This turned into a bit more of an adventure than originally planned, but those
are fun days and worth archiving for future reference. Here is our day in the mountains in
mid June. As usual, the best photos are Andrew's photo credit.
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After looking at the weather station at Burstall Pass which is basically just two drainages over
from Little Elbow and seeing ~150cm of height of snow, I got scared. I don't own misery sticks
(snowshoes) so Andrew and I decided to hedge our bets and bring a full backcountry ski set up
and ride bikes into the area. I think this classifies as a triathlon as carrying skis is
basically the same as skiing.
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It was absolutely saturated that morning and wasn't showing signs of letting up. In retrospect,
even though I would have been damp, I should have used Goretex pants and a proper rain jacket.
A soft shell only does so much.
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This was our first look at Threepoint of the day. We could see a decent amount of snow on this
side, so we made the call to bring skis and see what we saw from the Big Elbow campground.
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Across the bridge. I didn't know who Harold Chapman was, but initially I thought this was HIM
Turns out I was wrong, and I think it's actually THIS GUY .
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There's the first bump of Threepoint, now showing us that this side has no snow. Soooo, great idea bringing
skis, but it turns out to be a bit excessive on this day. Go exactly one drainage over to Tombstone though
and we would have been postholing to nuts.
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So, we decided to ditch skis and try to figure a way across the Elbow River.
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The look on Andrew's face sums this up - no crossing here.
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Instead, we went back across the campground, ditched our skis and boots on the other side of the trail
(reminder to me - why didn't I ditch the avy gear too? - although a probe might have been helpful to
assess the depth of the creek...). Then, we got back on our bikes and went a few more km down the
trail to a new composite bridge WAY above the creek, and then proceeded to ditch bikes and make
our way from there.
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This is looking up the canyon walls a little further.
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Looking at Threepoint as the rain finally stopped.
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This started turning damn near sunny in fact looking back at part of the Banded Peak massif.
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The old foundations of the bridge whose decking we suspect that we found later that day.
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We surprised ourselves to find this fully elaborate camping set up just before the tributary
crossing we would have to do. Someone has clearly put a LOT of time into this setup judging
by the amount of large rocks they have moved to get this setup.
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So, this doesn't really do it justice as in Andrew's words, "My nuts are wet". We were up to
our balls in freezing water running about a zillion gallons per second through this area.
For posterity, it's good to keep your backpack really loose in case we do get swept up
as it's easier to ditch and get it off your back at that point. We needed two points on the
hiking poles and two feet solidly on the creek surface to keep the raging creek from pulling
us down river.
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Yeah, this sums up my feelings for fording creeks early season.
Looking at what we DID cross
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I think this is Cougar Mountain above Andrew's shoulder here and to the back. As usual in the
Rockies, we were treated to unrelenting scree to get going out of the valley floor.
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Looking across Andrew and back to the northwest, to the NE arm of Banded Peak.
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A look at some of the scree and choss we climbed to get to the ridge line.
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A cool hole/cave found on the buttress of the first peak of Threepoint. The guide actually
suggested going to the left side and on top of this ridge, but with the snow up there, we elected
to stay and hug the inside right side, which may have actually been sketchier with side-sloping scree
and slippery rocks pointing down.
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Our target for the day - Threepoint Mountain.
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Sweet look at our lunch spot with Threepoint above me.
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Trudging along the snow/ice to gain the main ridge we'd ride to the summit.
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Trudging along the base of the buttress.
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A better look at the slippery down-sloping rock and snow and ice across this section. I suspect it would be fine dry.
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After getting through the side sloping garbage, the ridge walk was beautiful here.
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Fossil found along the ridge walk. There were buckets full of this stuff in the limestone. Hard to
tell for a non-geologist, but I think they're either brachiopads or clam shells.
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Summit of Threepoint Mtn, 2595m, 17 June 2022.
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Andrew and I on the summit of Threepoint Mountain.
View from the summit of Threepoint
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The Elbow River, making its way to Calgary from its origin in the Elbow Lake and Rae Glacier.
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Andrew just below the main summit. Our initial intention on this day was to try for both
Mt Rose and Threepoint, but with the snow level, the cornices, and the visibility dropping quickly,
we erred on the side of caution and pulled the pin.
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This would be the normal exit, but we turned tail and went back the way we came.
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What I thought was early moss campion along the ridge is actually purple saxifrage. Thanks Ben Gadd!
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Well, we would have gone the way we came, until we looked at this snow field and thought it would be WAYYYY easier than
going back along the scree. So, we dropped ~500 vertical metres right quick and then fought
our way along the creek/canyon walls instead.
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This 'easy path home' beckoned us to continue out this way instead of the terrible scree.
To be fair, in retrospect, it was roughly the same or even a bit longer, but it did allow
Andrew to say we did a 'loop', a very important psychological win!
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Hard to gauge the steepness here, but it wasn't
flat by any stretch. We did crampon up, although it's arguable whether that made it easier.
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The downside of dropping into an unknown snow field is that your only good data is from ~10m contour lines
on a topo. Sooo, a 5-8m cliff doesn't quite fit into those lines well. Needless to say the exit this
direction was mostly good, but quite a bit of this kind of stuff ensued.
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And lots of creek hopping back and forth too.
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Some of the cliff bands we kept running into on our exit out.
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Until we finally came out to the valley floor and saw cliff walls down to the creek we knew we
were going to have to cross again. What had been nagging me all day was how much the flow
was going to increase throughout the day considering how much rain we had been getting the week
previous. Based on the raging of this creek, you can guess that it's a LOT more than it was in the morning.
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Here's Andrew considering whether this crossing (down a canyon, across a raging creek, up a canyon on
the other side, and hope we still have a reasonable trail back) is better or worse than what we
did earlier that day. We decided to get back to our first crossing instead.
Also NOT the right spot to cross
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The other nagging feeling I had as we were working our way down the creek walls was that if we weren't downstream of it
when we exited, we'd have to cross it a second time when it got to the main creek. Well, I was right, and thankfully
it was just boot-top water since we could skip across the stones.
I still get more scared crossing water than I do in most parts of the mountains
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After some effort for sure, we were back at our original crossing with our balls firmly tucked
into our bodies like turtles. We could tell that the water flow was much higher. The question
was whether the water level had risen that much more too. Only one way to find out.
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Looking at the backcountry camp from across the creek before we crossed it.
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The fact that we don't have video from our crossing suggests how properly scared we were of this
crossing. We elected to leave our boots and pants on, since we thought we'd need the extra grip.
While it meant we were then totally soaked, it was the right call in the end. Here are my boots
starting the process of drying out that would only be complete two days later on the boot dryers.
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Our crossing we did twice. This was the most scared I've been fording a stream and was definitely
at my limit for comfort zone. In future, let's leave crossings/fordings like this until much lower
water levels, or at least a good bit after a ~100mm rain event.
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Andrew and I used the backcountry camping setup to dry off and eat a bit before the final push
back to our bikes.
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This is the bridge decking from the bridge that ripped out in 2014.
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Skis back on the pack and heading for home on the bike. A full day for sure although we
did start and finish without headlamps, so not too 'full'.
Link to Garmin Connect HERE for the activity with highlights of 5900 calories burned (chest strap worn),
11 hours, 28+km (Andrew's said more like 35 km) and 1410 m elevation gained.
I did have to move my watch to 'Ultratrac' mode for the last couple of hours or my watch would have died.
