This summer some of my friends and I decided to undertake a seldom-done expedition to the summit of Mt. Castleguard, located at the soutern edge of the Columbia Icefields in the Canadian Rockies. Castleguard is not the highest nor the most difficult climb, but it's remote location means that few parties attempt it.

Typically, for an alpine climbing trip, we can put together a group of three or four people, but this trip generated lots of interest and we had nine people ready to go. Unfotunately, one fellow got ill before the departure day and him and his wife bowed out, bring our group down to a still-large seven. We got seven people to the Caslteguard Meadows (really just a giant rock slab), but on climbing day, six headed out thanks to one fellow losing his sunglasses. Glacier travel and snow/ice climbing without sunglasses can be painful and deadly, so he got to sleep in. I admit as I crawled out of my bag at 3:00AM I was a tad jealous, but as I locked my crampons on I was glad to be getting going...

Backing up a bit...

Here is the view of the Saskatchewan Glacier from the valley floor. We'd been on the move for a good portion of the day when we came across "The Objective." The trip involves backpacking to the toe of the glacier, traveling on the glacier to the base of the Castleguard Meadows, climbing the rock to the Meadows and overnighting. The second day is climbing and the third day is out. the red line shows the route to base camp and the yellow line is the climb.



Here I am after donning my glacier travel gear. After slogging across the moraine (rubble) it was great to get on the ice. Even though it was 20C, the wind was very cold on the glacier. Thanks to the lack of snow on the glacier, we could see the crevasses and decided to travel unroped to make some time.


We goofed a bit on the glacier, staying to the left and hitting many heavily crevassed areas. Up on the Castlegurad Glacier, we could see the center of the glacier was much smoother and on the return trip, it saved us nerly two hours. That's me leaping over the crevasse...


Here is my tent mate and my tent. We were tired and hungry and even though the rock was hard, we were happy to be settled in for the night.


The "other half" of base camp.


We'd climbed the glacier out of base camp and luckily it was snow covered. We were worried about the snow conditions as it was very warm. The snow covers the crevasses and we were very concerned about those snow bridges weakening. Castleguard has a massive system of crevasses called bergschrunds prior to the summit ridge and we'd have to find our way past them. We ended up on the left-most edge of the mountain. The yellow line shows our route...


Leading Rope Team 2 (my team) up the final part of the steep snow slopes is my partner Sandy, and that's me just finishing step-kicking at Anchor position. We're simuclimbing roped, but unprotected as the snow conditions were awesome. The clouds hung around until nearly 8:00AM and it really helped.


After the last steep part, we negotiated the not-too-narrow summit ridge and gained the summit. The summit itself is very exposed and quite small. Our group of six was a little crowded. We remained on the summit for 15 minutes as the sun had come out and we were very concerned about the snow conditions. This is me on the summit...


Another of me...


Here's the north side of Mt. Bryce and it's valley from the summit...

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

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