[MCR] Totem Creek Ice - Banff

I spent the day guiding the ice climb "Totem and Taboo" in Totem Creek (drainage south of Murchison). Thin and wet early season conditions.  I managed to scratch my way up three pitches and turned around part way up the fourth pitch where detached thin ice with water pouring over and behind it got the better of me. First (rotten) pitch was avoided by climbing a dry rock buttress on climbers right (30 m 4th class).

Apart from poor ice the main hazards were rockfall and falling ice - plenty of each in this NE facing zone until the sun wheeled around the corner at around 1 pm.

There is a trail on the N side of the creek. You can pick it up a few hundred meters from the highway just where the tracks from a giant earth mover peter out. Sparsely blazed but worth finding.

Tom Wolfe
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
www.sawback.com
Canmore, Alberta

   

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