Cardiac Arête (maybe more like ‘Arrête’) 5.10d

Trip Date: October 10, 2022

Participants: Avery Soule, Fiona Landwehr, Sarah Knude, Sonia Landwehr, Tyler Soule

For some context: ‘arrête‘ means ‘stopped’ in French, whereas an arête is a corner of rock. This pun will make more sense as you read on.

As people are well aware, this past autumn was uncharacteristically warm and dry on the coast. This carried over to the Rockies in Alberta as well, which Fiona, Avery, and I wanted to take full advantage of during our visits home to Calgary for Thanksgiving. Fiona and I had already had a relatively full weekend: the classic problem of too many people to see, and not enough hours in a three day weekend. A wedding on Saturday resulted in spending Sunday working through varying degrees of hangover until Thanksgiving dinner with family friends, then made our way to Avery and Tyler’s parents’ house that evening. This was to ensure an early start on Monday. The past few days had been sunny and beautiful, even decently warm, so the slight forecasted potential rain was but a blip on our radar. After Avery failed to convince us to join him for a session on his home-wall, we went to bed for about four hours.

For those who don’t know, Cardiac Arête is a classic bolted 4 pitch 5.10d multi on the Grand Sentinel Spire by Mt. Temple and Moraine Lake. If you’ve ever stood atop Sentinel Pass after admiring the larches in the valley below, you may have seen the distinctive spires in the adjacent valley. The grandest of them all was our objective, and had been on all of our tick lists for a while. However, there is very much parking beta to be followed for getting into the Moraine Lake area. Had we hiked up the simpler and more familiar (to us) Larch Valley trail to the Grand Sentinel, we would have had to leave Calgary significantly earlier, as the Larch Valley trailhead is at the main Moraine parking area.

As many may be aware, getting a spot at Moraine is a mission and a half, and requires being there around 4 am to beat the sunrise spectators (perhaps some hyperbole there, but truly not that much). Instead, we decided we’d hike up via the less popular Paradise Valley: a good alternative allowing for ~6 am arrival. After picking up Sarah in Canmore we arrived at Moraine Lake Road as the sun was rising. Much to our luck and surprise, we were able to get truly the last spot at the Moraine lot, allowing for a simpler approach via Larch Valley. (If anyone is curious about the convoluted way we got this spot, especially now that the Moraine Lake Road situation has become astronomically more complicated, rendering our beta irrelevant, feel free to shoot me a message.)

In spite of the three ropes and other assorted climbing gear weighing us down, the five of us motored up to Sentinel Pass under the emerging sun, achieving a personal best time according to my Strava. We appreciated the golden larches we were passing through, but resolved to take pictures and more time on the descent – ever aware of October’s reduced hours of daylight. Once atop Sentinel Pass, we took a quick snack break while enjoying our first view of our objective, and adorned our helmets before descending into Paradise Valley via a very convoluted path through large pieces of greenish rock. It was so interesting observing the rock around us progress from classic limestone colour to traces of the famous Lake Louise area quartzite and more brilliantly coloured stone.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite easily being able to see the spire from the valley, we were unclear about how to get up to it. A scree slope and more navigation through larger rocks was between us and the base of the climb. Knowing we’d eventually have to ascend the scree slope anyway, we finally sucked it up and cut over to it. The slope was super steep and probably my least favourite part of the entire adventure. It didn’t take us long to discover that we were in the path of constant rockfall, but the call of the spire was too strong to allow the rockfall to deter us. So we soldiered on, adopting a system of two people watching for rockfall while three of us traversed the slope, with the understanding that the rockfall spectators would yell their heads off if they saw rock coming. While it was still sunny, we decided to hope for the best upon catching sight of grey clouds gathering in the distance.

 

 

 

 

Finally arriving at the base of the climb, I took a moment to mumble to Fiona, “Also das war schonmal ein bisschen schrecklich,” roughly: “Well that was a little horrifying,” in German. I didn’t want to express my distress to the whole group, lest I instill stress upon everyone. Adding to the stress was the sound of rock raining down all around the spire from the mountain above. The spire itself is pretty sheltered from that rockfall, but the amount of loose rock left to navigate to the first belay ledge was a challenge in itself. In addition, in order to reach the first bolts, you have to traverse a small ledge, off of which you definitely do not want to fall. Had the ledge been dry, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so sketched out, but given that it was pretty damp, we were hesitant to traverse it without being roped up. We set up a makeshift belay by haphazardly slinging a large rock that we assumed was not inclined to shifting, and Tyler led the charge to the first belay anchor.

 

 

 

We had decided that Tyler and I would climb first, with Avery, Fiona, and Sarah being a three person crew. I followed Tyler, feeling more steady given that I was now being belayed from a bolted anchor. Thankfully, Tyler also agreed to lead the first pitch which gave me more of a chance to catch my breath (aka calm down). As he started up, it started sprinkling a little, and the wind picked up in earnest, but we had already acknowledged the day could very well end in a bail, so we just said we’d see how it went. Belaying with such intense wind was an interesting dilemma, as it was so strong that you could see slack in the rope between each draw. However, when I tried to take some of that slack in, it felt like I was short-roping Ty, so I didn’t want to take too much in. Ty ended up taking an absolutely spectacular monster whip. He was all good (with plenty of adrenaline coursing through him, I’m sure), but it really highlighted the difficulty of rope management in these conditions.

Once I started up the first 5.10b pitch I became even more thankful that Ty had led it, because the exposure that Cardiac Arete is known for was really getting to me. It was hard not to concentrate on the formidable Mt. Temple rising behind us or the aforementioned uninterrupted echoes of rockfall. As the sprinkling rain turned into snow, Ty and I switched leads, putting me on the sharp end for the 5.10c ‘crux’ pitch (odd considering the final two pitches go at 5.10d).

 

 

 

Now, I am not one to say “it was only 5.10c,” because I think grades are a good way to track progress and a fun tool to use to push yourself, but not phrases that need to be used to compare yourself to others. That being said, at this point in my personal climbing ability, I am typically able to onsight 5.10 grades. As I climbed the second pitch though I called for ‘takes’ extremely frequently, mental fatigue that no doubt was a result from stress about the exposure and elements setting in. The climbing was great, each individual move was interesting, and to top it all off, this pitch had a wild progression of rock bands. It reminded me of cake layers, starting with beige and swiss-cheese hole-like texture, moving to totally smooth green-grey slate, to these cool light grainy almost tuffa-like features. It was interesting on lead, oscillating between telling myself frequently aloud, “it’s just sport climbing Sonia, you’ve done this before,” to stave off nausea at the exposure and weather and feeling a total sense of elation at the aforementioned conditions. Classic Type 2 fun I suppose. Once I reached the next belay and had set up the anchor to belay Tyler up, I was formulating how best to propose bailing upon his arrival at the anchor. I caught my first follower fall on a multi, which I was ill-prepared for given that the bolts of the anchor are way over to the right of the large belay ledge, and I was standing on the ledge. Getting yoinked off the ledge and learning to assume a hanging belay position ensued as a result. As soon as he was within ear-shot, Ty said “Can we be done after this?” I very quickly responded in the affirmative and after taking some truly epic photos with the snow blustering all around us, we prepared to rappel. Pictures depicting the weather more accurately are at the bottom of this report (I have been known to not be able to limit my photos in trip reports), however, it may still be difficult to appreciate the extent of the storm.

 

 

 

 

Descending past one of the roofs we had climbed through, we arrived upon Avery at the top of the first pitch employing his recently acquired rope rescue skills to transfer load strands and lower Fiona. Fiona had been pelted with snow so thoroughly that she had decided enough was enough and hunkered down under a roof while Avery did his thing. Sarah hadn’t even gotten a chance to climb but it was clear the weather was not going to support that. Despite obviously going through all the same gnarly approaches and weather, but not getting a chance to climb, she had such a great attitude about it that I resolved to wallow about 6% less in my own misery. I remarked to Tyler at some point before our final rappel that while I was cold, wet, and suffering –  at least I could still kind of chuckle at the absurdity of the whole adventure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the base of the spire, we gathered our soggy belongings, ignored the icky feeling of banishing extremely wet (non-dry-treated) ropes to the depth of our packs, and got the hell out of there. We slightly adjusted our trajectory down the scree slope, avoiding the traverse we had undertaken on the approach, opting instead for descending adjacent to a small chute that we hadn’t seen much rockfall in. The weather had reached a wretched peak, high winds preventing us of course from hearing each other but also from facing certain directions lest our faces or eyes get scraped by the snow. Speed and time were very much of the essence as an early dusk approached, courtesy of the storm clouds. We made it to the top of Sentinel Pass as the precipitation ebbed off and took a breather. From here on out the descent was extremely mellow. Avery, in typical Avery fashion, started jogging down the switchbacks to Larch Valley while we watched in bemused entertainment. What I would’ve given for that level of energy still. It was super windy still, but the lack of snow/rain/hail was very welcome. We fruitlessly attempted to set up a self-timer for a group shot, and were pleasantly surprised when a solo hiker we asked to take a picture told us he had already gotten some nice shots of us in our self-timer faff.

The hiker joined our group for the final descent and we chatted about his home country Pakistan, inspiring dreams of future alpine adventures in the Karakoram range. A pretty hilarious moment occurred while we passed through the larches; the famous trees, once golden and lush (as of that morning still), had lost every single needle in the treacherous wind and rain, resulting in a lush carpet of golden needles on our path. So much for taking some nice larch photos on the descent! The rain began in earnest as we rounded the corner to the path at Moraine Lake to the parking lot and we had never been so thankful to see my parent’s Odyssey.

I awarded each person a superlative from the day, but can’t for the life of me remember each of them. The most notable in my opinion (and clearly in my brain’s memory centre’s opinion) was the award of “didn’t-freak-out-when-Sonia-took-a-picture-of-my-belay-set-up-for-her-reference” to Tyler. I promise I know quite extensively and confidently how to multi pitch under ordinary circumstances, but the Type 2 fun took over my brain a bit, so a reference picture of the ATC Guide was enough to instil a bit more confidence for me. The drive home offered little relaxation for me given the torrential downpour in the dark, and I drove much slower than I usually do, which is saying something, as anyone who has ever driven with me loves poking fun at my stubborn following of the speed limit.

All in all, it was a great day of learning about limits in the alpine, commiserating with friends, and actively recognizing the beauty and magnitude of the wilderness. However, the main takeaway was, as Sarah so succinctly put it: “Welcome to the Canadian Rockies: where the rock may be shit, but the weather’s worse.”