Big Sister, Canmore, Alberta	August 2004
Big Sister starts from the open gravel pit opposite the dam on the Spray Lakes. This is John in the parking lot, with the route behind him.  The objective is to pass to the left of the pinnacle on the horizon above the deep gully.  The summit is just behind, out of sight.  To get there, you take the left side of the gully, starting with the obvious trail.  As you get higher, more choices appear.  The first serious choice occurs just before tree line, where it is necessary to descend from the treed ridge and climb downsloping slabs between the gully and ridge.  We did not really intend to make it to the top.  Mostly we wanted to see what it was like.  Big Sister is a very popular destination for scramblers, presumably due to its proximity to Canmore.  It's not a good choice for a family.
View from the slopes of Big Sister from about 500 m elevation looking down on the Spray Reservoir.  It looks steep and it is steep, even here where there is a trail.  The trail is quite apparent over the first 600 vertical meters.  It's occasionally loose but a slip here would cause just a scratch.  There's no fall distance.
Just before the downclimb, the trail becomes obscure and options appear. This option was not pleasant.  It was easier to the right.  This rock might have been solid, but it was very steep.  This was a sign of things to come.
It's evident that many people take this 5 m downclimb.  There was flagging at the top and at the bottom - on the small conifer.  This is looking at an angle of about 70 degrees down to the scree below.  There are lots of holds and skilled climbers would have no problem with this downclimb.  Not for us, though.  This downclimb has fall distance.  We backtracked about 50 meters vertical and descended part of the way into the gully on the right.  Before the gully, there was a wide steep ramp and we followed this.
Looking across at the route from the top of the first downclimb.  The route goes up these downsloping scree covered slabs.  It doesn't look fun, and it gets harder nearer the top.
Approaching the downclimb from the wide ramp in the gully, you end up half way down the downclimb.  You can see the downclimb is not that steep, and all that is needed is a traverse across the ledge that Carolyn is on, which leads to the scree ramp visible at the bottom right.  The small conifer with the flagging is visible at the top of the scree ramp.  Most of our party might have crossed this, but not everyone, so we bailed here.  The wide ramp in the gully was unpleasant, like the route visible in the previous photo.  With more of the same ahead, the game was not worth the candle.
Enough's enough and back we are at the open area that serves as a parking lot.