Four of us made an early start from Calgary to meet Carl coming back from a Selkirks ski trip at the Lake O'Hara trailhead around 7:00 am. There were two or three other groups getting ready in the parking lot to try Cathedral. A friendly young man headed for Cathedral remembered Manfred from a lodge trip years ago (the Cathedral folks all looked very young to me - too young for "years"!). He helped us out with some advice as he had done Popes peak col a couple of weeks ago. We actually took off from the Lake O'Hara trail 1.58 Km from the trailhead on a broken trail not the 2Km suggested by Chic Scott. This trail did eventually intersect the Ross Lake trail which we followed. I think it is a bit tricky to decide when to take off from the Ross Lake trail to head up but we probably went further than the 500m Chic Scott suggests. We followed an old broken trail rising up the Narao slopes. Ski crampons helped Carl and I on the icy frozen crust but the others all managed sometimes taking a less steep line than the broken trail we were following. At tree line we started getting some great views but we ended up quite a bit climbers right of where we needed to be. Consensus from Carl and Manfred seemed to be that this happens always on this trip and the traverse is easy and scenic to the bench to gain the hanging valley below the col.

Manfred found a good route along the top of the moraine climbers left though there were some rocky bits to negotiate. Manfred broke trail and kicked steps through the cliff band and continued to break trail on skis above the cliff band.

Finally Manfred paused long enough for me to catch him up and do a bit of a turn at the trail breaking in snow that was now winter snow!

We got to the col, I think, around 12:45 pm with great views towards Lefroy, the Death trap and Abbot pass.

Not for me but it has been done ... descending on skis to the Plain of Six Glaciers Lake Louise ski traverse .. Wow!

After peeling skins we skied down in great snow to a dividing pinnacle in the route.

We had come up skiers right. A steeper line skier's left was appealing to avoid the cliff band -there was, however, some debris on this line (serac fall or cornice fall debris?) but nothing deeper had been triggered. After a group discussion we decided to go with the snow that we knew from the trail up - which we knew would still be good skiing. Carl had skied the steeper line on a previous trip so was a bit disappointed but went along with the group decision. The other line was still pretty good.

A few of us had various issues hitting rocks in shallower snow amongst the moraines lower down but Carl helped out retrieving a ski. Before we skinned back up to the Narao shoulder we looked back to our tracks from the col

.At Narao shoulder we took a look at tracks on Cathedral - not sure anyone made it to the true summit on this day but there were tracks from an exciting line off a sub peak.

In Narao trees we decided to go more skier's left of our ascent line. The snow was nicely softened in the trees and it was pretty easy to ski in control on a few cms of softened snow on top of the crust.

I thought the group worked really well together keeping everyone in view and working the group line - some times in fairly tight trees - thanks everyone. Back at the trailhead just before 4:30 pm for a round trip time of around 9 hours. Turned out Sim knew some of the ladies who cut the exciting Cathedral sub peak line - small world! For me a great spring skiing day greatly helped out by Manfred and Carl who had done this trip before. Thanks also to my other companions Sim and Gerald - always good company on these trips from John.