Where
Ya Ha Tinda Ranch Area, Alberta
When
March 14-16, 2022
Distance
The trip was a couple of separate day hikes, totalling around 25km.
Conditions
Early spring / late winter conditions.
Daytime highs around 7C, overnight lows of around -8C. No precip over the duration.
Overview
I went out to Ya Ha Tinda for a couple of days to scout out the ice conditions before heading out for a late-season ice climbing weekend with Des. The first climb Dream On is somewhere that we have climbed before and were familiar with. Fjord Falls was new to us, we just recently found it described on Will Gadd’s app and needed to confirm the location and approach route.
For the trip, I camped roadside at the Eagle Creek PRA Campground and day tripped the two falls.
Video Link
Day 1
The first day I travelled out to Ya Ha Tinda from Calgary after visiting my parents, the drive is around 2 hours. Once I got out to the Ya Ha Tinda area I quickly visited both the Eagle Creek Campground and Bighorn Campground. Eagle Creek was looking nicer so I planned to stay there and headed to the Eagle Lake trailhead. Readied my gear and began the walk back to Dream On. The hike back is about 5km and takes about 1.25 hours with a day bag. The terrain is pretty moderate and there is no significant elevation change.
Arriving at Dream On I checked the ice quality at the base of the lower falls quickly with my ice tool. The ice felt solid and pliable, perfect ‘Hero Ice’ typical of March. I then did the scramble around to the bench below the upper fall. The upper falls looked better than they did last season when we visited.
The two falls looked pretty good, a nice blue throughout and no visible slush or significant melt despite the warm conditions. I then headed back to the car and headed to Eagle Creek Campground to set up my camp.
Day 2
After a comfortable night around -8C I had a casual morning enjoying my breakfast and coffee before beginning my trip to Fjord Falls for the day. I drove over to the Bighorn Staging parking lot down the road and began the hike. Heading west from the parking I followed the old Banff Trail roadway, roughly parallelling the Red Deer River. After about 4km I was approximately straight across from the creek that forms Fjord Falls. I dropped down to the river’s edge and scouted along for a good crossing point. After checking up and downstream about 1 km I settled on a shallow section before some small rapids. The fording point worked well, it only came up to mid-shin with a light current.
After drying my feet and putting my boots back on I continued to the creek. Getting to the creek I found a trail signed for Hidden Falls running up the side of the creek gully. I chose to follow this trail and it worked well, the trail took me along the east edge of the gully right to the falls. There I found a small goat trail down the gully side to the base of the falls.
Fjord Falls was a nicely formed fall at a full 35m pitch. The guidebook said to expect WI3, but it was easily a WI4 difficulty. My ice tool test found the ice hard and strong, not as pliable as Dream On but still very good to go. After a brief snack break at the base of the falls, I followed the trail back out while GPS tracking the route for the future.
Day 3
On the last day, I again took a casual morning and then packed camp. On the way out of the area, I stopped in a few spots on the road to scout more ice falls. Along the road back to town there are multiple falls across the Red Deer River that I have yet to find information online about. I stopped to mark the approximate locations of these on my map to study for future trips potentially. After this, I drove out to meet up with Des and prepared to return in a couple of days to climb.
Take-Aways
Overall the trip was good, it was definitely not a challenging trip for me. The river fording was not new to me, but it has been a while since I located a fjord and crossed it. It seemed that I remembered what to look for to identify a spot as it all went smoothly and quickly.
When we returned on the weekend to climb the falls the ice conditions had deteriorated from my scouting trip. It will be important for me to keep in mind that at this time of year even 3-4 days can be enough to cause a fairly significant change in ice condition. The falls were still climbable and safe, but the top part of Dream On had become pretty wet and slushy. Resultingly we only climbed the lower ¾ and stayed off the upper section. Fjord Falls had gained a significant layer of chandelier ice on the lower portions which greatly increased the difficulty of that part of the climb.
I wore my new Fjallraven Keb pants from my previous review for both this trip and the climbing and they worked very well. The pants have continued to impress me with their design considerations and comfort. The pockets and hip vents are located clear of a climbing harness and the cut provides excellent mobility. The elastic cuff helped when pulling my pant legs up to ford the river. T he G-1000 cloth lowers readily repelled the splashes they received while fording.