Report on the Great Ramblers’ Kananaskis Range, Skiing & Hiking Traverse of January 20, 2002:On a dark, chilly morning in January, five intrepid Ramblers assembled at the Assumption parking lot shortly before 7:00 am. Bob St. John, D Mulligan, Arnold Westberg, Terry Manning, and Rick Collier (their humble coordinator and your even more humble scribe) harassed each other briefly about what kinds of equipment were essential and what were optional (mircrowave and tummy TV were left behind) and made arrangements for the traverse’s pickup and delivery vehicles. Soon we were off, boring a hole through the heavy dark on our way to Galatea Creek. Once there we discovered that fact correlated with earlier predictions – there was zip for snow at the trailhead. Oh well, what’s a kilometer’s trudge in ski boots?

By 8:40am we were safely at the Rummel Lake parking slot near Engadine – and here there seemed to be plentiful snow. Our plan was to ski up to the lake, forge on into the gullet of the unknown, reaching Rummel Pass about lunch-time, then plunge down into the belly of adventure (the headwaters of the S branch of Galatea Creek – see map 82 J/14), and from there on abandon this metaphor entirely.

After a check on safety equipment and transceivers, we headed off. The climb up to NW ridge of Mount Galatea was steady in brisk, enjoyable conditions – light cloud at –7º C – on a good trail. But it was obvious that, although snow depths were moderate, no appreciable amounts of new snow had fallen for some time. We reached the benches (where the foolhardy practice telemarking) above the lake about 11:00am and made good progress for another 0.75 km until we had to fix skis to packs and walk the wind-scoured rubble to the pass itself. And the winds were indeed having a wonderful howl through this valley – all five of us were now bloated in many layers of protective clothing. We reached the pass just at noon, for a glimpse of what lay ahead – and from this vista, it did not look too bad. Ah, the joys of aging eyesight!

But at least the descent to the E seemed to be in good shape – no cornices, no snowpack on the scree, and the lower slopes appeared quite stable. We made our way down to the goat trail, followed the trail to the snow, and then plunge-stepped down to a scree island where we put our skis back on. Hard-packed snow, with not a trace of powder, took us down around a treed corner to a point where we had to zigzag the side of a long slope descending from Mt. Galatea – once again, stability tests indicated that the snow was unlikely to perform any undesirable motions, and it didn’t. At the bottom of the slope we were back in scrub trees, and we skied to the boundary of the taller pines where we stopped in modest sun for lunch (1:00-1:30pm).

We were now at the true crux of the traverse – a three kilometer section that lacked any formal trail and which descended a thousand feet to intersect with Galatea Creek proper. In other words, we were going to be bushwhacking like crazy (another in a long series of ‘Rick’s Greatest Adventures’). And this prediction was not an exaggeration. After a pleasant powder ski through semi-open forest, we had to regain some elevation and then ‘crash-n’-burn’ several hundred feet down a steepish embankment to a point close to what I think is called Lost Lake (GR225346). Once across Lost Lake, all five of us took turns humiliating ourselves at the paucity of our route-finding skills and the number of times we had to climb up and over deadfall snags on our skis. Oh, it was great fun, indeed, sweating and groaning and falling backwards into willows, and it took only a mere 2.5 hrs to thrash our way down this three kilometer section. But, despite these horrors, I must compliment the group – everyone kept a cheerful attitude about the ordeal, and there was a minimum of whining (except for Bob SJ, who was whining during even the pleasant sections).

We reached Galatea Creek about 4:00pm to find (as I had anticipated) that it was still being used as a hiking trail, perhaps by would-be ice climbers. We were able to ski about a kilometer on this slick, icy path, but eventually the inclines and declines became sufficiently rigorous that one by one we abandoned our boards for our feet. We slagged out the last three kilometers (not a single klick as I had earlier predicited) of Galatea Creek in just over an hour, the last kilometer taking by far the longest time – it was slick and treacherous with glare ice, and more than one Rambler was provided with an unintended skating lesson.

We arrived back at the van at 5:45pm, drove back up the Smith-Dorien to secure the second vehicle, and then puttered in to Canmore for a supper at the Drake to celebrate a fine trip that everyone seemed to enjoy, but which no one would recommend to others or wish to repeat during this lifetime.

Rick Collier