the first week of March. It's hard to believe:




The snow did deepen on the way up, though still not as much as we had expected. The real danger was the ice. As long as the sun was hitting the snow, it was nice and slushy and posed no problem, but once the snow was in the shade, the path would get much slicker. Going up the mountain was mostly fine. Coming down a few hours later was the tricky part.

N spotted this tree about mid-way up. It had split twice in the same spot, allowing it to bend rather than break. The split looked old too... this tree has just kept on growing:



View of the Bow Valley, with the "heart-shaped" pond front and centre. The pond actually leads to a river and from other angles looks nothing like a heart, but this is always a nice shot, especially when frozen over. The view is unbeatable already:




The Rockies from Yamnuska. Again, shouldn't there be more snow in early March?




Near the treeline the snow deepened, but again, it was thick and slushy and actually much easier to navigate than the slicker stuff further down the mountain. Even here, near the top, the snow never really got knee-deep unless it had drifted:




At the top. Still little to no snow. Definitely colder though, thanks to the ever-present wind:



The hike down was, well, interesting with all the ice. It might be the first time it took longer to hike down Yamnuska than up. But to hike Yamnuska in March? Totally worth it.

Yamnuska Revisited -- October 14, 2007

Nearly a month after my first Yamnuska hike of the season, I found myself back on the trail, this time with N for a late-season hike. It had snowed between visits and this hike was worth the revisit. The fall colours were still lingering and there was a lot more of the picturesque snow covering the Rocky Mountains. This hike is nice because you work hard right away, but you get a payoff almost immediately:



We encountered much less snow that we expected, considering the snow that week (in fact when I drove by Yamnuska last weekend, the mountain was still relatively free of the white stuff). Most of the snow was around the approach to the rockface:




We made it up in nearly record time, but didn't summit due to the snow, and lack of planning on my part. Next spring for sure.

Yamnuska - September 15, 2007

Yamnuska Mountain (also known as John Laurie Mountain) - Take the Trans-Canada west from Calgary until the 1X turnoff to the 1A (towards Exshaw). Look to the left of the road for a turnoff to the Yamnuska trailhead.


There are few hikes as exhilarating as Yamnuska. The mountain is visible from the Trans-Canada highway as you enter the Rockies from the east and is one of the most recognizable mountains in the area. It's a fantastic hike because as you climb to the rockface, you can look eastward onto the foothills and see for kilometers. It also gives an excellent view of the Bow Valley to the immediate south. As you climb higher, there are also dramatic views of the Rockies to the north and west.

The next time you drive down the TCH, you will never look at the mountain the same way.

Yamnuska is a popular hike for both hikers and climbers, so arrive early!

I had hiked Yamnuska once before -- October of 2004 -- and that day out we weren't so lucky. The hike up was great... but the higher we got, the faster the clouds moving in from the west closed on us. The hike down was completed in record time through the first snowstorm of the season. Not well planned, but fun. The beer afterward tastes that much better.

The weather forecast looked much more promising this time out:



Most of the hike is up the east side of Yamnuska and approaches the rockface from the side. There is also a more direct hike up for the climbers, but for us hikers, the hikers' route is more fun, though certainly not an easy hike.

And it doesn't take long to get to the first of many great views. From this angle, the lake even has a heart-shape:



Looking west. Mid-September the leaves were just starting to turn:



As you get closer to the top, you're rewarded with a great view of the north side of the mountain -- the side of Yamnuska you don't get to see from the highway:



Once you arrive at the rockface at the top, there are a number of different things to do. The trail leads both to the southside of the mountain along the rockface and to a scree slope, as well as north behind the mountain. With a little scrambling and climbing that trail can take you to the top of Yamnuska.

But first, D and I decided to have a snack and enjoy the view:



Then we worked around to the south side of the mountain (yes, there's a trail there. Really):



The view just gets better as you wind along the southside:



And finally, view from the trailhead (a very FULL parking lot), about 4 hours later as we finished our hike. Amazing mountain, amazing hike: