Heart Mountain

Yesterday I headed out to the mountains to get a little bit of uphill hicking training. I left with a friend of mine and we elected to go for a ridge walk at the edge of the mountains. With avalanche dangers concistenly rated as high or extreme these days, any valley-travel is too dangerous to even consider. Avalanches can be triggered kilometers away and come down to the valley and take you out. In many cases, they find the bodies in the spring! In fact, we now sit at 14 avalanche-related deaths this year in Canada.... an average year.

The trail to the top of Heart Mountain starts with a steep trail/scramble that takes you up 2500' over less than 1 mile. Then you get a nice walk on the horseshoe-shaped ridge for about 2-3 miles and then head back down on the next ridge.

Even with a distance total distance of only about 5-6 miles, it still took us 7 hours to complete. We had to deal with loose rocks, snow, and a lot of wind. For the majority of the hike, the wind was blowing ferociously at us keeping the progression slow and our faces frozen!
Here is a picture, I'll add more later when I get those of my trailmate

Dom

first pitch:


second pitch:


Top of second pitch:



Last pitch:


View from somewhere near the top: