So I climbed an actual mountain yesterday. I don’t mean that I broke out ropes and pitons and scaled rock faces and scrambled up scree slopes. What I actually did was walk up the Comsic Ray road trail on Sulphur Mountain at Banff. However, with an elevation gain of around 900 metres in the space of roughly 8 kilometres, that’s a slope of roughly 11% on average. Since the lower portion is much gentler on average, the upper portion has slopes much higher for portions. What I’m saying is that old road or not, it’s a real climb.
I have two handicaps for doing such a climb. One is that I am in lousy physical condition. I need to lose more than 100 pounds so that should give you some idea how things stand. The other handicap is that I suffer from acrophobia. This presents most inconveniently as unsteadiness on my feet near any sort of drop off in addition to anxiety.
There was nothing I could do about my physical condition. I did, however, bring a walking stick to help with the balance situation. It turns out that the stick was actually enough to make me feel reasonably stable, even to the point of being able to look out over the valley below at many points.
The weather was not conducive for strenuous activity for a couple of reasons. First was the heat – it was unpleasantly hot, though many folks reading this will not think that mid to high twenties (celsius) is unpleasant. For doing anything strenuous, it is. If that was the whole of it, things would not have been as bad, however. On top of the heat, there was a blanket of forest fire smoke over the area. That made breathing more difficult, causing respiratory irritation.
It took a fair time to work out an effective climbing strategy. Lower down, I tried walking at a more normal pace and very quickly realized that would not work. It took relatively little to bring my heart rate up to a worrying point. Slowing down helped some but a continuous pace at any speed still kept my heart rate at a worrying level. I ended up taking a number of breaks along the way, where I sat down on the trail looking down (it’s stabler that way) and waited until my heart rate slowed down. Eventually, I hit on a strategy that covered ground at a steady, if slow pace. I would walk ten or twenty steps and pause for a few seconds. I did the walk and pause process for more than half of the climb. This had a few beneficial effects. It kept my heart rate at a sane level, for the most part. It also reduced the overheating effect from the weather (which I think was contributing to the heart rate, in fact), and it kept my legs from turning to mush. As a matter of fact, except for being tired, I felt relatively good when I got to the top.
I ran into a couple of problems on my excursion. First was the insect population lower down the trail. In the well forested areas, mosquitoes and their ilk were thick as anything. My insect repellent said it was supposed to be good for 8 hours. Nope, not even close. I was lucky if it was still effective after one. I suspect a large amount of the problem was due to sweating.
The other problem is that I ran out of water about a kilometre or so from the top. I really should have run out a kilometre or so before that but I realized I was getting low and rationed it a bit. I was still producing sweat at the top, though, so I wasn’t so dehydrated that I was especially worried. Still, more water would have made that last kilometre much easier, if only for the benefit of clearing the crud from my throat. I started out with about 2 litres. I probably should have had 3 or 4 litres given the heat.
Now for the real question. Would I do this climb again? Not unless I lose substantial weight first. I would also seriously consider putting it off until cooler weather. In addition to that, I would also tackle shorter climbs until those were relatively easy to accomplish before taking on a climb like Sulphur Mountain. There are pleny of much shorter climbs of equivalent difficulty.
Overall, I’m happy I did it, though. The views, even with the smoke blanketing the area, were spectacular, espeically from higher elevations. The trail is also on the opposite side of the mountain from Banff so there is no indication of civilization to be seen. In fact, you can’t even see any indications of the old weather observatory on Sanson’s Peak or the gondola terminal until you’re nearly at the top.
I should mention there is another strail that zigzags up the face of the mountain beneath the gondola. The trail is somewhat shorter but the elevation gain is also something like 300 metres less as well. The scenery is not nearly so nice as the the back route, though.
If you choose to attempt this particular climb, I recommend getting on the trail at the bottom no later than noon. If you’re in poor condition, aim for closer to 10AM. You definitely do not want to miss that last gondola going down – if you do, you’re walking down. Obviously, going down would be a lot less strenuous than going up and will likely take a lot less time (probably on the order of 2 or 3 hours) but if you’ve already climbed up, you won’t want to do that. I also find that going down is harder on my knees so that is a consideration as well.