Great Divide Ski traverse Completed!
This is one of the worlds great Traverses and it is so arduous it is rarely attempted and even more rarely completed. A recent Calgary Herald article on an international team that has done just that:
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Waking up before the first rays of daylight brushed their camp on the snowy expanse of the Freshfield Icefield, a huge glacier bordering the northwest corner of Banff National Park, Daniel Robb, Edward McCarthy, Gerry Heacock and Carsten Moldenhauer embraced the routine that after nearly three weeks had become effortlessly familiar.
Crawling reluctantly from the warmth of their down sleeping bags, they shoved their feet into cold plastic ski boot shells and fired up the backpacker's stove. Dismantling their two small tents, they shook out the icy condensation that had formed on the inner walls as their warm breath had mixed with -25 C air while they slept, then stuffed them into their already loaded multi-day packs.
On this morning, however, the skiers shared a single predominate thought: food. A week and many challenging adventures had passed since their last food cache, and now all they had to share for breakfast was a single serving of chili and noodles, plus four snack bars. With 26 kilometres of remote wilderness slopes and valleys between them and their next meal, which was stashed in the sauna building at Mistaya Lodge, the skiers knew they faced their most challenging day yet.
Their goal: The Canadian Rockies' Great Divide ski traverse, a 320-kilometre route of sprawling glaciers, icefalls comprised of jumbled Windex-blue frozen snow and ice blocks, brooding rocky summits and magnificently untouched mountain wilderness from Jasper to Lake Louise. Iconic Canadian adventurer and author Chic Scott calls it one of the world's great ski adventures.
While more than 5,000 people have now stood on the summit of Mount Everest, many of whose ascents were made possible by the Sherpas and skilled mountain guides who fixed ropes and establish high camps ahead of them, the Great Divide remains a true long-distance wilderness adventure through extremely difficult mountain terrain fraught with howling storms and unforgiving terrain.
Every spring, strong and determined groups of experienced ski mountaineers embark on the three-week wilderness expedition. But last month, Robb, McCarthy, Heacock and Moldenhauer, ranging in age from 22 to 26, became only the eighth team ever to complete the traverse since Scott and three companions first travelled the route in 1967.
"They have earned membership in a very select club," Scott said. "One of the things that makes the tour so special is that it has remained unchanged all these years. There still are no roads, no clear cuts, no hotels and only a few huts. The significance of other adventures, Mount Everest for example, has been seriously diminished over the years. But I personally don't believe that modern equipment has made the Great Divide traverse much easier than it was for us. It's still as much of a challenge as it ever was."
Hailing from B.C., Canmore and Germany, the four had skied a six-day wilderness traverse in Jasper in 2008, through which the friends learned they functioned well as a team. The invaluable teamwork component was evident this winter as Moldenhauer used his vacation to make two gruelling solo trips to place their essential food caches along the route. While the Mistaya cache was flown by helicopter to its location just outside Banff National Park, Moldenhauer delivered another cache in a 15-hour solo outing, and the third by towing a sled for two days to Fortress Lake, camping without stove or tent before skiing the 28 kilometres back to the road the third day.
Then on April 3, with Robb and Heacock's fathers sending them off with a bundle of baked goodies, they skied to the Alpine Club of Canada's Wates-Gibson Hut in Jasper National Park, spending their first night feasting on cheese fondue and steak knowing it would be nearly two weeks of tenting and dehydrated dinners before reaching the Lyell hut on a rock outcropping on the B.C.-Alberta border, 2,860 metres above sea level.
It was almost as long before they saw any other people, until Heacock's dad and a friend met them at their second food cache bearing fresh fruit, bagels and Grand Marnier to help celebrate Heacock's 26th birthday. They didn't see people again until they reached the Wapta Icefield, highly popular with so many Calgary area backcountry skiers, more than a week further south.
During their 20-day adventure, the team experienced a full range of Rockies' spring conditions, from roasting sun to deepfreeze nights. Fortunately, a deep, late snowpack meant never having to carry their skis in the valley bottoms, but occasional fresh snowfall meant breaking trail through knee-deep powder under the weight of 25-kilogram packs.
"We had absolutely beautiful, classic Rockies spring weather," Moldenhauer said. "But our first night on a glacier we were expecting nice spring temperatures, but the sky was clear and it went down to -25 C. It was so cold! But then you would go out for a pee and it would be so beautiful with so many stars out and the outline of the mountain ridges and the glaciers."
That night prepared them for how miserable all their glacier nights would be. Once, a whiteout kept them tent-bound for a full day, their tent and cooking area fortified by a snow wall.
Overall the avalanche hazard was rarely high, except for a couple of south-facing slopes toward the end of the trip. Intent on crossing over a dip in a ridge, one of the group was caught in a small avalanche on a slope softened by afternoon sun. They backtracked a short distance and set up camp on the icefield to wait for the cold night air to consolidate the snow, making it safe to ascend the col first thing the next morning. Unfortunately, with little food left, they knew the situation meant they would have a much longer distance to ski before reaching their next meal.
Setting out the following morning after a brutally cold night, the skiers focused on pushing one ski ahead of the other and soaking in the magical high alpine scenery. They tried to ignore the painful grum-bling in their stomachs, all the while aware that, after 18 days, their bodies' metabolisms were burning energy at an accelerated rate.
"That was our most challenging day," Robb admitted. "It was like skiing 26 kilometres really hungover on no sleep. It was really tough. Getting to those points though, and then getting through them feels really great, like it's an accomplishment."
Just as they reached the base of their final climb to Mistaya, they were thrilled to discover the lodge owner had set a track up the slope, making their climb easier. Opening the sauna building door and seeing their food containers in the waning 9 p.m. light brought feelings akin to ecstasy.
Descending from the familiar Wapta Icefield on April 22 in 10 C sunshine marked a perfect end to their adventure, as the now skinny men were greeted by family and friends bearing celebratory gifts of beer, cheese, oranges and champagne.
"The Great Divide is one of those do once kind of trips," Robb said. "You travel over so much ground that very few people ever get to see. There are endless possibilities for ski trips through all that terrain. This was the year to do traverses; we had only one crevasses fall, and not deep.
"We'll remember this and we're better friends because of it. On trips like that it can go either way. Lucky for us, it went the right way."