Basic Glacier Climb - Columbia Icefield Canada

The trip schedule was as follows:

7/19- drive to Golden BC

7/20 - drive to the Athabasca glacier trailhead and hike in part way to the main camp on Snow Dome

7/21 - finish climbing to 10k' near Snow Dome and set up camp

7-22  to 7/24 climb - in no particular order: Stutfield, North Twin, Kitchener, Snow Dome.

7/25 - return to cars and drive part way back to Seattle (hotel tbd depending on when we got to the cars).

7/26 - back in Seattle.

7-27-28 were extra weather days if we needed them.  

This trip requires a  park pass for each car, a random camping permit ($15.50 CA per day  per person as of 2/24), and a $11 CA registration fee.   Note also you have to move your camp every two days regardless of if you are on the glacier or not (park wide regulation).

In Golden the town lost all power the night we were there (planned Transformer replacement apparently).  It was very smoke when we got to the trailhead but I could immediately see the Athabasca was way too broken up to get to the ice field. We had to bail on the attempt (another climbing party we ran into also made the same assessment and canceled their climb).  The back up plan to do backpacking went quickly south on us due to the high temps (98 in Jasper one day alone) and massive mosquitoes.  Fortunately bailing Monday evening turned out to be an amazing stroke of luck as a wild fire started from Lightning that afternoon and by Tuesday morning they had a mandatory evac order for the entire park.  Jasper later would be partially burned down by the fire Tuesday/Wednesday.   Those still in the back country were being picked up by chopper and evac'd out. Their cars remaining at the trailheads.  

This climb would be best done by ski's in April/May or by foot probably in June for a normal year to get past the section that was broken up and prevented the trip from proceeding.