About this Website
When I started this website in 2001, it was a novelty, an attempt to show the excitement of scrambling alongside the beauty of the Canadian Rockies. Displaying few photos and almost no text, my website was meant to entice rather than inform. Being a novice scrambler back then, I felt I was in no position to offer advice, but I was happy to share what few photos I took.

In a short time, however, I began exploring new routes and felt behooved to add trip descriptions and instructive photos. Adding trip report after trip report, my site soon outgrew the space provided on a free website. In 2005 I took a domain name and signed up with a web hosting service. By then, after undergoing several changes, my website settled on a format much like you see today.

Photos
At the turn of the millennium, posting numerous or large photos was out of the question. For one thing, storage media – for cameras and computers alike – was expensive so I didn’t attempt to amass a mountain of photos. And because download speeds were glacial, posting many or large photos was impractical. Pages displayed so slowly that text had to appear at the top of web pages just to give the reader something to look at while pictures were downloading. As download speeds climbed and storage media prices plummeted, I started adding more and larger photos to my site. I’ve even gone back to give older pages a facelift by increasing the number and size of photos.

GPS Tracks
I became interested in GPS receivers when I first heard about them in the '90s. But back then the U.S. Military feared they could be misused, so they crippled civilian use to an accuracy of just 100 m. Useless for routefinding, I thought. Then the U.S. relaxed its position and in May 2000, after flipping a switch, accuracy for general use narrowed down to 20 m. Two months later, I bought a Garmin Etrex. In 2003 I began adding route maps to my web pages.

In 2005 Google Earth made a startling appearance on the Internet scene. Incredibly, GPS tracks could be placed on a 3D image of a mountain and studied from any angle. Few hikers had GPS receivers back then, but anyone with Internet access could use Google Earth. I began adding Google Earth (KML) tracks to my trip reports.

It never occurred to me that anyone would want to use an entire track to find their way up a mountain, but one day someone requested a GPX track explaining they couldn't convert KML to GPX. So I began including both track formats. It wasn’t long before GPS use caught fire, and I began getting requests for tracks for my earlier trips which lacked them. So I went back and added tracks to virtually all my older postings.

My tracks are edited, extraneous points removed, which is a good thing: there’s no point in following my tracks whether I’ve gone off-route accidentally or intentionally to explore. Since routefinding is usually easier on the way down a mountain, I often use my descent tracks on out-and-back trips.

A word of caution about GPS tracks: they don’t replace experience and commonsense. One scrambler attempted to follow my track in winter conditions when I climbed Mt Kidd when it was dry. He fell, was seriously injured and had to be heli-rescued. Years later, by chance, he recognized me while hiking in Icefields. He was happy to meet me, and said he had completely recovered and resumed hiking albeit less risky routes.

Trip Stats
Following Alan Kane's format in his book, Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies, I record the summit elevation and the height gain, the latter determined by the difference between the lowest and highest points reached (in some cases, the lowest elevation is below the trailhead). In 2023 I began including cumulative elevation gain. I’ve always posted my figures, however accurate or inaccurate they may be. My first GPS receivers weren’t as precise as those nowadays so my early trip reports may reflect discrepancies.

The trip time reflects the total time of the trip. Only recently have apps calculated moving times. Likewise total elevation gain is a recent development, and the numbers shouldn't be taken seriously. Total elevation gain can vary among participants with the same app on the same trip and vary wildly with different apps.

Sometimes I'm asked how many people visit my website. That number is in a state of flux with the highest number of visits appearing in the summer. My best month was July 2020 when it reached 62,643. Since 2020, however, visits have fallen steadily, undoubtedly due to new websites becoming popular, notably Alltrails.

Videos
For several years I produced short videos of my trips. Although I enjoyed creating them, I found it demanding and time-consuming. On the trail, video shots competed with other activities, such as routefinding and looking for photos. Invariably, I ended up with too few photos or too little video. Back at home, I spent hours compiling clips and adding voice-overs. The little feedback I received indicated my videos weren’t that popular. In 2012 I stopped producing movies that summarized my trips.

Not a One-Man Show
This website is not a one-man show. Dinah contributes to trip photos and proofreads my text. Readers have emailed me with suggestions and corrections. Book and website authors provide me with ideas and inspiration for new trips. My motivation comes from reading complimentary emails and seeing references to my web pages. I appreciate the support and feedback as it encourages me to find and write about the best darn trips that I can.

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