The ACMG TAP Alpine guide exam spent the last few days, from August 28- September 4th climbing around the Rockies.

We climbed an assortment of routes from front range rock climbs such as:

Castle mountain by various routes

EEOR

Mt Louis

Mt.Lorette

Lady Mac

The Fold

And mountaineering objectives such as:

Mt. Fay

Mt. Victoria

Athabasca

A2

Mt. Hector

We had overall unsettled weather and cold temps making for cold mornings, and chilly rock climbing. A cold front brought temps as low as -10 in the alpine and up to 20cm of new snow on the higher peaks such as Athabasca, Victoria, and Mt. Fay. This was accompanied by a cold NW flow that brought moderate winds which were gusting to extreme at times, especially noted at higher elevations around the icefields parkway.

The freezing level was noted around 2500m which left a layer of verglass in some locations, such as on the Perren approach to Mt. Fay. This seems to have largely melted off now.

The heat from the summer has made many glaciers more challenging than normal, and the new snow and wind did a good job of thinly bridging and hiding crevasses. This made glacier travel much more difficult than it has been the last few weeks when crevasses were easily seen. Good roped glacier travel techniques and probing were required to safely navigate these areas.

Also noted on the higher elevation mountaineering objectives was the accumulation of new snow and the formation of new windslabs. This created both slower than normal climbing conditions on routes such as Mt. Fay west ridge and Mt.Victoria.

We were not able to attain the summits on either of these peaks due to slow conditions encountered.
We observed natural loose dry avalanches up to size 1.5 in areas such as Mt.Lefroy west face. These appeared most prevalent in areas where the new snow was directly on ice.

The winds redistributed the new snow and formed windslabs especially at ridgelines and crossloaded features such as the silverhorn. We felt that these windslabs could be triggered by climbers or rockfall and would likely produce avalanches up to size 2. We managed this risk by avoiding these areas as best we could but we also carried avalanche safety gear with us.

The thin snow cover made us concerned about even small sluffs as the consequences would be pretty ugly as in many areas as you could get raked over rocky ground.

It is likely that these snow and ice routes will come into shape again soon as the new snow settles and makes for less calf intensive climbing with good step kicking.
Our last climbing day was September 4th, and by then the lower elevation rock route had dried out again and were in good condition. The precip and cold temps had certainly made some of the approaches slippery as the frozen mud began to thaw during the day.

Throughout the week our primary concern on most routes climbed was rockfall. This subsided a bit with the snowcover and cold temps, but will increase again with warming and melting.

Also of note was that animals have come down to the valley and a bear was observed foraging on the castle mountain fire lookout trail. There was also a wolf warning on the rockbound lake trail.

We carried bear spray, travelled in groups and made noise to avoid unwanted encounters.

Enjoy fall!

Submitted by Jeff Relph

On behalf of the ACMG TAP Alpine guides exam candidates