The Canmore Clubhouse

Alpine Club of Canada’s Headquarters Built in the woods on the eastern edge of Canmore, the Alpine Club of Canada’s ( acc) clubhouse is a quaint cabin. Often it is full of climbers, mountain bikers, hikers, skiers and travellers visiting the Rockies. Located on a sunny, south facing bench only minutes from town, the main clubhouse sleeps 31 people.

The clubhouse is only an hour f rom Calgar y, per fect for people f lying to the mountains for a long weekend. Close to the main hut are t wo smaller cabins. One is the Boswell Cabin, per fect for small groups and families, and the other is the Bel l Cabin, built for large groups.

Sitting at 1,335 metres, the cabin overlooks the Bow Valley. The views from the hut are hard to beat, the north faces of the Three Sisters, Mount Lougheed, the Windtower and the Ehag y Nakoda range. The inter ior is decorated in mountain chic The Bow Valley has thousands of sport routes to choose from in a number of crags such as, Couger Creek, Grassi Lakes, Grotto Canyon, Heart Creek, Carrot Creek and Echo Canyon.

For multi-pitch climbing there are dozens of big walls which have some high-qualit y routes, such as, eeor, Ha Ling, Yamnuska, Tunnel Mountain, Cascade Mountain and Goat Mountain.

Mountains to hike are Grotto Mountain, Lady McDonald, eeor, Pigeon, Heart, Ha Ling and Lawrence Grassi. Tal l Storey is the must-climb multipitch route to do in Echo Canyon. As Sonnie Trotter said, “Tal l Storey is a modern mega classic, towering eight spor t pitches high, it goes a l l free at 5.11c. Basical ly, you park in the lot and walk up the hil l from there, you can’t miss it, and when you come down, you can have a hut waiting for you, with clean showers, and a hot mug of tea. The route has an hour-and-a-half approach, and we went prett y slowly, enjoying the day.”