Canada Ice: Day 5 - Guinness Gully

Friday brought us to another moderate classic of the Canadian Rockies: the Guinness Gully. All of the climbs on Mt. Dennis have beer names, and this was one of the more popular moderates, rated at WI 4.

A kind of lengthy drive from Canmore brought us to the tiny little hamlet of Field. The first thing we saw out of the car was a warning to ice climbers that these routes were threatened by avalanche slopes. There had been no fresh in days, so we weren't too worried.



The approach was short and steep to the base of the route. Jordan took the first pitch of WI 4, and styled up it nicely. Shortly after he took off on lead, another party showed up behind us clearly wanting to get on the route. They chose to hang out down below. I thought they'd left at one point, but was pretty sure I heard harmonica playing. Harmonica? Seriously? That was kind of amusing.

Jordan brought us up, and the next pitch was purported to be the crux. It had gotten so much traffic that there were practically steps going the whole way up, so I volunteered to take the lead. The base of the pitch had a funky overhang/cave feature that gave Matt a sheltered belay and Jordan the opportunity to take some pictures of me that greatly exaggerated the steepness. Not to say that it wasn't steep. Arcteryx, if you're reading this, I'm unemployed and climbing. Hit me up. I'll pimp your stuff.

The next pitch was a really wide ice curtain that was also really tall. Jordan took the lead again, and made it look easy as usual. The other party came up and climbed on the opposite side of the curtain. Conversation revealed that, yes, they were playing harmonica (I asked). They had accents that I couldn't really discern, I guess a sort of eastern Canadian thing. The younger member of the party was telling us how he was getting ready to go down and do some desert rock at Zion and Indian Creek. Such a charmed life! I can't complain, with an Alaska trip in the works. Still though, I wouldn't mind cruising down to Utah for a month to become a hardman crack climber at the Creek or do some big - walling in Zion. I hadn't touched rock outside (without gloves on) in months!

A quick 'move-the-belay' pitch brought us to the end of this climb. We debated continuing further to the "Guinness Stout" pitches, supposedly 45 minutes up the gully. We opted to call it good so we could get down and back to Canmore early enough to get some good grub. As the guidebook recommended, we traversed off right to look for the descent route.

I don't remember if Jordan said "Oh snap!" when he came upon the glissade path, but that's sure what this picture looks like. The guidebook indicated that there is usually a glissade path (a.k.a. butt-slide path, a.k.a. otter slide) going down through the trees from this route almost all the way to the road. I wasn't too terribly excited about this; I've historically not been a fan of glissading. I figured that doing it through the trees would just shred my pants and involve me hitting my ass on rocks and roots. Jordan and Matt were stoked, though, and quickly took off in front of me.

I did my best to keep up booting down, but it became clear quickly that I should follow suit in order to keep up. Also, despite my prejudices, they made it look really fun. So I sat down. Did I have fun? Watch the video and be the judge yourself. I did in fact have buttcheek-to-rock contact. I showed Matt and Jordan in the hot tub later, and they thought it was hilarious! It was pretty funny I guess, but it was more funny when I could walk right a couple of days later.

We got back to Canmore quick enough to hit up another bar-and-grill spot, where I wanted to order Poutain (Canadian french fries served with gravy and cheese curds), but chickened out. We drank some beers, shot some pool, and enjoyed our last night in town. A guy could get used to this (ice climbing, hot tubs, swilling beers), but I was ready to get back home to Seattle. Tomorrow we would hit the road and try to climb something on the way. I was so psyched to have had such a great trip with great friends in a great climbing area.





Jordan's eyewear of choice? Mickey Mouse sunglasses.