Leadership

When I first joined the ACC, I was 12 and literally thought I could go climbing.  Neither parents were very "hardcore" in the mountains, they don't even backpack.  Alot of day-hikes were what they did, and my Dad had at one point taken a rock climbing course with the famous Hans Schwartz.  I think he went up Wiwaxy too.  But that was the entire extent of my parental encouragement.

I took the Edmonton Section's "Summer in the Mountains" which was awesome.  We were taught by an awesome group of experienced members of the ACC.  I won't name 'em because I don't want to track them down to ask permission but they instilled some great skills on me and my dragged-along Dad (required to come along with me due to legalities).  I owe a whole ton to these people who let me get started out in the mountains.  I also owe my Dad a pretty big slap on the back for devoting so much time to my new hobby.

After the course I remember signing up for my first ACC trip.  It was the "good old days" of the club when a guy named Jim led 12 of us beginners up Temple.  Now that trip was mostly a hike but its still a big peak and how the club ever allowed one guy (and an ancient, wrinkled, sage named Wayne) to take 12 people onto a 11,000 foot peak I don't know.  The short story is that I took a non-Chantalle approach to the snow slopes below the summit, and decided it would be faster to descend by running down them than to walk down the ridge (oh how 12 year old minds work).  It was midsummer and I inevitably post-holed and fell flat on my front.  Skidding down the snow (I must've weighed 80lbs or less) I then lost hold of my ice axe.  After wrangling it in, I managed to arrest (thank god for that part of the SIM course), but neither my Dad nor Jim were very impressed.

Fast forward just shy of 8 years and I'm leading an ACC trip of my own.  Not much has happened over those years; discovery of my Dad's chronic altitude sickness plagued my ACC membership until I turned 18 at which point I started doing some scrambles.  I never really picked it up though.  This summer would be different.  I had plans for almost every weekend of my 4-month hiatus from university.  The first trip Chris and I would do together would be a "beginner" scrambling trip to Heart Mountain and Baldy.

"Beginner" Scrambling

We met some of our group at the campground on Friday night, and in an odd turn of events the only local on the trip managed to get lost on his way to Mt. Kidd RV Park.  Anyway, we found him on Saturday morning at the Heart Creek parking lot and set off (beginner mistake #1: not signing the waiver!)  We worked our way easily up to the summit and it felt far too early to head back down so we spotted a peak lying to the S and decided to see if the connecting ridge would go.

Our group on the top of Heart Mountain, with our extension behind.  Little did I know this would likely be one of the only weekends with consistently good weather all season!

It turned out to be overall quite easy with a small tough down-climb hidden by some trees.  We went down on the right hand side, and after traversing a ledge managed to get down a short (slightly overhanging) step to easier ground.  There was also a nice-looking corner feature which looked quite good but had a much larger fall potential.  From there a nice walk with some short but airy exposed parts took us to the summit block which we climbed on solid rock to the climber's left of an obvious gully.

Go up on the left, down via the gully.  You could head up the gully if you're bored of solid rock and are looking for some of that awful treadmill scree, which we just don't get enough of in the Rockies.

Once on top there is another, twin summit, with a real register and some sort of weather/survey pole (?).  The map says they're about the same height and I'd tend to agree.  Getting there involves descending a gully on the South side and contouring around the summit block to intercept the connecting ridge.  From there walk over to the other summit.  We experienced some hair-trigger wet-snow avy conditions and had to tread carefully but later in the season it should be pretty darn easy.

The West twin.  This nice peak isn't named on the map but at least 5 different names were in the East register.

We sat around and enjoyed our lunch before setting off back towards the cars. This was much easier than coming over and we made good time back to the main summit.  Although one participant was quite slow on the descent we still made it off in one piece.  Although Chris and I both know we made a few mistakes up there, we made it out with everybody in one piece.  I'll call that a success.