Hey, went to climb the North Face of Andromeda with Mark, a new climbing friend from Red Deer and just a kid at 20. We had a good time even though we never got to summit. We found some really cool ice formations in glacial ice cave's at the toe of the AA glacier on route to Andro and that was worth the trip right there. We saw bad weather on the Columbia Icefield from the parking lot, but thought that we should still make a go of it. Gaining the glacier into Andromeda's bowl was fun and kept us alert, same goes for the route finding around crevasses on the glacier. We jumped a 4 foot hole of doom on the way out of the bowl, super cool. We turned around at bottom of Skyladder, the North Face route was still a bit away , 30 min. The wind was constant, the snow started to fall a bit, and the ceiling was dropping. It was do or don't at this point. We talked about just doing Skyladder but decided to bail due to conditions. We didn't really know where the rappel point on the East Ridge was. I was sure I could find it in clear skies but in a white-out? Mark didn't have much in the way of really warm stuff, his bad, and the Athabasca headwall was not in good shape for a decent via that route. So what do ya do?... Bail and play in the ice cave on the way out. Really cool!! I will be going back for the North Face route and the Skyladder route, as it will only be here for a bit longer due to it MELTING AWAY!! Got to love humans. Anyway Mark dropped my OR toque in a crevass and I made him rappel in and get it. He was a good sport about it LOL !!! Joke I didn't MAKE him he just did. Thanks Mark. So we headed home and stopped at a few cool ice cave's and then on the road. Part 1 of ?
