Chickadee Valley

After skiing here last week, we had to come back! More info to come.

Chickadee Slide Paths

More info to come.
We came back the next week!

Vermilion Peak

Trail Name: Vermilion Peak
Activity: Alpine Touring/Backcountry Skiing

Distance: ~7 km (RT)

Altitude: 2,647 m

Elevation Gain: ~950 m (to turnaround point)

Area: Kootenay National Park

Crew: Bennett, Glen, Andrea, Tom

Time to Summit: ?

Trailhead: Paint Potts Parking Lot

Getting There:

From the Trans-Canada (Hwy 1), head south on the Kootenay Highway (Hwy 93). Take the right-hand turn into the Paint Potts Parking Lot

Additional Info:

Cross the highway and head South. You'll see the avi slidepath after a few clicks. We went up to the right of this, in the dense trees. We got some nice cloud inversion, stellar views, and stellar turns this day!! We then headed to Panorama from here to meet the Baes at Jules' cabin. What a weekend.

The next set of photos may contain every photo I've ever taken in my whole life (aka. there are A LOT! I'm sorry! It's hard to narrow down photos!)

 Classic Slef.

 Pound it (not a BD Ad, I swear)

 Tight trees! (This wasn't even the bad part)

Ben. 

 Inversion!

 Boot packin'

 Back in!

 Lunch skis to sit on.

 Some soup-de-scoop

 Climbin', skinnin', risin'

 Gorgeous.

 Trees thinning out...

 Got some fresh turns.

 You go, Glen Coco.

 Navigating some rocks.

Everyone (minus Tom!)

Stanley Glacier/Storm Mountain Fire Break

Trail Name: Stanley Glacier Trail & Storm Mountain Fire Break
Activity: Alpine Touring/Backcountry Skiing

Total Distance: ~12 km

Altitude: ?

Elevation Gain: ~900 m total

Area: Kootenay National Park

Crew: Jon

Time to Summit: ?

Trailhead: Stanley Glacier Parking Lot

Getting There:

From the Trans-Canada (Hwy 1), head south on the Kootenay Highway (Hwy 93). Take a left into the Stanley Glacier Parking Lot.

Additional Info:

Jon and I decided to get our during my Christmas break from work. We wanted to do something on simple terrain since we are avi beginners, and even though the forecast was green/green/green, we settled on the Storm Mountain Fire Break. We ended up taking the wrong trail, and went up to Stanley Glacier - which was a great warm up! Then we came back down towards the parking lot and tried to bushwhack over to the Storm Mountain Fire Break, which was unsuccessful. Not sure what to do next, we tried to find the Fire Break by driving up the road a few hundred meters, and had success! (Its impossible to miss). We ended up parking at the bottom of it, got 3 runs in, and called it a day. Overall, we both wanted something a little more adventurous but were happy with the day due to our avi experience.

Heading up the Stanley Glacier Trail

 Jon, some poor visibility, and yellow-pants behind

 Jon again! We got a few fresh turns in on the Fire Break.

The Rockwall Trail (Overnight)

Name: The Rockwall Trail

Activity: Backcountry Camping/Backpacking

Total Distance: 61 km

# Nights: 3

Date: August 6-9, 2016

Area: Kootenay National Park

Crew: Ben, Eric, Travis, Stephen
Trailhead: Floe Lake Trailhead / Paint Pots Trailhead

Route: 
Day 1 - Floe Lake Trailhead to Floe Lake Campground (10km, 700m)
Day 2 - Floe Lake Campground to Tumbling Creek Campground (17.5km, 1100m)
Day 3 - Tumbling Creek Campground to Helmet Falls Campground (12.5km, 400m)
Day 4 - Helmet Falls Campground to Paint Pots Trailhead (14.7km, -400m)


We did the Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park from South to North. We ended up having to rent a 4-man tent since Bennett's work schedule lined up with our trip (yay)! The tent pads were plenty large enough for a 4-man and could most likely accommodate a 6-man (which we contemplated borrowing from JJ...)

Our plan was to do 2 side-trips - Numa Mountain and Goodsir Pass - we didn't end up doing either! It was too rainy on the first afternoon to enjoy summiting a mountain. Then on the third day we were going to hike up to Goodsir Pass, but we ran out of time because we took our time enjoying the hike from Tumbling to Helmet - we stopped for 2 hours to enjoy the sun and do some acro-yoga with Eric on Wolverine Pass, then also side-tripped up an unofficial peak "Drysdale NE4". Once we arrived at Helmet, we did the ~2km (RT) hike up to Helmet Falls

Overall this was an unreal trip. The weather was forecasted to rain most of the time, but we only had to hike in the rain for ~30mins on Day 2, and although it rained 2/3 nights, we never had to cook in the rain and we kept our tent/sleeping bags dry. The last day was by far the most weather-consistent so we were sad to leave the Rockwall Trail and go back to civilization.

Floe Lake reflection after some rain (Day 1)

Hiking up on the moraines across Floe Lake at sunset (Day 1)

 Beautiful wildflowers that we got to see every day! (Day 2)

Coming down from Numa Pass (Day 2)

Lush forest common along the trail at valley bottoms (Day 2)

Group selfie (Day 2)

Tumbling Glacier (Day 2)

View of Helmet Falls from the campsite (Day 3)

 Helmet Creek Patrol Cabin (Day 4)

Drysdale NE4

Hike Name: Drysdale NE4

Activity: Hiking

Altitude: ~2,400 m

Area: Kootenay (The Rockwall)

Crew: Travis, Stephen, Bennett, Eric

Getting There:

See the link below in "Additional Info".

Additional Info:

While we were on Day 3 of the Rockwall Trail on Rockwall Pass, we saw the opportunity to go up to a ridge and get a better view of the Rockwall and surrounding peaks (and bag a peak since we missed Numa the other day!). The weather rolling in behind us looked ominous so we stopped at a highpoint on the ridge and turned back - but it surprisingly stayed where we saw it (over Wolverine Pass), and it didn't rain all night!

 Travis, Eric and Bennett coming up the ridge

 Me and Bennett

 Bennett and the view behind towards Helmet Falls Campground. The Rockwall is seen on the left.

The clouds that looked menacing but stayed put.

Mount Kindersley Attempt

Hike Name: Mount Kindersley
Activity: Hiking
Distance: Unknown (We did not reach the top. No GPS.)
Altitude: 2,300 m
Elevation Gain: Unknown (We did not reach the top. No GPS.)
Area: Kootenay
Crew: Julia, JJ, Jay, Shahir, Jaimie, Steph, Jeevan, Praveen, Caitlin
Time to Summit: N/A (We did not reach the top.)
Lisa's Mom Rating: Yes


Additional Info:
We went far too early in the season and were unprepared for the snow. We spent 20 minutes trying to find the trailhead, and then after a few hours of hiking, we ended up in waist-deep snow. We had a lot of fun playing in the snow but got cold shortly after.

This mountain would be a LOT easier to manage in the summer time :)