Sunday July 8th, 2018 Little Sister (Hope), Canmore 2694 metres
Steve and I had planned on giving it a shot last year but neither of us forced a date and it didn't happen. This year Steve got on it, a weather window opened up and game on!
We left the truck at 5:20 am and headed up the east entrance to the Highline trail in Canmore, headed up for a bit and jogged left to gain another trail leading upwards following Gaia GPS. The trail is pretty good going, with a bit of dead fall hopping if you can keep to it as the trail fades in and out. Some orange and blue flagging helps considerably. I've got a gpx track if that I'd be happy to share if its at all helpful.
About 2/3 of the way up you break out of the forest and although still fair ways to go the views open up and little sister comes into view. As you break out a bit of a feature comes up that can be passed either right or left, right is a bit easier.
The entire climb does come into view and we took a moment to reconcile the summit post beta with what we were looking at, it was great and unusual to get a look at the complete route on approach. Once out of the forest it's actually a great hike!
In the end we took 2:50 hours to gain the 860 metres to the bottom of the roped up climbing. We ditched ski poles and some extra water just before the ridge gets a bit interesting and scrambled up to the start of the roped climbing. Once there we geared up and started the technical climbing at 8:45 am.
Steve had gear on so he took first lead. We had a double set of cams, single set of nuts and pitons and hammer, 12 draws and a 60 metre rope (the latter working just fine). Ended up being too much as we used mostly smaller/medium cams and frankly there wasn't that much gear. The first three pitches are pretty obvious, straight up the chimney on the right of the face in the photo above.
The first pitch went fairly easily, we looked at the alternative to the left however it looked like a sea of easier rock with absolutely no gear so we dove in the chimney. I took the second lead which was likely the technical crux. Great, old school 5.6 chimney climbing, more like a bar room brawl than climbing and great fun with not a lot of gear. As per summit post, I clipped a two pin rap anchor on the way up and belayed from the 3rd anchor which consisted of a pin and a slung horn. The technical pitches, especially lower down, were actually pretty good rock. We collected some old tat which had mostly fallen out, I assume as boulders moved around over the winter. The tat on route was in good shape, we banged on the pitons along the way however they were all good.
Steve came up and took the third pitch, not terribly long and slung a block to bring me up and to rap off of later. From there we scrambled up and quickly there was an obvious traverse left that lead to the bottom of a large bowl with a bit of a cairn.
Steve lead up this pitch, a little more than 30 metres with some interesting moves down lower then got more straight forward. It ends at a large balcony with 10' boulders where we slug another block to belay from and rap on the way down.
From there it was a pretty beat in path going across and down, easier than it initial looks. Just left of the waterfall and next to some lingering snow I started up. Straight forward climbing, it initially looked like no gear so I pounded in a piton however there were some good gear placements further up.
As mentioned in the summit post beta the station is up on the left and a bit awkward, obviously placed with the rap in mind. I belayed Steve up and given the terrain he elected to carry on further with the rope. He didn't find the next belay mentioned so bashed in a couple of pitons for a station. I followed and we ditched the rope and started scrambling, 12:30 pm and so far so good.
In fairly short order we made the ridge, and started to get some great exposure on variable rock. Even ran into an au cheval (at least for us) which kept things spicy. At 1:30 pm we ran into a bit of a gendarme along the ridge which stopped me in my tracks.
A few old school 5.6 moves, nothing drastic but with nothing but air below. The thought of down climbing it didn't exactly fill me with joy. After a bit of consideration I sat, ate my lunch and enjoyed the view as Steve carried on.
When he got to the top of this feature Steve found a two pin anchor and had some sketchy down climbing on the other side. It looked set up for a belay up and a rap down with the rope left in place to regain the feature. Steve made the summit at roughly 2 pm with a few exposed moves along the way, the next time he saw him he had his rock shoes on. He made it back to my alcove/lunch spot at 2:15 and we retraced our steps.
The way back was pretty straight forward, although we had invested in more than a few looks backwards as we made our way up. We picked up our gear along the way and made the top of the first rap at 3:30 pm.
First two raps were a little awkward however it was straight forward after that. Total of 7 raps (we did some lowering as someone forgot their belay device). The two of us were down off the technical climbing at 5:00.
After a bit of food and a gear sort headed out, followed our up track and hit the car at 7:20 pm. Pretty much bang on 14 hours. With the exception of the forested part of the approach, we never lost site of our houses in Canmore!
