Karina’s 9,000 by 9 – A fundraising Adventure for Wilderness
October 16, 2024
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Text and photos by Lindsey Wallis
In 2023 seven year old Karina Eustace-Wallis was inspired by her love of Alberta’s wilderness to embark on a challenge and raise money for Alberta Wilderness Association. She climbed eight Alberta summits before she turned eight years old on September 8 and raised more than $10,000 for AWA. In her words, “I like to climb, hike, and ski. I love wild places because they are sacred. Because they are ancient. They make me feel special. I like spending time in wild places because they are life. I want to protect them because they are extraordinary.” You can read all about her eight summits here.
This year, her goal was even bigger — to hike and climb 9,000m of elevation around Alberta in the summer of 2024, before she turned 9 on September 8. She also set a goal of raising $9,000 for AWA to “Keep the Wilderness Wildernessy”. There were many coulees and mountains climbed and in the end she gained 9,030 metres of elevation, as tracked by Strava. She also succeeded in raising $9,384 for Alberta Wilderness Association! Thank you so much to everyone who we met along the trail who had encouraging words, and a big thank you to everyone who donated. I hope that as she gets older she will remember that she can do hard things! Persistence and determination are traits that are always important in so many areas of our lives. In 2025 you can join in on the fun as AWA celebrates 60 years — stay tuned for more details as we ask: What’s your 60?
We started in late spring with a warm up hike at Lesueur Ridge on May 19 with Karina’s good friend. Because the only thing better than being out in the wilderness is enjoying it with friends!
There was still a lot of snow in the mountains near Calgary so we headed south on May 24 for a date with an old favourite from last year’s adventure challenge, Table Mountain. We were headed to the Whaleback on Sunday for a spring hike, as part of the Adventures for Wilderness program so made a camping weekend of it, with one night in Castle Provincial Park and one night in the Porcupine Hills. At lower elevations the flowers were out in force! Sunny yellow balsam root and fiery pink shooting stars dotted sunny slopes. There was a little bit of snow near the summit of Table Mountain and howling winds, as per usual for this part of the world. We tagged the summit and then scurried back to more sheltered parts of the mountain! The following day, we joined Kevin Van Tighem and a bunch of eager adventurers for a ramble along the rolling ridges of the Whaleback.
Stunning Shooting Stars!
Camping in the Castle
Hurrying back down, out of the gale!
Table Mountain, an early season favourite
Whaleback Adventure
Balsamroot on the Whaleback
We went on a number of adventures in June, including the Milk River Ridge and the Wainwright Dunes, but the elevation numbers were pretty minimal so we didn’t include them in her project. Finally, at the beginning of July, we got around to one of the Bow Valley’s classic summits, and one that Karina had not yet done. Îyâ Mnathka (known to many as Yamnuska), means “flat-faced mountain”, and is one of the most iconic mountains one sees as you drive West of Calgary. It is a popular hike so we weren’t alone, and Karina met lots of folks who she explained her adventure to. Karina’s favourite part was coming across the chains section (which I didn’t manage to get a photo of). Now she is asking when we can do a technical summit of “Yam” via the front face! Sounds like she already has a good goal for next summer.
On July 6 we headed north for an Adventure for Wilderness in Rosebud. There were more spectacular flower blooms along the coulees and we learned about this special place that is under threat from a proposed racetrack development in the valley. The group was fortunate to see a moose heading out of the valley, as well as prairie falcons swooping overhead. Unfortunately, this adventure ended with Karina unintentionally finding a wasp nest in the thick bushes near the trails end and three painful stings on her leg!
But Karina is a trooper, so we put some ice packs on her leg and headed back to our friends’ cabin in Southern Alberta for the night and a chance to see more spectacular flower blooms in Waterton National Park the following day. Since her leg was quite swollen and sore, we decided to do a shorter hike than originally planned. But it is funny how the mind twists your memory — I did NOT remember quite how STEEEEEEP Mount Galway was! We gained more than 800 metres of elevation in 3 kilometres. Luckily we had a stunning show of wildflowers and some fun, hands-on scrambling to keep our minds off our burning quads!
Mt Galway
With her wasp bites healed, we returned to Waterton at the end of July to share a favourite hike of mine with Karina. Akamina Ridge is a long day at 18 km and more than 1,000m of elevation gain, but I felt like this year she was ready. It was so interesting to walk the first part of the trail towards Forum Lake. What used to be a thick forest has been totally burned out by the fire in 2017. Now the hillsides are lush with wildflowers, shrubs and new pines emerging from amongst the fireweed. We met another family hiking the same route and joined them for a while, Karina can quickly make friends with anyone! When we finally arrived at Wall Lake we took a dip in the ice cold water to refresh ourselves for the final push to the car. Karina has grown up with a mum and good family friends who relish a good polar bear dip and the love for it has been passed on!
Beargrass!
Looking down on Wall Lake
We only had a couple days back in Calgary to get packed for our six-day backpacking trip from Sunshine Village to Mount Shark via Assiniboine Provincial Park with our fellow adventure family. While Assiniboine park isn’t in Alberta, our start and end points were, so we counted this trip for Karina’s challenge. We took 3 days to hike in, then had a day for a hike up to Nub Peak before hiking out over Wonder Pass, with a night spent at Marvel Lake. Once again, the flowers this year were absolutely spectacular! Karina had fun skipping rocks on all the lakes we passed and swam in three of them. Her highlight from the trip was boot skiing on the remnant snow at Nub Peak.
July ski season on Nub Peak
I heart Wild Alberta
Descending Nub Peak
Our next hike was a quick jaunt up Mount Lady MacDonald in Canmore to get some elevation in, and I don’t think it was anyone’s favourite hike. It was fairly smokey that day, and the noise of the highway and Canmore Folk Festival drifted up to us for almost the entire day. As we hiked the very steep trail to the helipad we ran into a famous Canmore resident, as well as some folks doing LAPS of the mountain to train some elevation gain! That was inspirational! The smoke made for some poor conditions so I have no photos of the day.
AWA welcomed German forestry student Christin Spatz as an intern this summer and Karina and I had a great time showing her some of our favourite places! In mid-August we headed to the Ghost for an Adventure for Wilderness up Hussey’s Hill. We had plans for the next day to look at the logging done along Aura Creek so we took the opportunity to camp on public land that evening.
Hussey’s Hill
Hussey’s Hill
Sunset in the Ghost
Of course our favourite places are those that are still wild and untouched by resource extraction, but sometimes we must go to see for ourselves what is happening to our environment, and what will continue to happen, more and more rapidly, if we don’t speak up. As a forestry student, Christin was interested to see our forest industry in action, so we took her to a section of the Ghost where we could view different ages of cutblocks, including one from last year, but then also see some beauty at Horse Lake, the surrounding aspen forest and the nearby beaver complex. We also saw the abuse of this part of our Eastern Slopes by quads and dirt bikes which are not staying on designated trails, riding through creeks, and disturbing sensitive ecosystems.
Cutblock
illegal OHV use in the sand hills
Horse Lake
Karina’s new friend
Beaver ponds
Karina had originally wanted to do more climbing to reach her 9,000 metre goal, but life seemed to conspire against us and we never quite managed to get out, until late in August, when we convinced our intern Christin to come give it a try. We climbed 9 pitches of easy rock on Mount Rundle, above the Banff Springs golf course.
Climbing on Mt Rundle
Climbing on Mt Rundle
For our final hike, we wanted to show Christin some of our really spectacular mountain scenery so we headed up the Icefields Parkway to Bow Lake, a stunning lake in its own right. But our destination was a little further on — over a giant stone balanced above a steeply carved gorge to another glacier-fed lake with the glacier’s tongue visible above. We then explored the moraine field, picking our way through the jumble of rocks pushed into piles by the glacier and into an alpine meadow that would lead to our second river crossing of the day, in the headwaters of the Bow River. The water was high with the warm temps so Karina got a dad-ride across what would have been a waist-deep ford for her! We had planned to pull the paddleboard out back at the parking lot but the gathering storm clouds and rumbles of thunder made us rethink that decision and celebrate her final hike of the challenge with a poutine back in Canmore instead!
Bow Lake reflections
Iceberg Lake
Post-swim lunch break
Rambling alpine meadows
Crossing the big chockstone
So once you’ve completed 9,000 metres of elevation, what do you do on your 9th birthday? More climbing of course! Karina learned to lead climb (where you take the rope up the wall with you and secure yourself as you go) last year, and got really excited about it on our climbing day at Grassi Lakes on her birthday. She celebrated her 9th birthday by onsighting her first (and second) 5.9 on lead before heading to the river for a dip and our friends’ house for cake and ice cream. Happy birthday to Karina, we are all so proud, and I know she is proud of her accomplishment too!
Birthday celebration day bonus pitches!
And her favourite part? Well, it’s hard for her to choose, but this girl sure does love neat rocks. I don’t know where she gets it from…I definitely didn’t have a rock collection growing up….just kidding I totally did. Look at this cool rock mum! Thanks again for everyone’s support, we look forward to you joining us celebrating AWA’s 60th anniversary in 2025.
