Earlier this week, I was lucky to go ski touring and it ended up being one of my most memorable days in the backcountry. The sun came up shortly after we arrived, sending long shadows of trees on the untouched snow. We were the only ones there after a generous heap of snow the night before. We crossed over to an open area and did a few runs from there, enjoying smooth turns and great views.

Photo by Paul Zizka - www.zizka.ca

Bow Summit can be accessed via the Icefields Parkway (Hwy 93) in Banff National Park. Park at the lower Peyto Lake parking lot (there are washrooms here), where you can also have room to test beacons and run a mock avalanche rescue. Make your way up the Peyto Lake Road, a turn your way into the woods from there. If you aren’t the first ones for awhile, you will see a number of track sets heading up the slope and to the left.

Aim for the fireroad (a more open trail that cuts sideways across the mountain) and take that to the left until you reach the slopes of the bowl just beneath Bow Summit. To the far right, looking down the slope, there are some nice open areas. These are avalanche prone, so do a good test of the snow and make the necessary preparations. To get down, make your way back to the fireroad and take it down and left towards the Peyto Lake Road. Once you reach the upper parking lot it is worth checking out Peyto Lake before bootpacking back up and heading down towards the lower parking lot.

Reaching the bowl beneath Bow Summit

This is one of the most accessible touring areas in Banff National Park. Try to head out on a weekday as weekends can get a bit busy with other people touring. Avalanche courses usually do their field days out here as well.

Looking for an avi course? I did mine with Yamnuska Adventures, which offers both AST 1 and 2.

© Meghan J. Ward, 2009.

Keep your eyes out for the latest issue of Highline Magazine.

Here’s a sneak peek at the upcoming Winter 2010 issue of Highline Magazine featuring my latest article, O Canada Go! In this article, you’ll find a brief history of the Olympic spirit in the Bow Valley and cool interviews with four Olympic hopefuls.

Check out what Phil Widmer, Sara Renner, Chandra Crawford, and Mike Robertson had to say about what the Olympics mean to them, what motivates them as athletes, and more! Which one of these athletes thinks a cool Polynesian culture would scratch the travel itch – you’ll have to read to find out. You can pick up Highline Magazine in the upcoming weeks throughout the Bow Valley.

In other news – I hit up Sunshine Village last week and it was amazing. Coming from Ontario, where powder is something you only dab on your nose, my day in the pow up at the hill was unreal. So far, it’s been a great start to the ski season, and let’s hope that keeps up! Anything could be better than last year’s. Can’t wait to get touring this winter.

Next up is coverage for Skiing Magazine of the upcoming World Cup and WinterStart festival in Banff an Lake Louise. Hope to see you there!

Not a great shot, but check out that snow!

© Meghan J. Ward, 2009.

I recently came across Yvon Chouinard`s (founder of Patagonia) basic philosophy of life, in his book, Let My People Go Surfing:

The basic tenets of that philosophy are: a deep appreciation for the environment and a strong motivation to help solve the environmental crisis; a passionate love for the natural world; a healthy skepticism toward authority; a love for difficult, human-powered sports that require practice and mastery; a disdain for motorized sports like snowmobiling or jet skiing; a bias for whacko, often self-deprecating humour; a respect for real adventure (defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive — and certainly not as the same person); a taste for real adventure; and a belief that less is more (in design and consumption). Pg. 150

I found that many aspects of his philosophy describe my own. Considering that, it was hard to swallow his definition of `real adventure.` Go ahead – go back and read it.

I find this particularly sobering on a day when the climbing world lost one of its best mountaineers, Tomaz Humar. Living in The Rockies, I rub shoulders with some of these guys (and gals) that seem to be lucky to be alive. Every year at the Banff Mountain Film Festival I somewhat rudely joke with my own climbing partners that some of the climbers featured at the festival may not be back next year. But, it`s completely true, and these people would admit it.

I thought I had a sense of adventure, but compared to these climbers, I may as well be hiking through a mall. Perhaps then, adventure is relative to the adventurer. My first stab at multi-pitch trad climbs this past summer was an awakening for me. There is nothing that compared to the level of focus and the mental battle I had going on some of those days, particularly on Grassi Ridge, a route up Wiwaxy Peak in Yoho National Park. Hanging a few hundred feet off the ground, I fully realized the dangers of what I was doing, and yet I needed, for self-preservation`s sake, to ignore them.

The route up Grassi Ridge follow the left sky-line

Though I try to tune out these dangers, my awareness of them also comes indirectly through my precautions against them. I tie the rope in a figure-eight knot and double it back, I grip the rope a certain way when I`m belaying, I put my protection in the rock on a certain angle, and I equalize my anchors. Each precaution represents an inherent danger to climbing – otherwise, we wouldn`t do these things in the first place.

Yet, there is so much we cannot control, and this is why I believe Yvon Chouinard defines `real adventure` as a journey from which we may not return.

Some, like me, pursue increased risk and adrenaline in adventure – and this is arguably `real adventure.`Furthermore, there are those who reduce even their precautions (climbing without a rope, being a prime example), and we may call this `pure (and perhaps stupid) adventure.` There is a good chance they will not come back alive.

Still, adventure, even at its most basic level, can be found in many places and situations. Some find adventure in a new job or starting a family. For many it is a matter of time and place. Something that wasn`t adventurous before becomes adventurous in the future. My great aunt and uncle even made an adventure of going to the hospital when their health turned for the worst, just to make it more fun for eachother. Likewise, as I get older, my threshold for adventure may weaken.

I turn back, then, to the end of Chouinard`s definition of `real adventure.` He defines it also as a journey from which you may not come back as the same person.

And this is 100% true of all adventure.

© Meghan J. Ward, 2009.

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Further reading (that I`d like to do, too):

Maria Coffey, Explorers of the Infinite and Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow

Steve House, Beyond the Mountain