Rather than push on, we retreated to the hut, bemoaned the incompetence of weather models which had promised blue sky and basically angry-napped before hiking out the next day.

So it is with climbing tall things in the Canadian Rockies - regardless of what the forecast says, the weather may just ruin your plans. Builds character or something.

We planned an attempt for another weekend last year but the forecast that time was bad enough we bailed the day before. I'm not sure if it counts as an attempt if you don't even get out of bed.

Assiniboine Round 2

Getting to Assiniboine Lodge

After getting skunked last year, we immediately decided we were going to go for a round two, so nearly a year in advance we called up the Assiniboine Lodge who manage reservations for the Hind Hut and booked a long weekend. After our weather issues we decided to give ourselves contingency and have two potential summit days so we could absorb a weather day without the whole thing being a bust.

The whole thing then sat on the back burner until all of a sudden our hut reservation was only a few days out. And this time the park was closed because most of Assiniboine Provincial Park was currently on fire. Shit. How do you even plan for that?

Just a couple of days before our attempt the park re-opened, but Conor had made other plans and had to bail leaving Nate and I to call the Lodge to book some spots on the heli.

So here's the deal with accessing Assiniboine. You have three options:

Hike in 11km from the BC side (involves a bunch of logging road driving and then some glacier travel) - apparently takes about 6-8 hours

Hike 27km from the Mt. Shark trail head to the Assiniboine Lodge. From there, hike around Magog Lake and then up through the Gmoser ledges to the hut (taking an additional 3-4 hours from the lodge)

Fly to the Lodge for a pretty reasonable $175 and then just do the 3-4 hours up the Gmoser Ledges to the hut

Both times I've gone up to the hut I've taken the Heli to the lodge and I'm never doing it again. Even though it isn't super expensive, having spoken with people who have hiked in from the BC side the added hiking time is minimal and if you factor in the amount of time spent dicking around in the Mt. Shark parking lot waiting for your heli ride, it's probably overall faster to just hike in from the BC side.