Spent the last few days guiding a few of the 11,000(ft)ers.
Flew into Assiniboine lodge and guided an ascent of the peak on the 24th. We had slightly different conditions than posted earlier this week in Conrad's MCR. The night we arrived it rained heavily on and off throughout the evening and despite the rain clearing off, a heavy veil of cloud remained shrouding the upper mountain for a good part of our ascent. Everything above the red band was covered in rime and verglass, which for us, slowed the progress down some relative to the lower mountain. Later that afternoon, a party who had started and returned much later than us reported dry(er) conditions on the upper mountain. The Gmoser Highway was in good shape both up and down on either end of the trip, but if I was going back I might consider taking up a few pitons to either back up some in place anchors, or change out the old hardware.
Both days we saw and heard of parties leaving the hut after 9am, one at 11am. Both days we watched lightening hit the upper half of Assiniboine as well as a couple of the surrounding peaks by mid to late afternoon. We chose to leave the hut early and preferred dealing with the rime and verglass as opposed to the electricity.
Yesterday I guided ascents of both Mounts Victoria and Huber from the valley bottom at Lake O'Hara. Leaving the hut at 0400am we got a short but strong rain event around 0530am, and the odd shower throughout the day. We approached the peak via the Huber Ledges which despite being a bit damp were in their usual good shape for this time of year. We found short sections of exposed ice on the glacier as we reached the toe, but for the most part travel was on well settled, or frozen supportive snow. A short, punchy section of around 3100m had us post-holing up to knee deep for a few steps, but otherwise travel on the glacier was great and crevassing minimal on the line of ascent. The overnight rains down at O'Hara had also produced snow at upper elevations, the snow line in the area reaching down to ~3350m. leaving the climbing on the ridge of Victoria snow covered to the summit.
We climbed continuous snow to the summit of Mount Huber on our way down from our summit of Victoria. Good step kicking all the way up and down from the summit. A few open crevasses to dodge but all were easily avoided, even in the whiteout we had for the trip up.
Have a great weekend out there!
Mike Trehearne
Cloud Nine Guides Inc.
ACMG AG/ASG
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