My buddy Graham invited me to his annual sufferfest and I happily obliged.
While we only ticked off one peak on my list, we had an epic trip through some
wild terrain, clocked over 55km, 4000+m elevation, and very limited trail time.
Thanks Graham!
First, a few photos around Cochrane
Biking for beer
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Walter loves making crafts, even if it's just gluing balls to Gatorade caps.
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I took the boys for a bike ride to Half Hitch so that I could have a beer with lunch.
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I'm not totally sure why Walter wanted to paint his nails, but he did.
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Date night! This was our 13th wedding anniversary at the Italian Farmhouse.
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Here's Walter, not very pleased that I took him to ride trails with me. I did bring the Tow-Whee though!
Barn Burner 2022
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My good friend Graham normally finishes his ridiculously intense teaching year by crushing his body
and soul with a thorough mountain outing. This year all of his partners bailed on him, so he and
I did one a bit later into July. This is just before we forded the Sheep River to start on our
outing.
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Only up to the knees so not as dangerous as even a few weeks previous to this. Graham had
tried a first attempt but made an adult decision to come back when conditions were better.
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Peak 1 on this day was planned for Junction Mountain. You can't quite see it here yet as there's
a LOT of ridge in the way first.
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Graham LOVES a good meadow prance and this day had a few of them.
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Graham with his cool new Bike Cochrane hat. To be fair, we were quite matchy matchy as I was
also rocking the same shirt that Graham had bought me.
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We had an absolutely stunning morning on this day with great views all around us. This is looking
past Gibraltar Peak, Highwood Peak, and into the Dogtooth Mountains.
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This ridge goes on and on until you see a big block of rock buttress where it changes character
pretty wildly.
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Soooo, what is the line again? Somehow up this scree-filled side slope to something remotely
close to a scramble? More like 5.x to me...
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This was the ledge we crept along with our ~50 lb packs.
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After making our way through much tougher climbing that we should be doing with packs on,
Graham is showing the way to the col and to much easier walking.
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Graham says, "Boo-yah! This rock is solid now!"
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Popping over the last little bit of rock.
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And then boom, beautiful, easy walking up to the summit from here.
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Although we have all of this side-hilling scree first...
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Graham, on the summit of Junction Mountain, writing in his log book.
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Me and the summit register. Yup, that's Hello Kitty.
View from the summit of Junction Mountain
Top of Junction Mountain
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After coming down off the summit and deciding NOT to continue to Pyriform, we found some snow and
a REALLY long ridge to walk.
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Interesting-looking fossil Graham found.
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So, I didn't take a single picture on one of the longest ridges I've ever walked along. It turns out
I was pretty sketched out and was more worried about my footing. We got to the point though that
I hit my wall and said to Graham, "That's all I've got my friend." And Graham, of course being
incredibly hospitable said, "Well, let's find a way down here!". I'm pointing at the way we
came down.
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Looking to the other side to Pyriform looked pretty neat. At this point though, we were thinking
more about the fact that we were both out of water and needed a campsite.
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So, naturally, Graham keeps hunting until we found something suitable. The first few spots along the
Trap Creek though were where the water was flowing underground. Ugh.
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But, Graham provides! He found us an amazing spot for the night complete with a flowing creek and
an incredible supper!
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And did I mention that Graham added these two bad boys to his pack without telling me? He said, "Uh
Paul, I want you to come see something in the creek." I had basically crumbled into a puddle when we
got to camp, and Graham had pumped me full of chicken noodle soup, charcuterie, and dinner, and I was
finally starting to feel human again. So THIS was quite a surprise chilling in the creek!
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Cous cous with LOTS of bacon bits please!
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This was the first night in my new bivy sack so Graham showed me how to use it. To be fair, we wouldn't
have needed more than a simple tarp as it was crazy warm on this night.
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Um, yes, that's right, breakfast started with a burrito, courtesy of chef Graham! This guide is
the real deal folks!
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After having a debrief and planning session, we decided to make an attempt on Patterson's Peak
from a direction we couldn't find any beta on. It 'looked like it would go' from looking at
the 10m topo lines. But, any first-year geography student will tell you that a 10m topo will
happily hide a 9m cliff for you. Graham is giving the thumbs up saying 'Let's give it a whirl'!
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This ridge with the mist on it was now our target. The initial plan was to do the long route
around the peak and come up the back way. Once we got closer though, we thought we could see
a good line to attack the west ridge and we went for it.
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This was roughly where we thought we could get a good look at the full route. I think it was
about here that we figured that the peak wasn't actually doable from this side, but that we
thought we could get up to a ridge that would allow access around to an old mine and then down
and around to the main route.
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Looking back at where we stood earlier the day before. The top of Junction Mountain looks a LONG
way from here!
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This tarn was actually our planned campsite. It would have taken us an extra 3 hours to have reached
this spot and we would have been demolished by then.
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This is about mid-way up the ridge when the weather started to turn. Graham got an Inreach weather
update from Kayla saying that thunderstorms were enroute. We could see them starting to circle at
this point from a few different angles.
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This was the 'reasonable' level of scrambling that we were comfortable with. Unfortunately, that
level was pushed up quite a bit shortly after this small pitch. We then made the call to give up this
ridge and drop back down to creek. It's never easy giving up your objective, but on this day, we had
very dark clouds in three directions, rock that wasn't getting easier, and 50 pound packs that also
weren't giving up. The objective on any given day is always simply to get home safely, so we turned
tail and called it.
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The exit was definitely not simple as we tried to get back down to the creek level that we had started
our day from.
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This is Graham saying that he's VERY happy to be off that ridge as the boomers starting coming in.
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We jumped over this snow gully to get over to where we could exit this drainage. It looks cool though.
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One of the many things Graham taught me on this trip was the use of an excellent sil tarp.
This kept us dry as we ate chocolate and had lunch while the world dumped around us.
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Our initial target for the day wasn't to be, but as Graham likes to tell me, a day walking in the forest
with a good friend is always a great day regardless of the objective.
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We got down into the drainage finally, but it was a long ways from easy from this point onward as we
fought the side slope, cliff bands, waterfalls, and tight canyons before getting back to our
starting point of the morning.
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I thought I was being smart by going high on the opposite side, but wound up having to give up all
of that elevation riding down a scree slope to get away from more ugly side sloping scree.
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Once we finally exited the drainage, we got back to what looked to be a hunter's trail and found this
cabin that's marked on the Gem Trek map. It looked pretty cool to me, and would have been the end of the
day for us if it had been unlocked!
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Which of course it wasn't, but it was still a neat find!
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This is me strongly approving of Graham's excellent campsite for night 2. Once we got the sil tarp
and our gear set up, the world unloaded about 25mm of rain on us. We stayed happy and dry under the
cover of Graham's solid work.
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Early the next morning dawned with a perfect sky and lovely light.
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Our fantastic and dry campsite! Thank you Graham!
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Making breakfast bagels. Did I mention that Graham (my guide) planned, picked up food for,
carried food, and made all of our meals?? I should be putting out!
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Graham isn't terribly pleased here as we start the day fording a few creeks to get us on the right side
of our exit to the Bull Creek hills.
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A disemboweled rodent we found on the trail.
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Looking back at Mt Head and Mt Holy Cross.
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Graham and a gorgeous view into the mountains. You almost can't see all of the cow shit
on his legs from slipping in the muck.
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One of the cemented in old oil wells in the area.
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That's what you get for hiking in Crocs!
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An old bridge that washed off the river. This was likely planned to be a temporary bridge and
after the flood destroyed it, it was cheaper to simply leave it here rather than bring it back.
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Graham finding the way to get up and over a fence to find the 'right route' over the Bull Creek
Hills. After changing our plans a couple of times on this trip, Graham was determined to make sure
all of the traveling we did was still really awesome.
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A cauliflower mushroom I found on the trail.
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Top of a high point enroute to Bull Creek hills.
View from the Bull Creek Hills
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Graham says Life is good in the Rockies hanging out with a buddy.
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I think we figured out that this pine is the limber pine which has massive pine cones and is
similar to the protected whitebark pine but not the same.
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Check out this sweet skull that Graham found!
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This is a wildflower that Graham tried to teach me the name of and I both forgot the name and
also managed to overexpose the photo. Cool though.
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Graham says 'When the sky is booming, get the F out of there!' We had some more massive thunderstorms
as we exited back to the Highwood valley.
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Giant Douglas fir trees on the way back to the roadway. I'm proud to say that my fitness and legs
didn't fail me on this trip, but the surfaces of my feet most definitely did fail me. I've since
replaced the insoles in my boots and will be keen to see if that improves it. Thanks to this
tree hugger for an epic trip and thanks for the confidence in inviting me!
Garmin Connect data for day 1 HERE with highlights of 18.6km, almost 12 hours of movement, and 1760m elevation
gained. This was one of the hardest days I had done in a while wearing a pack.
Garmin Connect data for day 3 HERE with highlights of 18km of travel and 1100m of travel.
While none of these numbers is that impressive, it's impressive to realize that it was only the last ~8km
of the whole trip that was actually on a trail. It's also notable that in all three days, I outlasted my fully charged
Garmin device. Some of the GPS tracks are a mess since I had to turn on 'Ultratrac' just to finish the session.
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Day 3 bringing us home to civilization - thanks Kayla for picking us up at the highway!
