Mount Joffre

THE APPROACH

After crossing Hidden Lake it became obvious I was following descent tracks but given that they were coming from the plateau to the right of Fossil Falls where I wanted to go I decided to follow them up rather than going up later and risking getting off route. Things started off smoothly but when the sidehilling began and then the ski tracks turned to boot pack tracks down towards Foch Creek I decided to abandon the track and continue up. What followed was some seriously tedious sidehilling through crust, avy runnels, and bushwhacking before spotting the ski track again descending a chute where I decided to regain it. Thankfully I was through the crux of the routefinding shenanigans and things were relatively straightforward from there for the day.

Despite a bit of shenanigans, following the track turned out to be a solid decision giving me a good sense of where to go to reach the plateau above Fossil Falls. After getting up the awkward narrow chute the track went straight up the slope soon after before easing off and gaining at an angle so I had my fair share of switchbacks to put in. Eventually I deviated from the skin tracks since I had Talha Ali's GPX to follow through this section and it wasn't long before the trees opened up, the terrain leveled out, and I was making my way for Aster Lake.

I was making better time than expected being less than 3 hours in by the time I was crossing the lake and after rounding the next corner Joffre was in sight. Sticking to the low point up until the spot beside the rocky subpeak of Joffre was the easiest travel and following a few switchbacks things flattened out quite a bit closer to the upper mountain with an initial rocky section to bypass followed by the long glacier climb.

THE NORTH FACE

I found Joffre's glacier quite foreshortened with the skin up to the base of the steeper section taking longer than expected, but I was pleasantly surprised to be able to set a skin track a decent ways up the face before conditions got a bit more crusty higher up and I switched to boot packing. The top of the face had a sizable amount of exposed rocks which seems to have been getting worse over the years as the glaciers recede so I had to watch out for that for the ski down, but once on the summit ridge it was a simple walk to the summit. There was a neat arête feature of ridge that looks like it leads to the true summit, not sure whether it's the high point or not, and I topped out 7 hours after starting.

THE SUMMIT

THE DESCENT & EXIT

After spending a bit of time on the summit it became quite cloudy overhead and the wind picked up sizably so I geared up for the ski descent quickly. The upper section was quite crusty and wind blasted but by the mid face the skiing was good and once on the less steep section it was super cruisy turns. I took a slightly different line down the lower section of the glacier to avoid some of the flat terrain before Aster Lake which saved me some time but I still had to put the skis back on to get back across the lake and back to the top of the plateau above Fossil Falls.

For the most part the descent from the plateau above Fossil Falls went smoothly besides the tough ski conditions with the warming temperatures but when I returned to the chute I used on the way up to find the tracks to follow again I decided to follow their tracks out rather than sidehilling and retracing mine. It seemed promising until the critical error that I only realized after the fact where it crossed a bridged section of Foch Creek to the skiers left or the west side and here I got pinched between a sketchy drop to the creek and the woods and was forced to bootpack and suffer through some nasty postholing.

Hindsight and knowing the terrain makes a big difference here but that one pinch point was the only issue with the route. For future parties I'd recommend either taking the initial slope up that I did before crossing the creek on any debris before the pinch, or just stay climber's left of Foch Creek the entire way and for both routes travel in the same direction as the creek till you reach the chute. From Hidden Lake the rest of the exit was simple and while the ice had been getting a decent amount of sun I trusted it was still quite thick on all the lakes so I beelined for the parking lot across Upper Kananskis Lake.

Round trip time for my single push solo effort on Joffre was just over 10.5 hours and I'm honestly a fan of banging out big days like this in one go. The style was also quite enjoyable, and skiing made the exit more fun and much less of a slog than it was when I did it in the summer and had to run out.

This trip served as good prep for bigger single push efforts to come, and when a nearly perfect one day window near Jasper showed up, Mitchell Thomas and Taylor Sullivan expressed interest, and Mitchell filled me in on the fact that the caribou closure in the Warren and Brazeau area had been lifted over a couple months early, there was only one thing left to do.