Ice Climbing in the Polar Vortex

 It's been quite a few years since I've driven east and taken part in one of the Sask Section's Ice-Climbing weekends.  I'm not even sure how many years it's been.  I wouldn't say that the years of absence has allowed me to forget how cold and hard ice climbing is, though.  Some memories never go away.

So it was with some misgivings that I agreed to go along on this year's beginners' ice-climbing weekend.  Really, the attraction of getting together with friends that I haven't seen much of over the past years was most of the appeal.  Hopefully, the weather would cooperate.

      

Sure enough, in the days before the weekend booked for the event, an "Arctic Outflow" dominated the weather.  It was colder than normal in the Kootenays, but it was just ridiculously cold in the Rockies and the prairies.  Night-time lows of -35C, day-time highs of maybe -15C.  I ended up wearing layers that I hadn't had out of the closet for years.

Despite that, a large group of us descended on the Shunda Creek Hostel near Nordegg, we went and climbed on Saturday, visited all evening and some went out again on Sunday.  At least Saturday's climbing location was in the sunshine.  However, my modified feet were unable to stand two days in the plastic boots, so I went, watched for a bit on Sunday, and then drove home.  It was one of those beautiful, blue-sky days in the mountains.  Dazzling snow, great scenery and a highway thankfully relatively free of traffic and other potential miseries of the mountain highways in winter.  

It was great to see the current crop of trip leaders who are now running things.  Great technical and organizational skills and fun times being had by so many new to the sport.  I remember years when we had to struggle to get half a dozen people to sign up for such trips.  I think there were almost 35 on this trip alone.  Good to see.