I was back in Calgary for a couple weeks at the end of summer, visiting family and biding time until the new semester started. Fresh off my summer travels in Latin America, I’d gained a new appreciation both for my hometown, and for massive sufferfests. What better way to marry the two than a traverse that’s been on my list for quite a while?
Any Calgarian will recognize the Mount Glasgow to Banded Peak range that features prominently on the Western skyline, in the Canadian rockies. Banded Peak, with its recognizable band, at the southern end, and the pyramidal Mt. Glasgow at the northern end. Between them are Outlaw Peak and Mount Cornwall. Fun tidbit, Outlaw Peak was named by someone who heard Banded Peak as “Bandit Peak” and wanted to keep with the theme. Growing up in Calgary, this particular range was always front and center on the final major road down into my neighbourhood, so the range has in many ways become a symbol of both my hometown and my childhood, so I was beyond stoked to finally give it a try.
The range, approximately as seen from Calgary. NOT MY PICTURE, courtesy wikipedia. Banded Peak on the left, with the band clearly visible. Glasgow is the tall pyramidal peak towards the right. Outlaw and Cornwall, from left to right, in the middle.
That stoke was not shared by any of the people I attempted to recruit for the traverse. Turns out a 31km hike with 2500m of gain in a single push doesn’t excite all that many people (at least, non-VOCers). I tried for a couple weeks to find a partner for this slog, including asking on the VOC discord, and was about to give up when I got a response from Lucas Braun a fellow Calgarian VOCer. Back in service after his own summer adventure in the Arctic, he was keen (and foolish) enough to elect to accompany me on this slog. I was beyond excited. We corresponded for a few days and organized the logistics, and come 5:30am on a late summer’s Tuesday, Lucas was outside my house and we were off.
The drive wasn’t very long, and we started off from the trailhead at 6:30, just as the sky began to brighten. Neither of us had downloaded a map, so we were relying on the free preloaded map on the AllTrails app, which proved to be folly as we lost the trail within the first kilometer. It only took us about 10 minutes to bushwhack our way back to the main trail and this proved to be only a minor inconvenience.
We walked through a lovely meadow in the morning light, looking for when the trail veered off to the right and up the ridge to the summit of Mount Glasgow, the first peak on our traverse. Upon reaching the point where the trail map on AllTrails turned off, we were unable to find a path and concluded that if we continued along the path, we’d find another path to take us onto the ridge. And so we walked for another couple kilometres before we realized that the trail we sought did not infact exist. From there, we spent the better part of an hour bushwhacking up to the ridge, where we rejoined the trail.
Little meadow that we followed too far and subsequently lost the trail in.
Before long we passed treeline, and we ran into some cliffbands about halfway up Glasgow. Lucas tried his hand at some crackclimbing, and we spent an embarrassingly long time discussing different ways to climb the cliff before realizing we would walk around it. The ascent past this cliffband was heinous, with large unstable scree ensuring that for every two steps forward, we took three steps back. After some five hours, we summited Glasgow, in an unbearable heat which was surely worse for Lucas, given his recent return from a summer in the Arctic. It was at this point that we realized we hadn’t brought nearly enough water, each of us having about a half litre left after our first peak. We decided to only go for Mount Cornwall, the next peak on the ridge, from where one could easily bail into the creek valley below to find water. Neither of us were very happy about this, having been particularly stoked for Banded Peak, the final and most iconic peak on the traverse, but c’est la vie we figured.
Lucas practicing his crack climbing.
Lucas and I atop Mount Glasgow.
The descent towards Cornwall from Glasgow was lovely, with the rock being far more stable and forgiving than what we ascended. Before long we were headed up towards Cornwall, and on the slope we encountered a saint of a man, hiking solo, who gifted us each a half litre of water. Our saviour! We could have worshiped him at that moment.
We figured that water made completing the traverse feasible, so we marched on and reached Cornwall, signing the wasp-infested peak log before the uneventful jaunt over Outlaw Peak to Banded Peak. At 6:30pm, twelve hours after the start of our hike, we summited Banded Peak, finishing our water at the peak in triumphant celebration. From there, it was only a short descent to the creek where we could top up on water.
Said short descent ended up taking us two hours, thanks to the lovely and forgiving scree. We slid down the scree to a cliff band, which we then had to traverse around with great difficulty. We then slid down a gully, spaced out to avoid any rockfall danger. We were extremely dehydrated by the time we reached the creek just after sunset. After a break to filter water and relax our legs after the scree slope, we began our long trek out, most of which was on an old boring FSR. We made it back to the car just before midnight for a 17.5 hour trek.
Lucas descending the world’s most heinous scree on the slope of Banded Peak, the namesake band clearly visible above.