New route on Alberta’s North Face

No one ascends or attempts Mount Alberta expecting superlative climbing. Present-day climbers are well aware that the approach is arduous, the weather foul, and the rock dangerously loose. Yet, like the north face of the Eiger, Mount Alberta continues to attract ambitious mountaineers who regard the challenge of a difficult route simply too great to resist.

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Chris Brazeau and Jon Walsh have made a new route on the North Face of Mount Alberta (3619 m) in the Canadian Rockies. The party climbed the 1000-meter face in a single push on September 7, making probably the first all-free ascent of the wall. The Canadians  simulclimbed two pitches of mixed ground at the base of the wall, and then soloed the ice field leading to a limestone headwall. They climbed the exposed headwall in six hard pitches to the right of the original 1972 route. The crux pitch involved both M6 mixed climbing and 5.11 rock. Unlike many of the big Rockies faces, the climbing on Alberta is not over when you reach the summit – a descent down the easiest Japanese Route (IV 5.6) on the mountain’s east side  is long and complicated. Brazeau and Walsh returned to the bivy hut a little over 30 hours after leaving.

Although done already in 1972, The North Face of Alberta is still regarded as one of the great prizes of the Rockies. The first ascent, made by Jock Glidden and George Lowe, was an inspiring achievement, years ahead of its time. The route was done in impeccable style on the first attempt and rated VI 5.9 A3. It involved 13 rock ,17 ice leads and several hundred feet of scrambling. That visionary route went unrepeated for almost 10 years (second ascent: Kit Lewis and Steven Swenson, 1981). In August 1991 Mark Wilford soloed a variation to the Glidden-Lowe route (he traversed to the Northeast Ridge in the upper part).

Further reading:
George Lowe: Mount Alberta’s North Face, “American Alpine Journal” 1973, p. 314-315
Mark Wilford: Mount Alberta’s North Face and Northeast Ridge, “American Alpine Journal” 1992, p. 99-106