- Rick Bombaci Looks like he even brought a good stout rope to hang him with. Remember, 13 turns on the noose.
Steve Sokoloski When last we spoke over a map of the Little Yoho Valley you said that on your divide trip you looked at it and decided that "it did not look too interesting" and went by on a different route. You were wrong. Great 4 days at Stanley Mitchell Hut. Lots of interesting hiking, lots of fun. Had to teach the flatlanders how to play cribbage. More coming on the blog. Just out and back at Lake Louise Hostel. And Robin Rose, long before August was Eagle Cap season it was Banff/Jasper season...
Rick Bombaci No, you were wrong. I never said that, and I don't know where your imagination came up with that. In fact, I put together a couple of off-trail links in my hike in 2008 specifically to enable me to hike the Iceline Trail through the Little Yoho Valley. I hiked through a miserable cold rain up out of Field, enjoyed views of Takakkaw Falls, walked by the Stanley Mitchell Hut, and climbed up out of the valley into a whiteout. That were two of my more challenging days.- Steve Sokoloski Well, now we have one more thing to argue over the next time we are at TG.
Showing posts with label Stanley Mitchell Hut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley Mitchell Hut. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Interesting People: Jimmy Beets and Bacon
We are trying to keep a list of people we have met on our trip who we have found memorable. we hope to do up some posts about them including such folks as Year in a Tent Bob, Sunny the Bus Driver, and Patrick the Michigander Coordinator.
We could not leave Yoho without mentioning Jimmy Beets and Bacon. Douglas Hammerstrom, this recipe is coming to CO with us so watch out. It is a simple dish, a pound of thick cut bacon with a medium maple cure, couple of sliced or shredded beets, a parsnip shredded if you care to and lots of black pepper. Big frying pan, fry it all up, done.
Coming to the first Monday Night With Mikey dinnerfest when we return. It really will rival 'rune and 'shroom pizza.
We could not leave Yoho without mentioning Jimmy Beets and Bacon. Douglas Hammerstrom, this recipe is coming to CO with us so watch out. It is a simple dish, a pound of thick cut bacon with a medium maple cure, couple of sliced or shredded beets, a parsnip shredded if you care to and lots of black pepper. Big frying pan, fry it all up, done.
Coming to the first Monday Night With Mikey dinnerfest when we return. It really will rival 'rune and 'shroom pizza.
The Takakkaw Falls Mets Fan
When we pulled into the Takakkaw Falls parking lot to begin our Stanley Mitchell Hut trip I noticed that the car next to us had a Mets hat sitting on the dashboard on the drivers side. Way out in the middle of British Columbia, a fellow traveller. ANd it was not just any Mets hat. It was the classic blue with orange lettering. Dutifully I took out my classic cap out it on and waited and hoped as we sorted and packed.
In a few minutes a couple of guys came out of the Takakkaw Falls Campground. The Mets fan was from California. We bonded instantly. I had been able to jump on the Internet and knew about some player movement at the end of the trading deadline, and wa aware that the Mets had backslid into first place. He filled in a few more details.
They ended up hiking the Iceline up to Stanley Mitchell and then out the Little Yoho Trail. Essentially doing the loop we contemplated counter clockwise in one day, while we planned on going clockwise in two days of hiking. So, we were there at the hut as they turned for home.
I seriously doubt that the Stanley Mitchell Hut has ever heard cries of , "Let's Go Mets!"as we said good bye to each other.
In a few minutes a couple of guys came out of the Takakkaw Falls Campground. The Mets fan was from California. We bonded instantly. I had been able to jump on the Internet and knew about some player movement at the end of the trading deadline, and wa aware that the Mets had backslid into first place. He filled in a few more details.
They ended up hiking the Iceline up to Stanley Mitchell and then out the Little Yoho Trail. Essentially doing the loop we contemplated counter clockwise in one day, while we planned on going clockwise in two days of hiking. So, we were there at the hut as they turned for home.
I seriously doubt that the Stanley Mitchell Hut has ever heard cries of , "Let's Go Mets!"as we said good bye to each other.
Four Days, Ten Glaciers and Two Wayward Johnsons: Part 2
One of the things you learn about when you actually get to a place is that your perceptions from afar are uually off base. I don't know how many years I had looked maps of the Little Yoho Valley. It is different when you finally get there and the little brown contour lines, the white patches showing glaciers and ice fields and the blue of lakes, streams and rivers morph into physical geography. Reality erases what the lines on the map put into your head. You also learn from other people about their perceptions of the area are.
People at the hut come to the valley for different reasons. It provides a cluster of high peaks that are not super technical, and thus are suitable for novice alpinists. They are also close so you can bag another if your chosen peak is not the best choice. we learned from other folks hanging at the huts and talking about mountains that the President was unclimbable at this time as the glacier leading to the summit had deteriorating snow and ice and was not safe for beginners or those unwilling to put forth the effort deal with the conditions. No worries, there was always another peak nearby for these folks to try.
It was clear that the site of the hut was chosen to maximize the access in both summer and winter. The hut log book talked of lots of winter activity. You have to ski up the Takakkaw Falls Road as it is closed in winter, then you get to do the six miles we hiked in. I am not sure how you ski up the 182 fights of stairs that got us to the hut (see Part 1 of this post). I am thinking that you might have to carry snow shoes to get up the steepest hills. However, once you get to Stanley Mitchell, there is lots of skiing to be had. Folks write about getting up into the snow bowls below the pass we missed yesterday and running turns down the bowl.
For our part we had to choose if we were going to take another shot at the pass or head up the legendary Iceline Trail. We chose the latter. The forecast for our out hike day was for showers and the day again had dawned as cloudless and sparkling. We hedged our bet by heading out the Iceline, lest we be rained out the next day.
The night before was also cloudless and also the height of the Perseid Meteor Showers, with a late rising moon. There was a lot of late night shuffling and scattered flashlights as folks took advantage of the open meadow vistas of the sky on their trips to the "biffy". It was actually difficult to recognize constellations as stars of less magnitude were visible in the dark sky presenting a confusing picture. The Milky Way was a ribbon of cloudy white running through the sky and the meteors put on a decent show for the 30 minutes I spent outside. I also got up at dawn and got some nice alpenglow off the western peaks.
We made the correct choice in the Iceline Trail. It rises from the valley to a point around the side of the Vice President near a small lake fed by a glacier. It then descends back down to the parking lot at Takakkaw Falls. Our goal for the day was to get to the high point of the lake and come back to the hut. It was a great hike along a trail that ascended up a bit then hugged the line between the subalpine forest and the bottoms of the scree fields. It eventually broke out into the alpine slopes providing unlimited views across the Yoho Valley. It was a gorgeous ramble across the bottom of the moraines rising slowly the lake. Across the valley to the east was the Waputik Icefield spawning the Niles, Daily Fairy and Diableret Glaciers as the peaks split it into rivers of ice. To the northwest was the McArthur Glacier surrounding McArthur Peak. Above and behind us as we walked and stretching out to the southwest were the President, the Vice President and the Secretary-Treasurer with their smaller unnamed glaciers giving us close up views of ice falls, blue tinted bottom ice where the glaciers met the small lakes and snow caves where larger quantities of water had carved out a hole under the ice. It was like walking in a beautiful dream dream.
Four Days, Ten Glaciers and Two Wayward Johnsons: Part 1
This is a tale of exuberant youth, and wisdom that comes with age. If you have been reading our previous posts, you might agree with me that everytime I write it sounds like we are gushing over everything we have seen. Each post we seem to find something more fantastic, see something more extraordinary, something more amazing. Some of you have been very kind to post comments about all the cool things we have experienced and seen.
We started this blog to help us remember all the details of what we had seen and done. As we get older when we look back the things get jumbled. Did that happen when we were here with Janice Shannon and her crew or was that with Rick and Doug?
I can tell you sincerely that for all the wonderful things we have seen and done so far, the last four days have surpassed them. If I become addled with age and cannot think straight to recall the bike rides or the times in Glacier, or Waterton and I need someone read me the old blog and tell me, "Look Steve, you wrote in 2015 that you saw a bear near the Prince of Wales hotel", I will have the memory of these last four days burned deep into my brain. Other than my wedding day, the days spent creating and birthing my children, the 1969 and 1986 Mets World Series wins, and that day in Gampel when the UCONN Women beat Tennessee for the first time, these have been the best four days in my life.
We left the luxury digs of the HI/ACC hostel at Lake Louise on Tuesday morning. We had spent late Monday afternoon into the evening organizing our packs, sorting and dividing up four days of food all to be ready for an early start up the Yoho Valley Road to the parking lot at the base of Takakkaw Falls. The road is twisty with two hairy hairpin turns, but the thundering cascade of the 300 meter falls was worth the white knuckles. The falls is the outflow of a lake fed by the Daley Glacier. it is actually a two stage falls with the first cascade hitting something up there and sending it out in a 254 meter free fall to the base. Its roar made it difficult to talk to each other in the parking lot as we gathered our things. We met a couple of interesting fellows as we left. They will be the subject of another post.
I also experienced my first taste of the exuberance of youth. We were headed to ACC Stanley Mitchell Hut in the Little Yoho Valley. The trail junctions we were headed to were described by Patton and Robinson as tricky. So, with a tear in my eye, I took my Swiss Army knife and carefully sliced out the 5 or 6 pages of the "bible" to take with us up to the hut. Katie looked over my shoulder and said, "Oh yeah, I took pictures of those pages with my phone." Kids these days.
We started this blog to help us remember all the details of what we had seen and done. As we get older when we look back the things get jumbled. Did that happen when we were here with Janice Shannon and her crew or was that with Rick and Doug?
I can tell you sincerely that for all the wonderful things we have seen and done so far, the last four days have surpassed them. If I become addled with age and cannot think straight to recall the bike rides or the times in Glacier, or Waterton and I need someone read me the old blog and tell me, "Look Steve, you wrote in 2015 that you saw a bear near the Prince of Wales hotel", I will have the memory of these last four days burned deep into my brain. Other than my wedding day, the days spent creating and birthing my children, the 1969 and 1986 Mets World Series wins, and that day in Gampel when the UCONN Women beat Tennessee for the first time, these have been the best four days in my life.
We left the luxury digs of the HI/ACC hostel at Lake Louise on Tuesday morning. We had spent late Monday afternoon into the evening organizing our packs, sorting and dividing up four days of food all to be ready for an early start up the Yoho Valley Road to the parking lot at the base of Takakkaw Falls. The road is twisty with two hairy hairpin turns, but the thundering cascade of the 300 meter falls was worth the white knuckles. The falls is the outflow of a lake fed by the Daley Glacier. it is actually a two stage falls with the first cascade hitting something up there and sending it out in a 254 meter free fall to the base. Its roar made it difficult to talk to each other in the parking lot as we gathered our things. We met a couple of interesting fellows as we left. They will be the subject of another post.
I also experienced my first taste of the exuberance of youth. We were headed to ACC Stanley Mitchell Hut in the Little Yoho Valley. The trail junctions we were headed to were described by Patton and Robinson as tricky. So, with a tear in my eye, I took my Swiss Army knife and carefully sliced out the 5 or 6 pages of the "bible" to take with us up to the hut. Katie looked over my shoulder and said, "Oh yeah, I took pictures of those pages with my phone." Kids these days.
Trail at the end of the parking is the terminus of many routes that take you into the delights of the Yoho Valley. At the beginning you follow the access road to the Takakkaw Falls campground which is self service and first come first serve. It was going to be one of our options for a place to camp on our day out, but by happenstance Marsha had checked with hostel and found that there was a family room available on that day, so we skipped the campout and grabbed the room. We did check out he campground for future reference. It is a .2 km walk in and there is a cart where you can lug your stuff down the road to a tent site. Water from the gray glacier fed Yoho River, to be filtered or boiled and pit toilets. It has a kitchen shelter. We learned later that for a winter trip when the access road from Trans Canada 1 is closed, folks ski the 13 km up the road and camp in the kitchen shelter and then head out to other destinations up valley. The walk in without snow was not bad.
Beyond the campground, the trail follows along a roadbed on the broad flat alluvial plain of the river for a while, then turns up and scabs the side of a hill steeply. It gets your heart going.
The trail does flatten out after a while, and leads down to the Laugh Falls Campground, where of course the outflow of Laughing Falls which takes the flow of the Little Yoho River and delivered it to the Yoho. Laughing Falls is tent sites scattered around the all alluvial debris of this part of the Yoho River. No kitchen shelter, water from the river but a very nice, new pit toilet. It was a pretty busy place with many tent sites filled.
Out trip now took us up the hill that formed Laughing Falls on the Little Yoho Valley Trail. Just a heavy stepping one foot after the other, turn at the switchback, move up again, turn at the switchback and move up again. It was a chore and a half, but after the initial surge it tapered off a bit so that your heart was no longer pounding in your ears, just merely pounding out of your chest. It was long and tedious but in the end not overwhelming. Katie had her FitBit tracking her walking and the trip up was worth 182 flights of stairs.
Stanley Mitchell Hut sits on the edge of a meadow hard by terminal moraines formed off the flanks of several 3000 meter peaks, that ring the Little Yoho Valley. The hut and the meadow are broad and green, but once you leave the valley floor you are up into alpine tundra of scree and rock. There is an camping area just up valley if you do not have a spot at the hut.
You can see right away that it is an alpinist hut build in the ACC tradition of placing huts in places that support technical ascents of peaks. From the warm secure hut you can strike out and summit several peaks that ring the valley.
The hut itself is very nice. Complete kitchen with gas stoves, pots and pans and all the kitchen utensils you need. Water is pulled from the stream outside and boiled. The creek also serves as a refrigerator. There is a small bunkroom that fits eight, and an attic loft up a ladder that sleeps another 16 or so. The common area has tables and benches and a woodstove. It is a fine place to stay, well used and signs that tell you how everything works. Whatever group is there quickly figures out the routines of hut life and works cooperatively to share chores and kitchen time.
Stanley Mitchell Hut sits on the edge of a meadow hard by terminal moraines formed off the flanks of several 3000 meter peaks, that ring the Little Yoho Valley. The hut and the meadow are broad and green, but once you leave the valley floor you are up into alpine tundra of scree and rock. There is an camping area just up valley if you do not have a spot at the hut.
You can see right away that it is an alpinist hut build in the ACC tradition of placing huts in places that support technical ascents of peaks. From the warm secure hut you can strike out and summit several peaks that ring the valley.
The hut itself is very nice. Complete kitchen with gas stoves, pots and pans and all the kitchen utensils you need. Water is pulled from the stream outside and boiled. The creek also serves as a refrigerator. There is a small bunkroom that fits eight, and an attic loft up a ladder that sleeps another 16 or so. The common area has tables and benches and a woodstove. It is a fine place to stay, well used and signs that tell you how everything works. Whatever group is there quickly figures out the routines of hut life and works cooperatively to share chores and kitchen time.
We settled in with our hutmates. The first night there were a couple of families, a guided group that was learning technical mountaineering, and other groups that were using the hut as a base.
The second morning we chose to head up the meadow to climb up to Kiwetinok Pass, a col that would offer views back across to the two high peaks, The President and the Vice President, and views down valley to the peaks to the east. A perfect cloudless day with cool temps and a little breeze.
The exuberants lead off, charging up the valley, with the old folks bringing up the rear. Thier strong legs led them to the bottom of the scree and the streams that flowed down from the glaciers. They had heart, they had courage, they did not have a map. The old folks did. After a few minutes watching their path from far below it was pretty clear that the Wayward Johnsons had gone up the wrong drainage. Too much thundering water, too much wind to call them back, to exuberant to look back over their shoulders to see the old folks far below waving and pointing at the valley now far to our right leading to the visible and obvious pass that was now getting further and further away. We were headed pretty straight toward the glacier that hung off the President on the route the peak baggers took to use the glacier as the route to the summit. We were not inclined by temperament nor by equipment and experience to make a summit attempt, but we pressed on up the moraines, the exuberant Wayward Johnsons hopping over rocks, bounding over streams, climbing up the sides of cascading water, the old folks far below, muttering under their breath and carefully placing one foot after the other.
In the end as always, folly rewards youth, and serendipity often leads to its own reward. As the intend pass stayed to the west, the height of the moraine at the outflow of the glacier was reached. first by the exubernt legs, sometime later by the old ones. It was glorious. The flanks of the President offered views down valley, and to the peaks and associated glaciers of the Waputuk Icefield to the east. Clear as a bell, not a cloud in the sky, warm but not too warm and a cooling breeze. The mountains seeming so close that you could reach out and touch them, yet so far away. The Wayward Johnstons were forgiven.
We marveled at the glacier and wondered at the tortured geology. The mountain had a lot of sedimentary shale that had been lifted. In one area, a huge bulb of underlying granite had pushed up under the shale, bending it into a horseshoe but not breaking it.
Too soon it was time to descend, but which way down? We did some scrambling down the scree slopes, picking and choosing the least steep and least scary routes. Tricky and nerve racking.
I am being called to a lovely breakfast so I will finish this post and pick up the tale in Part 2. We have decisions to make today. It has been thundering and lightning in Lake Louise all night. We are scheduled to move 3 hours north into Jasper for tent camping the next three nights, however, they have room for us here at the hostel. Time to rouse the Wayward Johnsons for this no brainer.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Moraine Lake Revisited
I reminded Kate that the last time we were here it was cold and windy and the best we could do was climb the rock pile moraine at the foot of the lake. Renting a canoe on a glacial lake of white caps was out of the question with two little kids. Glad we had such a perfect day,
We were back at the hostel mid-afternoon and geared up for the main event, our trip into the backcountry of Yoho National Park to Stanley Mitchell Hut. It is a 6 mile hike, at least 3 of it uphill. Full pack, w/ 4 days of food. We did score a room at the hostel when we come out (Can you shout, sow-na!!!). No bars and no wifi for a few days.
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