Had a long, smoky but enjoyable day climbing Apollo on the S Ridge of Mt Hector Wednesday with Stan. This is an excellent alpine rock route that offers challenging climbing at its grade. Good gear placement skills and the ability to deal with loose rock are required, but several three star pitches on the route make it very worthwhile.

There is still lots of water flowing on the approach at treeline (~2300 m) and several snow patches remain near an optional high bivy location at ~2550 m, though the snow patches are melting quickly.

We had light winds for the first half of the route and were happy to be wearing long underwear tops and bottoms as well as puffy jackets for the first part of the day.

A couple belay station hangers were loose and we tightened them as best we could, but a wrench would be nice to cinch them down for the future.

A great day out on a prominent landmark in the Bow Valley. Many thanks to the first ascentionists for all their hard work.