In 2009, while passing through the national jewel of Canada - Banff National Park, and documenting undeniable charms of my sexy wife, I couldn't not notice the impressive mountain in her background. This is Cascade Mountain, one of the iconic mountains of Canada, featuring prominently in almost all postcards from Banff.
For all kind of reasons, the idea of hiking Cascade Mountain hasn't returned to me until recently. This is not an easy mountain to make. The approach to the base of the mountain - Cascade Amphitheatre - is 7.5 km and 600 meters of altitude gain. And from there, eager scrambler needs to gain another 860 meters of altitude over a distance of approximately 2.5 km. Quite steep.
Besides distance and height, we also had to deal with somewhat uncertain weather. In spite of decent forecast we experienced some showers on our way to the Amphitheatre, and found the top of the mountain brushed with snow. Anticipating technical problems the Team of the Club's Harpagons (Roman Lipiecki, Piotr Zielinski and Gennadij Sergiejew) rushed forward. This left I and Michael struggling alone with the big boulders leading to the First Peak.
The trail is rather popular so we met many other groups pushing through the field of boulders.
The character of the rock very much reminded me of Tatra Mountains, especially my hike to Slavkovsky Stit.
We reached the First Peak with Mikele around noon. It was not my day, and I was thinking about stopping there. However, the Tough Guy concluded "the hour was still young" and requested that we push a bit more.
We got closer to the False Summit ...
... with the crux of the trail, the so called "Hidden Notch" - a short wall that we had to climb down.
Then came the first traverse of the False Summit ...
... which Mikele negotiated not without difficulty. Then came the second traverse:
Before the third traverse ...
... Mikele concluded that he had enough "exposure to the fake news" and that False Summit was good enough for him that day.
This left me alone with the challenges of the summit ridge:
which is much steeper than it looks from this picture. I almost "spit my lungs" on it, welcoming a little break to talk to the descending Roman, Piotr and Gennadij. They reached the top 1.5 hours earlier when it was still quite cold:
I reached the summit at 2:20 pm with a group of nice young people, when it was already warmer.
One of the ladies took this picture of me:
Due to the 600 fires burning in British Columbia, the famous views from Cascade Mountain were rather hazy.
I didn't spend much time on the top. On my way up, I gambled a bit and left detached the lower parts of my pants. The icy wind on the summit ridge not only was making my eyes water but also appeared to freeze my testicles.
I retraced my steps on the way down as suggested by A Scrambler's Guide to Cascade Mountain. The mountain can reportedly be quite treacherous, especially in bad weather. Luckily for me, it warmed up in the afternoon sun.
It took me a while to get down to Cascade Amphitheatre.
Shortly before the trees level I reconnected with Gennadij, with whom we walked another 7.5 km to the car, where we reunited with the remaining companions. Altogether we were in action for 12 hours. Luckily we didn't meet any bears. On our way Gena sang the alpine songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. I reciprocated with ... Krywaniu, Krywaniu! Pity my wife couldn't hear the joy in my voice!
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