Cesar's Blog

Surprise Pass in Lake Louise is for sure one of the most beautiful passes in the area. After a long an steady climb and a couloir boot pack to descend to the expectacular Lake Louise. It was a great day out before heading out to Florida in December, cold but sunny.     

  Bluerock Summit  One more Ridge in Sheep River Provincial Park before they close the road until June 2021. Over the last few months I have joined Ken and Pete for some adventures in that area, and every time we have been running/hiking we kept seen Bluerock Mountain ! Magnificent ridge, three false peaks along a ridge 3.5kms long..... we discussed a few times and Ken said, next summer guys. Last Friday I saw a post on Facebook, some guys just climbed it ! And the views were stunning. I like it (literally) and at the same time Ken sent me a message about the same post to what I replied “why wait till next summer?”. ken sent an email to Pete and I and explained the logistics. We set on an Alpine Start of 6:00am to catch the Sun Rise at the top of the Ridge and bank for 10 hours round trip. We ran 7.5kms in the dark before starting the s cramble to the ridge. Temperature was just above 0c and we needed to stay dry so that the rest of the day was comfortable. After an hour twent...

  Great adventure before the road is closed for the season.. This is the third Sunday we are in the Sheep River Provincial Park running trails and bushwacking. Pete, Ken and I started a bit later this time.. around 9:00 we were running and done by 3:00 (28 kms with 1,500mts of elevation gain). The first 11 kms were fine, up but with a good pace. After that and after enjoin a nice view of Bluerock we had to do a bit of a traverse and bushwack for the next 10k or so..

With an alpine start of 6.30AM and low temperatures of -30c we headed out to summit the Junction Mountain Fire Lookout. With an overnight of more than 30cm of snow, it was a real challenge to keep our feet warm. The summit was at around 13km, mostly uphill from the parking lot. We were following some Cougar's foot prints for quite a while after km 5, but eventually stopped seen them.  The temperature went up during the day, but the fact that our feet were burred under the snow for nearly 6 hours didn't allowed the sun to warm them up. We made it to the summit in around 3:17:00 (close to 800mts of gain), and I thought that going downhill was going to be easier.. but, it was still difficult when the snow is so deep. Last 4 kms seem interminable... it was a drag all the way until I called it and said fuck it ! I am walking and the death march started... I was exhausted, poor footing, frozen toes, dehydrated, and wit aches and pains everywhere due to the deep snow. After that, we a...

 Another crazy adventure in the Sheep River Provincial Park near Turner Valley with Ken and Pete. We run/hike a loop counter clockwise to have the wind in our backs half way through, with the first objective been Volcano's Ridge where the wind was blowing at 100k-p-h or more. Temperature was all day at around -15c with with a 1,086 meter of elevation gained during the day we managed to stay warm. Second objective was Prospector's Ridge (on the map as Surveyor's Ridge). After a serious bushwhacking and stumbling on an outfitters winter camp we were able to conquer that second summit.  Third objective was Mount Ware (the most scrambled pick we did during the day), rocky, steep and windy ! Beautiful ridge walk despite low visibility. From there, we started to head down, more route finding and relying on GAIA App as GPS option of the day.    Bushwhack that wasn't that bad Carin at Mount Ware Ridge Walk at Mount Ware Surveyor's Ridge First Summit of three that day False ...