Mount Hector - August 6 2022

Murchison Group, Banff, Alberta
3394m

After getting our toes wet in glacier travel and feeling like "real mountaineers" back on Mount Garibaldi, we'd been itching for some more ever since. So, shortly after starting our 2022 "month in the Rockies" trip, we joined an 11,000ers group in the hopes of finding people wanting to do a bigger peak which would scratch that itch. Sure enough, that was not very difficult, and we found someone wanting to organize a 3-4 man rope team for heading up Mount Hector.

We organized things fairly far in advance, so after a week or two of chatting back and forth whilst we bagged other peaks, we ended up settling with a 3-man team: Me, Logan, and Subhan (whom we met in the aforementioned group). Once the day drew closer and we got all our gear, etc. lined up we set a 4:30am trailhead meeting time. It ended up being more like 5:00, and we set out just after that at 5:06am. My pack was pretty heavy, as I was carrying the rope, and it weighed in somewhere between 30 and 35 pounds at home. Surprisingly, though, it never really felt like a serious hindrance like my winter overnight bags have.

Once we set off, we immediately wasted 5 minutes walking down the road to find the trailhead only to backtrack and find a way across right beside the car. It turns out that we entered on the wrong side of the creek, and we could've entered on the other side from the road, but we just didn't see that in the dark. Thankfully, the creek wasn't flowing very intensely this far down and this early, so the crossing wasn't notably challenging or anything. The first probably half-hour or so were spent walking through a forested trail, until we broke out of the dense forest and hit open skies, following Hector Creek fairly closely.

At about 30 minutes in, just below 2000m, I was foolishly letting Logan lead, and we ended up climber's right of the trail and the creek going up some random steep scree slope. This was... not very fun, and we topped it out at a large cliff band with no obvious way over. So, I checked my map, and sure enough, the trail was over to our left, so Logan and Subhan went back down, while I decided to traverse the slope back to the trail instead. After some careful walking, 15 minutes wasted, and a benign creek-crossing once more, we were back on trail. By the time we got back on trail, the sun was up enough to stash our headlamps, at least. This was especially nice because without a helmet on, headlamps are somewhat annoyingly tight on your head.

Despite our new on-path location, apparently Logan wasn't very happy because in short order, we ended up heading climber's left around the path to some random scrambling. To his credit, it was fun, but was also definitely not as efficient as coming up the path. We spent another 40 minutes scrambling and routefinding our way between 2025m and 2200m, at which point we managed to make it back almost back to the path.

To get all the way back, we had to top out one last scramble. There was actually a bypass to climber's left which Subhan walked up, but Logan and I found a fun little overhanging "scramble" to get up, and decided to have some extracurricular fun instead.

Once you top that out the area opens up a bit, and you make your way through an alpine meadow, up some rocky slopes with low-moderate amounts of scree, and up into a rocky bowl which leads up to the moraine at the former end of the glacier, followed by the foot of the glacier itself. The meadows are fairly easy walking, as are the rocky slopes, which seem fairly well-cleared of scree and are mostly solid purchase. There is one slope leading up to the junction where the Little Hector route splits off that's a bit worse, but there's enough of a trail in it that it's not that bad, really.

After topping out the above hill at about 2600m, we spent the next 40 minutes or so picking our way through the moraine, which was just a giant field of rocks. After going through one snow field on the flank of Little Hector, we arrived at the beginning of the constant snow at 2685m, where we geared up for the glacier.

Technically, the glacier was a bit further up in terms of "there being flowing ice under you", but it's nicer to transition on solid ground. We spent about 45 minutes gearing up, Logan refilled some spilled water, then set out 4.5 hours in (about 9:40). We decided as the man with a GPS on his wrist, I should take lead, Subhan would take the middle, and Logan could bring up the rear. This was my first time leading on a glacier, and my second overall glacier traversal, so the pressure was definitely there, but it was balanced with excitement.

After the first half hour, we'd managed to get out of the "just snow" section and into the glacier proper, gaining about 75m of elevation in the process. Here, we could see the first crevasses up ahead, and assumed a measured, careful pace with breaks whenever we crested a new bump and got a new view of the upcoming terrain to discuss our approach. A more experienced team might just blaze forward at a constant pace, but since we were all still "fairly" new to glacier crossings, I think everyone felt more comfortable talking the route out.

Another half hour and 90m of elevation and we got over a couple bumps, and got a good view of the majority of the glacier. Given that this was August, and our last glacier experience was early July, it makes sense that there were more exposed crevasses, but that didn't make us feel any safer 😅. We had crevasses to either side, and further up directly ahead as well, but I managed to lead us across a stable snow bridge to climber's right, and we got ourselves a fairly clear path up to the base of the steep final glacier slope and summit block.

Continuing up from here, for some reason we took a 20 minute break right at 2970m, though for the life of me I can't remember why, probably a gear check or snack for one of the other party members. By the end of that break, though, we did get the final clouds off the summit, and get blessed with a pretty great view.

From there, we took a long route up and around that icy bump, which probably took longer than necessary, but also avoided some steeper firn frontpointing, so overall I'm not unhappy with the decision. It also kept us fresh and strong for the difficult summit push. We stopped on a flat-ish spot at about 3200m to take some pictures, now over 7 hours into the journey at about 12:30pm. We were determined to get the uphill done before having lunch though, so the break was only momentary.

8 hours in, we made our way to the edge of the mountain at about 3250m, where our GPSes were having a bit of a disagreement. Mine wanted me to yeet of the edge into the abyss, while Logan and Subhan's wanted us to turn back climber's left toward the saddle between the false and true summit. We chose the latter.

20 minutes of walking brought us up to the saddle, where we managed to spot some other folks following our tracks up. It definitely felt good to see that they were following our tracks (meaning there were either people as dumb as us, or we did a good job setting tracks in reasonable locations). We also got some good views here as we decided on our plan of attack for the imposing crux we had to ascend next. It looked all of rocky, steep, loose, and icy, and previous reports listed it as a 5.5 or higher, so it was going to be a "fun" one.

I headed up first, got to the end of the snow, and fumbled with my feet until my crampons came off, awkwardly clipped them to my harness, and debated my life choices as I tried to get up the crux. It was indeed quite loose, a few potential holds decided to just crumble in front of my eyes. There were a decent amount of handholds, though. The biggest problem was purchase for my feet. Most of the nice spots were ice, and the rest were rather narrow, and I didn't like how my mountaineering boots felt on them. Swapping to my trail runners would've been nice here, but the group didn't enjoy standing on the corniced snow ridge, and there wasn't much space to do a full transition with everyone bunched up at the base, so boots it was. Eventually I got the willpower and pushed myself up and over, and I arrived on a little scree shelf above.

Sadly, up there, there are basically no places to build an anchor. The ice was too thing for screws, the rock all loose or simply "part of the mountain", etc. Eventually, Subhan just went with Logan anchoring him from below, and me above body-belaying as best as I could. Logan followed up last.

While we spent way too long getting ourselves up a few metres of vertical, the group that was following us caught up, tagged the false summit, settled our debate about which summit was the true one (confirming my eyes were right and my GPS was wrong, and that our path was the right one). They seemed to be watching our slow progress and debating if they should follow or not. I doubt we inspired much confidence. However, after maybe 45 minutes, we got ourselves up.

From there, it was a pretty simple final push. There's a small scree slope past the shelf, followed by some slabs to scramble up (or a scree gully if you hate yourself like Logan apparently does), then a small bit more scrambling up to the summit. Nothing super exposed or difficult here, I'd say class 2 or 3.

We took our well-earned lunch break at about 3pm up at the top, surprisingly not too windy given the conditions up to that point. Strangely, despite one member of the party of 4 below us coming up the crux, the rest of his party never did, nor did he push on to the summit. Instead he turned back, and they started descending while we were up on the peak. I can't say I'd have done the same, but I suppose it's good they stayed in their comfort zone. We also found and signed the register, which is always a cool feeling. It turns out there IS one at Mount Temple as well that we missed being our first, as it was buried in the snow last year when we went 😢

At about 3:40, though, we started heading down, as none of us had a particular desire to be out in the dark (again), and were hoping to grab food while restaurants were still open once we were back in Canmore. The downclimb was fairly straightforward for me and Logan, though Subhan wasn't quite as much of a fan. He took a good few minutes to negotiate himself down a small crack and over the notch between the end of the slabs and the final summit scramble. After spotting holds for a while, I decided I would head down ahead of the other two so I could swap out of my trail runners and into my mountaineering boots, since I swapped them after the crux on the way up, and figured that'd take a while.

Once I got to the crux, I decided to stick as far to skier's left as I could whilst remaining in the crux area and not going too far into the downsloping cliffs beside. There was a small, mostly dry crack here I got most of the way down on, and then it was just a few careful steps down icy rocks to a dry spot where I could change my shoes. With the boots on, it was a few more icy steps, then a short snow-walk over to the flat part of the saddle. From the top, I got back to the saddle in about 20 minutes, and watched the other two get down.

That took... about an hour. Subhan was having none of the "downclimb the crux" life (understandable), so some time was spent trying to find ANYWHERE to anchor the rope up to belay him on the downclimb. After not much success trying to find somewhere to place protection, they ended up looping the rope around a small bit of rock jutting out from the ground which probably wouldn't come out or cut the rope, and he slowly picked his way down.

Once he got down to the icy part, though, things slowed down once again. He traversed a bit too far to climber's right, and ended up having more slopey ice to contend with before reaching the icy pre-snow, and the eventual snow. Logan actually scrambled his way down while Subhan contemplated his life choices here, and got ready to catch Subhan if he slipped on the final stretch with a snow anchor. Eventually, after many attempts at digging in steps with his axe, he did make it out, though, and we all grouped up at the saddle, those two got their crampons on, and we headed out after they got a bit of rest. It was now about 5:20, so we had to make much better time on the descent to get out in the light.

The first, steep slope from the saddle was probably the worst part of the glacier descent. Here the ice is very thin, and the rock is right below, so your crampons get very little purchase. Careful stepping and slow progress are the name of the game in these sorts of situations, and we definitely practiced that. Thankfully it's not a long slope, and once we got back to the big turn at the edge of the mountain, the snow got deeper and easier to get traction in. Actually, it was a little too soft/deep to be honest, as the daytime heat had heated things up enough to make us posthole quite a bit. As leader of the group, me most of all 😅 (it wasn't that bad, though).

Once we got a bit past that point, we followed a "shortcut" path the former group had made instead of our long path around the bumps. This was harder firn, but it actually held us well, so we headed down that way for a while. Logan took one tumble here, but we managed to arrest him, proving the efficacy of the rope team🙂. We took a break at this one little "river" formed in the glacier, where we actually saw a crazy "slushalanche", which Subhan managed to capture in video.

After that excitement, we continued down a fairly uneventful snow-walk on our broken path, which was extra-compacted by the 4-person group that followed it up and took it down before us. Logan had a couple crampon issues where they came off (hopefully being resolved with new toe-bars before our next outing) which forced us to take breaks, but other than that not much of note. The way down is usually easier since you have tracks to follow. There was one snow bridge we crossed in the morning that the previous group collapsed on their way down we had to jump over, but thankfully I noticed, and it was narrow and easily leap-able.

We made it back to the foot of the glacier at about 6:40, transitioned gear for another half hour, and set out a bit after 7:00. It felt great to get back into my shoes and onto solid ground (or moraine, but that wouldn't be for too long). Even though my pack now had all the rope back in it, I didn't really care.

The moraine walking was apparently more fun for me than the others, as I quickly pulled out ahead of them. Since there was no real path through, I didn't feel a need to stick around so I got myself through quickly and found a nice rock to sit on at the end of the rocky deposition, and let the others catch up.

After the moraine, it's the moderately rocky slopes down toward the meadows, which were also a bit easier for me, so I continued the "blaze ahead and wait" methodology, preferring to minimize the time spent around ankle-destroying rocks. Once the path started developing, though, Logan actually started doing much better than usual, and kept up quite a good pace I was happy to match. Subhan took it a bit more casually, but it was far from unreasonable. With the extra benefit of knowing the terrain better and being able to see it from above, we stayed on more broken trail and make quite good time.

From here, we moved fairly well together, and followed the path (and therefore the creek) basically the whole way down. The evening views were quite pretty, and we made our way down well-beaten path all the way past the waterfall on the way up, and eventually into the creekbed for a nice stretch of boulder-hopping until we got to the forest.

Once we got out of the creekbed and onto the dirt path, it was only about 15 minutes to the car, and we got back around 9:30, for a total car-to-car time of 16 hours, 2o minutes. Definitely not that fast, but it was pretty relaxed, I barely drank 500mL of water. 100% a fun trip, I had a great time leading on the glacier and doing some fun scrambling, and we got to check another 11,000er off while making a new friend in the process.

Sadly we didn't get to eat together for dinner as Subhan got a flat on his drive back, but fate smiled upon us the next day as we just happened to bump into each other at Vertical Addiction in Canmore while shopping, and we hung out for a while.

GPX Track + Map