Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

October 13, 2025

2460m

Jasper, AB

The Whistlers is directly behind the Jasper Sky Tram and because of that, this is by no doubt the most regularly visited “peak” in Jasper, if not the entire Canadian Rockies. The highest point does boast over 100 m prominence to qualify as an independent peak. For peak-baggers The Whistlers is often tagged en route to Indian Ridge, which is well documented in Alan Kane’s scrambles book. I however, was always keen on exploratory and not-so-well-documented routes so back in 2013 I had already done Indian Ridge as a winter ascent by traversing over Marmot Mountain. I thus became one of the only few who had ascended Indian Ridge without tagging The Whistlers. This might not be a bad thing because it gave me an oppourtunity to do this subsidiary summit in a separate trip, and this eventually turned out to be more than 12 years later. One could choose to hike the entire profile from the townsite or take the gondola ride.

Clair and I had been planning a Thanksgiving long weekend road trip to the Canadian Rockies for over a month but the detailed itinerary was laid out at the very last minute as the weather would be rather fickle at this time of a year. The weather was indeed quite a problem. We only had 3 days from Vancouver to Vancouver and the weather would be absolutely garbage on the first two days. The third day could see some sunshine but such would be accompanied with 20+ cm of fresh snow and bitterly cold temperatures. I had a personal goal to tag at least one P100m objective even though this trip was designated for the family outing. It took me a long while to decide on The Whistlers on the 3rd day. This would result in us detouring all the way to Jasper and adding at least 4 hours of driving, but there was really no other better option. I even thought about dumpster-diving Mt. Pringle on the 2nd day but the road condition was downright sketchy east of Canmore.

This was indeed a beautiful day. We got out of Canmore at 8:30 am and dashed up the familiar Bow Valley corridor to the Icefield Parkway. We stopped at Bow, Peyto and Waterfowl Lakes and the Columbia Icefields for Clair to take in the scenery. The spur road heading down to the toe of Athabasca Glacier was already closed and we didn’t want to spend too long up there, so we quickly turned our attention to Athabasca Falls and the Jasper townsite. By the time we got to Jasper Sky Tram it was already 2:30 pm. There was thankfully not a lot of tourists around. I knew normally we would have to reserve our tickets but I decided to take our chance and got the last minute rides by paying cash in person (to be indefinitely flexible). The round trip cost was over 150 dollars for the two of us. Back in the old days there was absolutely no chance for me to afford that, but things had changed drastically over the past decade, that money in such scale was no longer an issue for me anymore. The weather was crystal clear enough that we even got to see the tip of Mt. Robson from the ride to the top. The forest underneath us was completely burnt to black, on the other hand.

Clair wished the gondola could have dumped us to the very summit but this was not the case. We still had about 2 km of hiking as well as over 200 m elevation gain, and the entire route was covered in fresh snow. I had come prepared for the October’s unusually cold weather by forcing us to bring the mountaineering boots and dress like we were about to do a high altitude summit push. I opted to use the La Sportiva G5s whereas Clair’s only choice was her Phantom Techs. I gave her my Everest’s Camp 2 jacket and she was able to wear that for the entire course, and that really showed how cold it was up there. There was not a lot worth noting about the hike itself, as the terrain was simple and the trail was already broken by the previous hikers. The scenery was much better than I thought though. I had apparently forgotten how beautiful the Canadian Rockies was, and this trip really reminded me that I need to come back more often, especially in summer time when the bigger peaks are in shape. The true summit was a ways away but I made sure we both tagged the highest point before calling it “good”.

Eventually after having enough of the views we leisurely walked back to the upper gondola station, bought some souvenirs and took the ride down. I really wanted to show Clair the Jasper townsite but we weren’t doing great on time. It would be either the townsite or Mt. Robson and I picked the latter. It’s not that easy to get such clear weather for seeing the king of the Rockies. We then had dinner in Valemount and I pushed all the way back home in the same day, arriving at 2 am. Our home-to-home time was about 76 hours which I thought was quite impressive.