Our climb of Mt. Athabasca is now some decades past so most of this post is just a collection of memories, not a guide to completing the route.   We were still on film cameras then, so by modern standards I did not document the detailed route with GPS and digital camera as we can today.

We had taken a mountaineering course at the Columbia Icefields and the final part of the course was a climb of 11 453 foot Mount Athabasca.   We started in the middle of the night/early morning and our guide led us to the start of the route in the dark.   We turned off the road onto the moraines and followed a cairned route to the rock below the glacier, and worked our way to a place to start the North Glacier section, roped up for safety.

The upper section below the North Face was quite steep, but we started to work our way over onto the Silverhorn, coming off the glacier.   I was at the end of the rope and a couple of our party of 5 were tiring on the steep terrain.   We stopped for a break on the Silverhorn and enjoyed the view past Mount Andromeda to the west.

By the upper section of the Silverhorn two of our party were exhausted and sick (altitude/fatigue).   They couldn’t go on, but the guide let them stay in a sheltered spot while we continued up the ridge.   Near the summit, the final section was on a very narrow ridge.   I can recall the guide saying that “the only rule for this traverse was don’t fall.”  We shortened the rope and carefully completed the summit.  The technical climb of Mt. Athabasca had been a bit intimidating, but not exhausting.  We ascended 4800 feet over about 5 km to the summit.

We came down to the rest of the party who were still having difficulty.   The Guide was getting nervous because we had lost a lot of time allowing the 2 sick/exhausted people to rest.   He was concerned about afternoon avalanches off the North Face or snow on crevasses giving way in the afternoon sun.   I was asked to lead going down.   A part of 3 passed us and we chatted briefly.   As I watched them pull ahead in single file, one of the party disappeared into a crevasse, hanging upside down on a rope out of sight.   The other guide first stabilized and secured the rope they were on.   Our guide came forward and assisted the crevasse rescue.   He was pulled out of the deep, dark crevasse, shaken, but unhurt.   Following this episode, we were careful to watch our feet and on a few occasions jumped across the snow where we could see a crevasse ahead.

In the end we came off the glacier and descended to the road, all intact, tired, but happy to have completed the summit.

We did return to the area and skied up through the Icefall onto the neve.   On another day we ascended 11 339 foot Snow Dome.   Another hike was up the slopes of nearby Mt. Hilda where we found a huge fossil bed.   We have also gone to the top of Wilcox Peak and a few other hikes in the area.   But the best one of all was the climb to the summit of Mount Athabasca still vivid in my memories after decades.