Trail Running around the Bow Valley: The Canmore quad with Phil

A few weeks ago I had a blast up Ha Ling & EEOR in 2h 40m. How hard can the 4 corners of Canmore really be I thought? Grotto mountain, Mt Lady MacDonald, EEOR and Ha Ling, all done in a day, entirely under your own steam, no shuttles or bikes allowed. Phil Villeneuve posted on Facebook that he was looking for partners for his attempt, so I decided to give it a go.

Well it turned out to be a stellar day in the mountains. Unfortunately Phil's quick pace and the hot temperatures, plus around 8 hours of running already in my legs from the previous 7 days, meant I was unable to finish all four.

Grotto was a first for me - a real steep grunt, followed by an an amazing windy ridge to the summit proper. Then Lady Mac, and an even windier summit ridge that threatened to blow me off. We fuelled up at Phil's house downtown, but I knew heading up to Whiteman's gap that I was close to being done. The first 3 or 400m of steep climbing up Rundle confirmed that it wasn't to be my day. But hey, they'll be there for another attempt one of these days! And next time I'll be rested and tapered!

My time for the day - 7h 43mins, 3400m of climbing.

Awesome effort by Phil on cracking all four in just over 11 hours. That'll take some beating. You can read about it at :

http://x-cphil.blogspot.com/2011/09/canmore-4-peaks-challenge.html

Here's a few pics I snapped.