SUMMITING Caldron Peak But First an ICE COLD Creek Crossing ~ The Summit Above Banff’s Peyto Lake

Over the past week, Emily and I have seen some incredible areas of Banff National Park and the Canadian Rockies. We've had perfect weather in the Bow Lake, Lake Louise, and Moraine Lake areas of Banff. Today is our day off, so we're spending it in Canmore and Banff shopping and relaxing before tomorrow's adventure up to Cauldron Peak, which sits high above Pato Lake right off the Icefields Parkway. Tomorrow morning is another early morning wake-up call, about 4 a.m. Then we have about an hour and a half drive north to Pato Lake. Once we get to Pato Lake, there's an actual trail up to Cauldron Lake. From Cauldron Lake, we have about a 2,000-foot scramble to the summit of Cauldron Peak, which gives you unbelievable views of Pato Lake and a bunch of surrounding glaciers. The only thing we're kind of worried about in the morning is a couple creek crossings, but we're kind of prepared for that. You ready? Love me a creek crossing. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. In 600 meters, turn left. So we have about six total miles and 5,100 feet elevation gain to the summit. We're almost to the famous Pato Lake lookout. A little dark, but if it's right off the trail, we're gonna go take a peek, see what it looks like this early in the morning. So that's Pato Lake at about 6 30 a.m. We're gonna walk right by it later, so I'll put up a couple shots of the afternoon light. Hopefully we're down at a decent hour so it still looks all bright and blue. We got about a thousand foot drop to Pato Lake from the viewpoint, so that is absolutely gonna suck later coming back up with this thing after going over 4,000 up to the summit. So that's good. I figured this would be the case so late in the season that the runoff isn't as high as all the reports had it. It's supposed to get really nice this afternoon, so it might be a little deeper, but it shouldn't be too bad. But I can't imagine how deep this is in early season. You probably can't even cross it. Well, I think I take that back. We might be getting wet. Finally foraging the river. We couldn't find a spot, so here we go. Not too bad so far. This is the part I'm worried about. Holding the schlong. Just go real slow and dig hard. Use your leg muscles. Get low. There you go. Low. Good. You got it. Use those sticks. Use the sticks. Use them on your right side. There you go. Atta girl. **** yeah. Okay, I gotta get my pants back on. Good job. We did it. All right, I take all that back. That sucked. That took us an hour to navigate up and down this creek bed to find a spot to cross. But we are finally here on the other side. Oh man. Dang it. There's our objective getting lit up right now. So we're way behind unfortunately. So we're going to cross this creek one more time, and then we have that little sand ridge. And then it banks around that way to Cauldron Lake. So now begins finally some elevation gains. There you go. Can you go back down there? There you go. All right, we got Cauldron Lake right up in there. And we just crossed the creek. That was fun. I'm so sick of creek crossings right now. And now we have a fun little sand ridge line to navigate. That should be good. And yeah, we got about another 1500 feet maybe to the lake. Not too bad. We're feeling good about it. And right on cue, a mountain goat comes up over that ledge. Perfect timing. All right, there's our fall summit right there. And there's our lake in that basin. There's Emily. She just made it up. And there's Pato Glacier, which is filling obviously all of Pato Lake. Okay, next stop. Cauldron Lake, right? Do it. Here we go. Okay, not bad. That it? That's it. So we made it to Cauldron Lake. Absolutely gorgeous basin here in a giant circ. There's Cauldron Peak right there. I think I'm going to make a run for it. It should take me a couple hours to get up there and an hour to get down. I'm going to go as fast as humanly possible. So Emily doesn't get too anxious down here in this awesome basin. But she is going to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner probably. Nah, she's going to have brunch, that's for sure. And then I'll be back down here. Hopefully I'm guessing one to two. So it looks like we have about 2000 feet to the summit from this lake, about 1800 feet. So I left Emily with the bear spray and all the food. I filled up my bladder. I think I got it. It's just going to take a while. So Matt is headed up to Cauldron Peak. He's currently a tiny speck of red with those white tips. Not sure how long we're going to be able to see him on this journey, but I will be finding my spot for Chateau Emily, which will be opening in approximately 30 minutes. Unfortunately, Emily's going to lose track of me. It is not up this stuff. There's a little ridge and then it goes up the bowl of the false summit and Cauldron Peak. So she's going to lose me unfortunately. She might pick me up closer to the summit though. Hopefully. So I switched spots just to get out of the wind a bit and try to dry out my feet. That creek crossing, I just went after it. Just boots and all. It was just, that was the only way it was going to happen. And Matt didn't give me the car keys, so I had no choice but had to go across the creek. A couple of young bucks came up here and I said, are you going on further? And they said, yeah, they're going to do Cauldron Peak. And I said, well, my husband's up there and he went left. And they looked at me oddly and said, well, we're going right. Okay. So we'll see if they make it. I don't think they're going to. They seem like a couple of wingers and you know, Mom, Matt goes left. You go left. Okay. I see an actual trail halfway up there. And once I can find a trail, it's going to be steamrolling this thing. I'm already doing pretty good. It's only been 25 minutes, I think, since I left Emily and it's in my grasp. I can feel it. It's been nice. I've been out of the sun until about right now, where it's going to start rocking me the whole day. So sun exposure here on out in about 10 seconds. Time to sweat. Feels good though. Brutal though. So I have done a couple of my jobs. I made two cups of coffee. I made two meals. So I boiled water a couple of times and then this is what I do. I flip socks. So that's another job of mine. Sock flipper. Hopefully those are toasty by this time. Well, it's down. Now I've got to get a few more things done to filter water, which is not fun. But you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. Should be down to Pato Lake and Icefields Parkway. Summit! All right, let's take a look at Pato Lake from above. Not bad. My goodness. Almost there. Emily and Cauldron Lake way down there. And this is the summit of Cauldron Peak high above Pato Lake and the Icefields Parkway. Run over here. Check out the view. Looking up here this morning, crossing that creek. I never thought I would be up here looking at that. Unbelievable. I can't believe this view. I got incredible views of my car. Cauldron Lake, just unreal. There's another little tarn lake above it. Pato Glacier, gigantic. This was not too tough. The hardest thing was probably the creek crossing and then the tiny little ledge where the goat was. That was pretty sketch. But man, this is just massive glaciers everywhere I look. Peaks beyond peaks beyond peaks. Ah, so good. What I'll do is I'll throw shots right now of what Pato Lake looks like when we get down there from that viewpoint because it was so dark this morning. All right, so I gotta get off this mountain and back to Emily. So I'll put the stats somewhere on the screen right now. I want to get down there so we can get back and have a one last awesome meal in Canmore. So hopefully you like this. I hope everybody's doing well out there. See you later. Here he comes. Back to me. How was it? I made it. Three minutes to spare to the chateau. That's important. Three minutes. The chateau is closed.