Day 2 - The rodents attack

The next morning we woke up moderately early (maybe around 7:30am) and leisurely ate breakfast and packed. The Fay Hut was really nice - it was a luxury hut! There were solar panels, which powered some small lights (including one in the out house). There was also a propane stove and propane lights. It was very nice looking inside as well, with tiled floors even.The original Fay Hut was built way back when but it burned down in the 1996 forest fire in that region. The Alpine Club of Canada recently rebuilt this hut, so it was really nice and new.After packing our gear and suiting up, we headed outside to collect our hiking poles and start our hike. This was when we noticed something odd about our hiking poles:The foam handles and fabric straps of our hiking poles were all chewed up!!The previous evening, Garrett had laid our hiking poles underneath the hut's outside staircase, so they wouldn't get wet if it rained. However, this allowed small ground rodents access to our (apparently) yummy foam and fabric. They nibbled on the foam and chewed the straps right off, presumably taking them back to their nests. Our emotions ranged from anger, to dismay, to humour, however in the end, our poles were worth about $120 a set, so it was pretty annoying that an expensive piece of equipment was damaged.

We set out over the river and up the snow-filled canyon. The snow was packed so well that we just hiked up on the snow the whole way up.Garrett was behind me, so I took a number of pictures of him hiking up the canyon with the mountains behind us.We gained about __ meters climbing in the canyon. Without the snow, it probably would have been a challenging climb and hard work, but since the snow made a smooth path for us, we just hoofed it up.There were lots of rocks on top of the snow - rocks that had fallen down from the walls to rest on top of the snow until the melt completed.Once at the top, our view opened up to a broad vista of snow and rocks.Evidence of the spring melt was starting to appear, and continually increased over the days we were up there. You can see the waterfall amongst the snow in the middle of this shot:We took a rest at the top of the canyon and decided to suit up with our snowshoes. Since the sun was strong up there and had been for a number of hours by that point, the snow was pretty soft and walking through it was tough. Often your foot would go through to the knee or beyond, which makes for hard traveling and wet feet/pants.
Our route towards the glacier was up to us to decide, but this is the way we went up:On the way down, we actually took a much different route, traveling off to the left of the above picture.

So off we went:There's Garrett:That's Joelle:Garrett again:Ian was a bit of a non-conformist and didn't want to put his snowshoes on right away, so he was wandering down below us on his own:Soon, we approached the glacier:Since it was such a cold spring and the thaw is so late this year, the glacier was still completely covered with snow. This made it really quite safe to traverse, especially with snowshoes, which prevents your legs from falling through small crevasses as you hike. Despite the safety, we were all wearing climbing harnesses, carrying ice axes and roped ourselves together in case someone fell in. This is where we roped up:There was a cool little bowl at the base of the glacier:Ian and Joelle taught us the few knots we needed to know for the glacier traverse. They were really simple, so we set it all up at the base of the glacier.We started up the glacier - up and up and up and up. It didn't look that steep but you'll see shortly from one of my pictures that some parts were quite steep. It was really hard to see changes in slope and depth on the white glacier until you were quite close to the contours.This is us on the glacier, looking back at Garrett and from where we came. As we climbed higher, we could see over the first mountain range to the mountains behind.Climbing up:Looking back from where we came:Looking at a small pond in the middle of the glacier. My camera didn't capture the blue colour very well, but I'm hoping someone else got better shots than me.Climbing up. The sun was getting quite hot by this point, and with our packs on our backs weighing us down, we made fairly slow progress up the slope. We took a number of breaks during our ascent.Looking back from where we came:Once on the top of the glacier, it was only a gentle slope towards the end of the glacier and our destination: the Neil Colgan Hut.As we neared, we saw the hut on top of the cliff at the end of the Fay Glacier.However, as we neared the glacier, we started to realize it might be a little tricky to get all the way up to the hut. Since it was around noon when we arrived at this part of our trip, the sun was hot and the snow was getting a little melty. This made our climb up a little tough and a little scary, since falling off while climbing kindof meant falling down that there cliff.Of course, we made it up just fine, although I have to say I was a little scared while we did it. But once we made it up, we didn't have to go anywhere for a couple days.

The hut was really a rickety old thing that was partially secured by cables attached to barrels filled with rocks.Here's some info about the hut from a plaque on the wall:The hut is the highest structure in Canada that you can sleep in. It is also the highest that both Garrett and I have ever climbed to, so we were excited about that.The hut was a lot smaller and more ghetto than the previous hut, but that was kindof to be expected. There was still propane stoves and lights, although we didn't need the lights since it stayed so light out so long up there. We had to melt and then boil snow in order to have drinking water, so that's what we used the stoves for the most.This is the view from the balcony of the hut.This is looking to the right side off the balcony.And this....is the OUTHOUSE! Highest outhouse in Canada. Probably also one of the more treacherous ones. The biggest danger was the door swinging out of control in the wind up there.This is the view looking out the window of the outhouse:Here is a little video clip showing the panorama view off the balcony.