Clemenceau Icefields - Front Range Magazine

Day Two - Mt. Clemenceau 1st Attempt

Alex and Marc hiking across the Tusk glacier with Mt. Irvine in the background.

Our first attempt at Mt. Clemenceau starts with a 4:00 wake up - the "alpine start" that's needed to get as many hours of daylight as possible when climbing a big mountain. The weather doesn't look too good, and after eating breakfast it starts to rain and snow.

We are all very bummed, and decide to go back to bed and see what develops.

An hour or so later the sound of Alex yodeling outside our tents wakes the rest of us - the storm has blown through, the sky is clearing, and we quickly pack up and head out across the Tusk glacier to the base of Clemenceau, about 40 minutes away.

Let's go see what's up there on yonder mountain!

Getting from the Tusk glacier onto Mt. Clemenceau requires either scrambling up through a cliff band of loose orange limestone or climbing a couple pitches of grade II ice - we choose the scramble route as it looks faster.

Due to the storms the previous week, there's close to 30cm of fresh snow higher up on the glacier, which causes rather difficult trail breaking once we get up onto the mountain itself.

Roping up before we venture up onto the Mt. Clemenceau glacier.

Zig-zagging through open crevasses.

We are following the "normal" route, which is given an Alpine Grade II rating, in this case meaning mostly hiking up a glacier, trying not to fall into a crevasse. However, the crevasses on this glacier seem to have opened up recently, and the described route gives us route-finding difficulties as we run across crevasses that are simply impassable.

We decide to turn around in the late afternoon and save our energy for a later attempt, hoping that all the energy we expended in trail breaking will pay off in a day or two as we can just follow our bootprints up the mountain. Wands are left in the glacier at strategic points to mark the way through tricky areas; they are retrieved on the 2nd attempt.

Hiking back across the glacier after turning around. Looking south-west, Reconnaissance Ridge in the background.

That night a storm blows in after dinner and we lie in our tents listening to rain, snow and wind howl around us, grateful that we decided to turn around - it would NOT be very much fun to be up on the mountain in this weather!

Day Three - Bad Weather and Good Rest

We wake up to 6 inches of heavy, wet, fresh snow that came down overnight. Today is a weather-enforced rest day, which should be a good thing, since we all need to be very well rested before giving Clemenceau another shot. It rains and snows on and off all day, and we spend most of the day in the tents.

Weather days are not so bad if you have something to read. Marc (thanks!) brought along a copy of Ernest Shackleton's South, which chronicles the famed 1914 attempted trans-Antarctic expedition. It's an amazing story, and it certainly put our little adventure into perspective! More information on Shackleton's expedition can be found here.

Sunset over Tusk Camp - the weather looks good for tomorrow!

During a brief sunny break we all ran outside to dry the sleeping bags, and end up looking like a gaggle of Precambrian sea monsters. Photo: Normand Begin.

We also eat a lot, storing energy for the following day, which will be the last day that we can afford to have another attempt at Clemenceau, since we have to start walking out on Wednesday.

In the evening the sky clears - a good sign! We get to bed early, excited about the possibilities tomorrow, and try to get a good nights sleep before tomorrow's alpine start.