I'd wanted to climb Edith Cavell ever since John Scurlock and I flew past it on an aerial photography trip to the Canadian Rockies in May 2012. (The photos above were taken on this trip.)

Edith Cavell's East Ridge is a classic Canadian Rockies route, offering an athletic adventure with mixed climbing at a moderate grade. The peak is one of the more accessible in the Canadian Rockies and the East Ridge can be completed comfortably in one day. Depending on the snow conditions and weather the route can be bare rock the whole way, or snow and ice requiring crampons and an axe. Most of the climbing is 3rd and 4th class on generally good quartzite, with a short 5.3 section on especially beautiful quartzite. The descent is either by reversing the East Ridge (shorter but steeper and might be tricky if there is snow/ice) or heading down the West Ridge (longer but more mellow terrain).

In summer 2017, construction was being done on the parking lot in the Edith Cavell Day Use area, the trailhead access for the East Ridge. Because of this, the parks service had placed limited public access to the parking lot via a permit system* (a maximum of 180 vehicle permits per day, staggered entry times with the first being 8:30am, gates closing at 8pm, and 2 vehicle overnight permits per day for climbers wanting to sleep in the parking lot to get an alpine start). Rob and I arrived mid-day in Jasper the day before our planned climb, and were told that there were no more available overnight permits. So the earliest we could start hiking would be about 9am. And we would have to be back to the trailhead by 7:30pm to drive our cars out before the gates closed at 8pm. This gave us a 10.5 hour window to car-to-car the climb. We figured we could do that. (*Perhaps because the late-season crowds were minimal or because the park staff was worn out of enforcing the permits, but we felt that we could have easily gotten away with ignoring the permitting rules....)

Conditions were about as easy as it gets, allowing us to do the climb in just under 10 hours car to car, at quite a relaxed pace with a few short breaks thrown in. The route was entirely rock, and we never needed to touch snow, even on the summit ridge. We also decided to solo the 5.3 section in rock shoes (this part was the best climbing on the route, and we wished there was more of it than just a single pitch worth!). So we ended up bringing a lot of gear we never used: 60m 8mm rope, 4 cams, a few nuts, 6 slings, crampons and ice axe, and down puffies. (Being a bit unfamiliar with Rockies conditions and expecting possible ice between the rocks from late-summer storms the previous week, we had definitely over-geared a bit for this route. But on the other hand, it would have been frustrating to get up there without the right gear.) The weather was great too—it was an unusually warm and pleasant day and we did much of the climb in t-shirts. The main bummer was the smoke from forest fires that muted our views of the surrounding mountains. (Forest fires had plagued western Canada in summer 2017. Depending on the winds, one day could be smoky and the next one not, and vice versa. Unfortunately, it decided to be a bit smoky the day we climbed Edith Cavell.)

We had planned on descending by reversing the East Ridge, but at some point on the way up decided to come down the West Ridge. We were glad we made this decision, as it allowed for a nice loop trip over the mountain and brought us down into the beautiful Tonquin Valley. It was more "check out and enjoy the views" terrain, worth the perhaps 1 hour longer it took versus the East Ridge.

The following page gives photos from our enjoyable athletic day up and over Edith Cavell. Thanks Rob for joining me on this climb!

Interesting tidbit: The mountain was named for an English nurse executed by the Germans during World War I for helping people held captive to escape.

Car to summit: 4 hours 55 minutes
Summit to car (via West Ridge): 4 hours 40 minutes
Total car-to-car: 9 hours 58 min