For attempt number 3 of Townsend, I recruited my buddy Levi and my friend Matt to take a
run at Mt Townsend, along with adding Epic Tower and Mythic Tower too. It was a serious undertaking
with more than 16 hours of push, but we completed it on a gorgeous day in August.
First - Downhill biking and karting at COP
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One of the events on Henry's 'must-do summer list' was to go back to COP and do some downhill biking.
Here we are on the chairlift getting some laps in.
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This is how they transport bikes at COP - less efficient than other systems, but super easy for little rippers.
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Henry having fun on Safari Island - one of the best blue flow trails at COP.
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Henry is getting quite a bit more stable on his bike and enjoying the flow trails.
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The boys had wanted to try downhill karting, so we did this at the end of our outing. Apparently, a Sunday
in August is mighty busy, so even though there were spots to book before we left in the morning, they were
gone by the time we arrived. So, short answer is the world belongs to the planners.
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Walter tried one lap on his own and then wanted to ride with me to go faster.
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We didn't get a photo of Henry since he was going so fast. These karts are actually on three wheels
and Walter really liked going super fast until we almost touched down on the front side of the kart.
Hiking Mount Townsend
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So I convinced my friend Matt and my friend Levi to join me in my mission to climb more peaks. This
was an early morning start where I picked up Matt and met up with Levi for our semi-annual peak bagging
expedition. This is the sign inside the outhouse at the Cougar Creek trailhead in Canmore. The last time
Levi and I tried this peak, we got turned away due to construction and the time before that my buddy Lou
got a massive migraine and we turned back.
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My buddy Matt had spent the day before in Tokyo so I was pretty happy he was able to join our outing.
The light off the peaks behind Canmore were pretty nice.
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This is the first view into the Cougar Creek that I've had since they finished the dam. This would be
a pretty massive flood event before the dam gets overrun now.
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A look at my gear and some of the boulders in the creek.
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This is NOT our route (on the mountain), but I found the vantage points challenging until we got quite a ways into the creek.
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Thankfully most of our morning was in the shade of the creek valley as it would have been a hot one.
This is looking back towards Canmore in the nice colour of the sun along with the bright moon too.
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Some of the car-sized boulders in the creek.
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After a pretty long approach up the Cougar Creek, we eventually got to the climb up to Townsend.
I thought this canyon was cool and Levi stuck his finger into it.
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This is the start of the climb up to Mt Townsend. It was pretty steep, and relatively loose
wherever you weren't right on slab. I took a slightly more left line as it was along the tree line
and wasn't as loose.
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A look at my route with Levi and Matt slightly to my right.
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Once we cleared the trees and got above a rock band, we got a look at our destination, on the middle
left here.
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I'd argue that Matt was a little outside his comfort zone most of the day with us, but
he had great spirits and gave it a good college try.
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Some of the steeper almost fourth class hiking to gain elevation before heading hard left.
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This shows most of the route to the summit. This is more than 5 hours after leaving the car.
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Levi did the bulk of the route-finding on this day leading a strong path wherever we needed to go. I'm coming
in behind and picking up the rear.
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Matt and I deciding that trekking poles have no place when you're using all fours to climb down something.
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The weakness in the rock is actually to the left of this shot. The wall here looks pretty
imposing so it's good we didn't have to climb it.
Video of a look at the route up Townsend
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Levi and Matt at the weakness in the rock.
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Me looking at our next section of route. It was NOT up this wall.
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A good luck at the last push to summit Mt Townsend. The cleft here or the 'belly button' as I called it
was full 5th class climbing, but the seam to the right and then up the scree pile was very comfortable
4th class. You can guess which one Levi did.
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Matt doing one of the steeper bits before the summit.
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Matt and I on, objectively, the better route than Levi.
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A cooler shot of Matt being a serious mountain climber.
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This doesn't look fun to me. Thanks to Levi for checking out this route, doing it anyway, and then telling us
that it was terrible.
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Levi and Matt making their way off the summit.
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Once you're up on a steep peak and you see how close you are to falling, sometimes it makes more sense to walk with your hands
off said peak.
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Me coming down from Mt Townsend with Epic and Mythic Towers ahead of us. We didn't really know the
route but we figured it out. Big kudos to Mapster for the GPX track.
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You know, just mountains everywhere you look. Not bad.
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The big guy behind me is Mt Fable, something I climbed with Andrew Skarsgard years previously. There's actually a route
back through Fable to get back down to the valley bottom, but not something we explored on this day.
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This is Epic Tower, our summit plan #2 for the day. It was a bit imposing to say the least.
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Looking back at Mt Townsend from the route to Epic.
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Levi on the wall before getting around the start of Epic Tower.
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This was the last little chimney before gaining the summit of Epic. To be fair, it was pretty loose
all through here and kicked a decent amount of rocks everywhere.
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Better look at Matt making his way up the pitch with Levi offering guidance.
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Levi Goertz, summit of Epic Tower, 12 Aug 2025.
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Levi with a cool view of mountains all around him looking to the south and west from Epic Tower.
Video of the summit of Epic Tower
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This is looking down to the Anklebiter Ridge side of the mountains. It was STEEP and straight down.
Video of the steepness to the north of us
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Considering the descent off Epic Tower. We decided to take a different route than this one as Matt was the smart one in the group.
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It turns out this was NOT the route either. But sometimes you have to go check to be sure.
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Most of the Rockies are a big pile of choss.
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This is what we DIDN'T descend and instead went around. Way to go team.
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After getting through the Epic summit and then bailing off the ridge for being too loose, we walked back
around and went under the peak to gain the ridge again before attempting Mythic Tower, the big bulbous-looking
peak on the left here.
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Fun fruits I stole from the kids along with a look at Cougar Peak.
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As we made our way over to try Mythic Tower, we had to traverse a LOT of loose and slabby rock.
Here's Matt checking out the route.
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Levi offering climbing guidance to Matt to ensure that he didn't blow a foothold on the limestone slab.
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A good look at some of the terrain under Mythic Tower. Not my favourite. Not hard, but not really fun either.
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After finally getting across about four different gullies, we finally got to scree forever at the far
side of Mythic Tower.
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Then we gained the ridge and looked back at Mythic. Can you see the 'obvious route' here?? To be
fair, this route isn't in any guidebooks and the route description I found online was done by some
crazy ultra-marathoner who is a mutant.
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A good look at the ridge on the way up to Mythic Tower.
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Levi saying 'Really Paul? Do YOU see a route?' The route is actually along a wide-ish ledge but then
up some actual 5th class climbing.
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"I say Levi, what the F are we doing up here? I don't see a route?"
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Levi walking across the ledge and doing some exploring. To be fair, under NO circumstances would I have
been exploring here without Levi's excellent climbing skills.
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A neat look at the ledge under Mythic Tower.
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The bottom of the chimney. I strongly considered making this as far as I was going for the trip but after
Levi explored it and proved it was fine, I joined him.
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Levi doing the 5.3-ish move to get across from the roof and over to the loose rock before the summit.
Pulling the roof-flake-y thing in the chimney was the obvious climbing piece here, but the three distinct
sections of climbing made me think we weren't scrambling anymore.
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The third bit of the climbing to gain Mythic Tower. The rock was fine and the climbing was
pretty simple, but the looseness of the rock made it challenging.
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The LOOOOOOONG scree route down to the creek bottom. This wasn't so much scree surfing as stepping on rocks
about the size of bowling balls and trying hard not to trip. More talus than scree to be fair.
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Matt asks 'Where is the scree surfing????' It's not here although we found three short veins of scree to ski.
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A good look at what our exit looked like as we had to flip on headlamps.
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Crossing one of the zillion of creek spots enroute out.
Video of the dark in the creek
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A look at the full route HERE . Data showed a 16 hour day and almost 2000m of elevation gained
and ~33km of travel.
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This is what my watch told me my day looked like the next morning.
