A field day with Barry Blanchard
Thanks to funding from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies I had the opportunity to work with a guide and explore more complicated terrain around the Abbot Pass area of Lake Louise. I was very lucky to go out with the legendary Bubba, aka. Barry Blanchard.
I picked up Barry up at 5AM and headed to Lake Louise, we hiked up to the Plain of Six and down to the lower Victoria glacier. It was actually really hard to access! Recession has made steep, loose moraines – some of which have obvious ice cores making the rock exceptionally loose. After some navigating, we make it onto the glacier. The entire length of the glacier was covered in rock, had little to no snow coverage, and lots of water flowing down it.
We didn’t need crampons at first because it was relatively low angle and the rock on the ice gave us good grip, however it required careful walking as the surface under the rock was VERY slippery! On the way up, we found a golf ball, one crampon, and a camera case. About ¼ of the way up we encountered rockfall off Lefroy, which started as showers of little pebbles but as we got higher the same place started releasing bigger rocks. The largest rock was about the size of a dinner plate!
Upper Victoria also seemed to be waking up and released a handful of seracs - the Death Trap was absolutely living up to it’s name! I was quite spooked and the route above was only getting more complicated, especially around the bergschrund. Because my shoulder is still giving me grief from my dislocation in mid-July, I didn’t think I could ice climb or self-arrest, so we unfortunately decided to turn around. We ended up walking the entire forefield back to Lake Louise, found quite a few large holes with one obvious moulin which was very cool (I wish I had taken a picture!!). The walking was quite tedious and very loose at times. As glaciers keep receding and ‘scree’ walking becomes a larger and larger part of mountaineering – it is going to really suck!
The ‘Death Trap’ in Abbot Pass, 1929 and 2022
Fun tid-bits I learned:
The north face of Victoria, first climbed by Rudolph Aemmer, was a snow route all summer and it is now rarely climbable due to a lack of snow.
Lefroy used to have 3 nice snow gullies to climb up – now you are lucky if there is 1 good gully to get up.
Abbot pass itself is becoming increasingly inaccessible:
From O’Hara side, the toe of the gully is eroding away and making it very steep. Rockfall is an increasingly large concern in that area.
Lake Louise side, when the hut was first built, guides predominantly took clients up the from Lake Louise to climb Victoria and/or Lefroy. Climbing this side of Abbot Pass is rarely down these days because rockfall combined with serac fall makes this rapidly receding glacier complicated terrain to navigate.
South summit from Abbot Pass used to be quite popular, guides are now taking folks increasingly to the North summit to avoid Abbot pass all together
Aberdeen is increasingly technical as well – used to be a grade 1-2 ice climb to get up onto the glacier. Now it is more technical and guides require some experience prior to signing up for that peak.