Click to hear me sing
Bennett Pass
Elevation:
Height Gain:
Location:
 6,890 ft (2100m)
1,640 ft (500m)
Waterton
Note for 23 Oct 04: I went with Blair Piggot. We went to climb the early season ice around Midnight Monkey, but after getting hit with two small sluff avalanches, we decided to back off the ice and go skiing instead. Awesome turns. Click for the detailed trip report

Note for 09 Jan 05: Blair and I were scoping out the route to Kintla Lake for a later attempt at Long Knife Peak. We got to the point of rounding the north face of Akamina Ridge, but avalanche concerns turned us around. We took a descent run down to Biscuitboard Creek, then back up to Bennett Pass, where we went home.

  Date Ascent Time Descent Time
1st Time 23 Oct 04 3:30 2:00
2nd Time 09 Jan 05 forgot forgot
After the purchase of my lastest Gem Trek map, there seems to be some controversy surrounding which col is actually Bennett Pass. Up to the purchase of this map, Blair and I always thought Bennett Pass was the col marked with a "1". But my Gem Trek map shows it to be the col marked with a "2". I searched the Internet, and discovered a couple of other people thinking it is the "1" site, and I found no other evidence of it being the "2" site. I think Gem Trek is wrong.

Anyway, on this trip, Blair and I skied in to go ice climbing, but ended up skiing instead. The faint red is where the good turns are.



This is the Akamina Pass trailhead. Usually, the road to get here is closed about 3km up the road, so you end up having to ski that part too, which adds about 20 mins to the trip each way. A week prior to this trip, the entire area was dry, so Parks didn't really have a chance to close the road yet. That was good for us.



This is Blair standing on the shores of Wall Lake. There is a lot of ice climbing in this area, so this place is becoming quite popular with me and Blair.



From the lake, the trail ventures along the shoreline for about 100 yards before branching off into the trees. It then pops out of the trees into the bowl above Wall Lake. Here we see Blair heading into that bowl. Keep in mind, at this point, we're still planning to go ice climbing.



Here is Blair making his way up to the base of the ice climbs. As you can see the weather wasn't the greatest.



From our ice climbs, this is looking across to an unnamed knoll above Bennett Pass. It was sunny over there.



This is Blair getting ready for ice climbing. I think he's giving himself a manicure or something. Behind Blair (above his helmet) is where we ended up skiing. This is the second time we've skied that. The other time was coming off of Akamina Ridge.



This is after we'd been hit by two small sluff avalanches. We backed off to this point, and then decided to skin up the slope to do some skiing so that the day wasn't a complete waste of time. We went up to the base of the rock just right of the left gully. Last year, we skied that left gully when coming off Akamina Ridge.



This is looking back at the ice climbs we were after. There are four shown in the picture. Left to right, we have Midnight Squeeze, Midnight Rendevouz, Midnight Monkey, and Midnight Tease. In case you're wondering about the "Midnight" term, there are 12 ice climbs along that wall, and they all start with "Midnight". It's kind of like a theme.



This is looking down toward Wall Lake. The flat area on the left is what we believe to be Bennett Pass.



Here is a picture of our ski tracks (first run). I had to darken the picture, so you can see the contrast. Otherwise, it was just a picture of of white slope. Even with the darkening, it's still hard to make out our tracks.



Just before our second run, the sun really came out. This is looking east across Waterton. In the extreme background, you can see Mts. Carthew and Alderson.



Here is another picture of our runs. Blair's track from his first run is the right-most track. The two left ones are mine. At the top of the picture, is Blair about to make his second run. I actually video'd the run, so you can download the 5.3MB file if you want to see just how good the turns really are. Click here to watch the video.