About this Website
In 2001, I started this website as a novelty to showcase the excitement of scrambling in the Canadian Rockies. With few photos and minimal text, it was meant to entice rather than inform. As a novice scrambler, I felt I couldn’t offer advice, but I could share my photos. Over time, I explored new routes and added trip descriptions and instructive photos. My site grew beyond the free website space, so in 2005, I took a domain name and signed up with a web hosting service. After several changes, my website settled on its current format.

GPS Tracks
I first heard about GPS receivers in the ‘90s. However, the U.S. Military feared misuse and limited civilian use to 100 m accuracy, making it useless for routefinding. After relaxing its position in May 2000, accuracy narrowed to 20 m. Two months later, I bought a Garmin Etrex which greatly added my routefinding. In 2003, I began adding maps to my web pages.

In 2005, Google Earth appeared on the internet, allowing users to place GPS tracks on 3D mountain images and study them from any angle. Though few hikers had GPS receivers, anyone with internet access could use Google Earth. I started adding Google Earth (KML) tracks to my trip reports.

I didn’t expect anyone to want to use an entire track to find their way up a mountain, but someone requested a GPX track because they couldn’t convert KML to GPX. So I started including both formats. GPS use caught fire, and I began getting requests for tracks from my earlier trips. I added tracks to most of 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: GPS tracks don’t replace experience and common sense. One scrambler tried following my Mount Kidd track in winter conditions when I climbed it in the summer. He fell, was seriously injured, and had to be heli-rescued. Years later, he recognised me while hiking in Banff and was happy to meet me. He had recovered and resumed hiking, albeit less riskily.

Trip Stats
I record the summit elevation and height gain, determined by the difference between the lowest and highest points reached. In 2023, I began including cumulative elevation gain. I’ve always posted my figures, though they may be inaccurate due to the limitations of early GPS receivers.

The trip time reflects the total time of the trip. Total elevation gain is also a recent development, and the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. It can vary among participants with the same app on the same trip and wildly with different apps.

I’m asked how many people visit my website, but that number fluctuates. The highest number of visits was in 2020. Since then, visits have fallen, likely due to the rise of new websites like Alltrails.

Videos
For several years, I produced short videos of my trips, but they were demanding and time-consuming. Competing with routefinding and photo-taking while hiking, I often ended up with insufficient footage. Back home, I spent hours compiling clips and adding voice-overs. The little feedback I received indicated my videos weren’t popular. In 2012 I stopped producing movies that summarised my trips.

Not a One-Man Show
This website is a collaborative effort. Dinah contributes trip photos and proofreads my text. Readers suggest and correct my work. Book and website authors inspire me with ideas. Reading complimentary emails and seeing references to my web pages motivates me to carefully write my trips reports.

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