Ghoster Coaster is a three pitch WI3 ice climb located along Cougar Creek, upstream from Canmore. The approach starts in Canmore making it an easy drive from Calgary.
I have wanted to check out this climb for a few years after seeing Facebook posts and Youtube videos about it. This year, we’ve been leading a lot of WI3 and felt very confident to take this on.
The downside of this climb is the long approach. On social media, folks said it took 2 hours or more to reach the start of the climb. I told Dan that this day might be a long hike with a bit of ice climbing in the middle.
Beta:
- WI3
- 3 pitches
- 2-bolt anchors at the top of each pitch
- descent: rappel the route
- we used two 60-meter ropes
- approach hike is almost 6 km and about 400 meters elevation gain
Access
The trail to the climb starts in Canmore at Cougar Creek. This is also the trailhead for the hike up Mount Lady MacDonald and access to the Cougar Canyon rock climbing area.
The red line is our route to Ghoster Coaster. It shares the trail to Lady MacDonald at the start and then branches off right to follow Cougar Creek.
The Approach – Cougar Creek Section
The trail from the parking lot heads up Cougar Creek. The day we went, it was very icy and we were happy to have micro spikes.
We passed a trail sign for Mount Lady MacDonald as we headed toward the dam.
We climbed the hillside on the trail above the left side of creek.
Here the trail to Cougar Creek left the Lady MacDonald trail. The top of the dam is on the right.
We followed the trail to the top of the dam and went down the other side.
Eventually, we found a nice trail in the woods near the creek. But it didn’t last long.
When there was no trail, we hiked beside the creek.
There was no snow that day so we had no trail to follow for much of the hike.
We had to figure out the path of least resistance as we hiked up the valley.
There were some good trails, especially near climbing areas where we saw bolts on the rock walls.
(It’s been years since we’ve rock climbed here. Lots of the routes looked tempting. We’ll have to come back when it’s warmer!)
We saw some smaller ice smears on the way in. I don’t know if anyone ever climbs these. The taller one looked kind of cool.
Hiking over loose rocks on the creek bed got a bit tiring.
We were getting closer. A couple of turns in the creek and we would be at the gully that contained the ice.
I was hoping we’d see approach ice when we looked up the gully.
getting closer
Here a left turn took us into the gully where we hoped to quickly find the climb.
No such luck. Here is the view up the gully.
We found a trail in the rocks and gravel and headed up for more hiking.
The Approach – Gully Section
We continued hiking on loose rocks, but here we were going more steeply uphill.
Parts of the gully were filled with boulders and deadfall.
We continued making our way through the rocks, hoping around the next corner we would see some ice.
Eventually, we could see some high steep walls ahead and it looked like the gully was going to get narrower.
I wondered, at times, if we were in the right gully. But the navigation feature in the Ice Climbing app is usually very good and according to it, we were on track.
At last, a frozen creek!
Around the corner, we put on harnesses and crampons and then stepped onto the ice to continue up.
We had come 5.8 km and nearly 400 meters of elevation gain.
The Climb
Around the corner, we saw the first ice step.
This has been referred to as “approach ice” on social media. The ice climbing app considers it part of pitch 1.
We decided to solo this.
The ice was good and it was a fun solo.
At the top of the solo step, we saw a two bolt anchor on the left marked with pink tape. The two bolts are joined by a chain and there is a rappel ring.
We used this station at the end of the day to rappel rather than down-climb.
The rest of the first pitch was just beyond a short flat section.
It looked fun.
We hiked up to the base. It was Dan’s turn to lead and he made quick work of it.
At the top, we found another bolted anchor marked with pink tape.
The second pitch looked great!
It was the highlight of this climb. Definitely the money pitch.
Lucky me, I got to lead it.
The third pitch was a long rambler with some steepness at the end.
We used two 60-meter ropes for this and it was a stretch to reach the bolted anchor near the top.
We should have soloed the first rambling part and just belayed the top step part.
Dan stopped at a bolted anchor on the left.
Usually the climb continues up to a tree anchor further back but the ice was thin and running out at the top.
The bolted anchor was ideal.
The Descent
We rappelled from the bolts at the top of pitch 3 and got back to the top of pitch 2. We rappelled again from there and got all the way down the top half of pitch 1 to the flat step that we had soloed up to at the beginning of the day. A third rappel got us to the ground.
From there, we started our long walk back to Canmore.
Ghoster Coaster was interesting to check out and I’m glad we finally climbed it. Overall, we felt the climbing was a bit underwhelming for the long walk required to get there. We filed this one under “one and done”.
We’ll be seeking out some new ice climbs and I will post the write ups here. If you want to receive an email when I post a new write up, scroll down to subscribe.
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