Stanley Falls Senior

Overview

Stanley Falls Senior is the obvious sunny 40 m grade 4 ice climb clearly visible directly accross the valley from the classic ice climb Shades of Beauty. It sees a fracton of the traffic of Shades, but is a worthy objective by itself. Especially if the traffic on Shades looks backed up. When combined with Shades in a day it can make for a great moderate link up. If the link up is your goal, it would be wise to start on the sunnier Stanley and finish on Shades (crowds permitting).

Getting There

As for all of the Beauty Creek Ice Climbs you need to park 2 km south of the Beauty Creek Hostel.

From Jasper turn south onto Hwy 93 and follow it for about 86 km past the Beauty Creek Hostel to the parking lot for all the Climbs.

Google Map From Jasper

From Lake Louise follow Hwy 93 north for about 140 km.

Google Map From Lake Louise

Approach

From the parking lot approach as for Shades of Beauty most of the way.

From the parking lot walk directly across the creek to the old roadbed. Follow this old road south (right) for about 500 m. Watch for a trail breaking off left up and into the trees and follow this. You will follow Beauty Creek on the climber's left for 30-45 min. You will emerge into the upper valley. Continue up this valley on the left of the creek for 15-20 min. It is impossible to see Stanley from below, but where the trail heads right across the creek to head up to Shades is where you will want to look for the line of least resistance up to the left. It is a steep grunt up to Stanley and you will very likely be breaking trail the entire way. You may want to use Shades as a landmark as it is directly accross the valley from Stanley. 75-105 minutes.

Route Description

The route is straight forward and can be done in either 2 short steep pitches or 1 long 40 metre pitch. A natural belay is found midway on the climber's right of the climb.

It could be possible to combine the two pitches. Both pitches are solid grade 4 and the general consensus is that compared to Shades of Beauty, Stanley is the harder ice climb.

Descent

Rappel from a tree to the climber's right. This is a long free hanging rappel that drops you well to the climber's right of the climb. The ice at the top of the climb is suspect and a v-thread is not recommended.

Essential Gear

A second rope for the rappel.

Standard ice rack.

External Links

There are two great websites for ice conditions in the Canadian Rockies:

Gravsports-Ice

and

Live The Vision - Ice Conditions.

Images

View Stanley Falls Senior Image Gallery - 9 Images