Eagle Mountain | Ski Touring in Banff National Park (Townsite)

01 Eagle Mountain | 2011-05-28

Eagle Mountain

Location: Banff National Park (Townsite)
Activity: Ski Touring
Height: 2,820 m (9,252 ft)
Elevation Gain: 1,340 m (4,397 ft)
Distance: 12.9 km / Round Trip (8.0 mi)
Avg Steepness: 11.7°
Estimated Time: 5-8 hrs
Technicality: Intermediate
Fitness Level: Hard

Download GPX: [Trail] Eagle Mountain.gpx
OpenStreetMap: See track recorded by GPS
Print: Display in printer-friendly format
Conditions:
- Weather
- Avalanche Bulletin

I was invited to Beather’s trip at the last minutes. Knowing weather forecast, I thought they were crazy but I was also stupid enough to get excited and decided to join.

Our objective was Eagle Mountain. Confusingly Sunshine also call this peak “Goat’s Eye Mountain”. They also call two peaks south of Eagle, “The Eagles”, which is really Mount Howard Douglas…

Anyway Ben, Heather and Brad and I headed out to Sunshine. I have met Brad few weeks ago at the summit block of Hector. That’s right, I kicked him out from summit LOL. Weather was promisingly bad. Driving from Banff to Sunshine it was raining hard. Luckily rain became wet snow as we gained elevation to the parking lot.

We pretty much made use of ski hill’s runs to get to the summit. After the end of Goat’s Eye lift, we weren’t too sure about snow condition but after days of discussion, we felt ok to go. Like Ben suspected, near north edge, snow was much less and about 30 to 50 cm of single layer new snow from a week-long rain we had.