The Twins, Stutfields, and Cromwell | 11000ers of the Canadian Rockies

The Twins, Stutfields, & Cromwell
April 24-26 2025

Sitting at the northmost point of the Columbia Icefield, The Twins, Stutfields, and Mount Cromwell make up for over 12% of the 11000ers of the Canadian Rockies list. The latter aren't all that impressive but the iconic view of The Twins never fails to catch the eye, and with North Twin holding the title of the 3rd highest point in the Canadian Rockies as well as the Twins Tower arête being one of the most aesthetic lines on the entirety of the list these peaks are among the most saught after in the entire range.

Timing the mountains on the Columbia Icefield is often half the battle and this is even more true for these further out peaks. Given the vast amount of glacier and high altitude the weather on the icefield is about as fickle as it gets in the range aside from Mount Robson so anything but a bluebird window should be avoided if you want decent odds of success.

Two mountaineers roped up and skinning across the Columbia Icefield towards South Twin and North Twin under clear blue skies during a spring ascent.

Following my first visit to the Columbia Icefield in early April of 2025 and a successful ascent of Snow Dome and Kitchener with Brent we were both keen to return and go for some of the bigger objectives once a solid weather window appeared and the avalanche conditions were reasonable. I had work obligations at the start of May that would last a few weeks so i was a bit concerned we wouldn't find our window in time but luck was on our side and from the 24th to the 26th the forecast was showing bluebird high pressure conditions up high! With 3 days to play with we wanted to go big and decided The Twins were a worthy objective and began preparing for our trip. To my surprise after mentioning the trip plans to my long time biathlete and climber friend Troy Martel he also expressed interest so our group of 2 became 3!

Unlike my last trip to the Columbia Icefield the avy conditions were lower, and at this point in the spring were more based on the time of day and amount of solar the slope had been exposed to. Because of this we felt comfortable using the Athabasca Glacier for our approach which would significantly reduce the total distance for our trip. I'm not envious of the future generations that will one day have to use the Saskatchewan Glacier to approach for everything on the Columbia Icefield once the Athabasca Glacier is too broken up and dangerous, hopefully it's a while till that happens! We planned to reach the Twins-Stuts col to set up camp on our first day, go for all four of The Twins on our second day, and exit on our last day but Troy and I started getting optimistic about fitting in a push for the Stuts and Cromwell as well so headed into the trip I had bagging those three peaks as well in the back of my mind!

links: STRAVA | GAIA
elapsed time: 61hrs
DIFFICULTY: mountaineering - extensive glacier travel, multiday, winter camping, steep snow / ice climbing

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Given the heavily crevassed nature of the Athabasca Glacier and a recent incident that had happened a week prior we opted for a later start so that we'd have natural light by the time we reached the broken up sections. We were leaving the parking lot by 4:50am and after a bit of hiking and skinning we had reached the infamous Athabasca Glacier icefall. The incident report's aerial photos proved to be a valuable resource to help us scope out a line through the numerous gnarly section of the glacier and we ended up passing through without issue after taking an initial detour right around the first icefall followed by a detour left around the second that eventually lead us to the final ramp to reach the Columbia Icefield.

Once we reached the proper icefield travel got a lot easier and a lot less steep. As we worked our way around Snow Dome and started trending north towards The Twins there were still a few large crevasses and terrain traps to watch out for but nothing compared to the Athabasca Glacier. The majority of the elevation gain approaching the northmost objectives on the Columbia Icefield is done simply getting up the Athabasca Glacier and getting over the shoulder of Snow Dome so once we were through these sections it was more of a flat slog for the remainder of the day aside from some mellow ups and downs along the way.

We ended up deciding to set up camp a bit before reaching the Twins-Stuts col to avoid some elevation loss and regain we'd have to do on the way out, but we made good time and were setting up camp by 2:30pm which was a lot earlier than I had expected it would take. Shortly after setting up camp a couple other groups arrived and ended up camping alongside us so we had a decent sized Twins-Stuts base camp going with everyone taking advantage of the wicked weather window! With our early arrival we had plenty of time to hydrate and rest up and before the sun set we were off to bed early for our big effort the following day!

The Athabaca Glacier icefall, can already tell it'll be a bluebird day

Cutting across the glacier following our detour around the first icefall

Looking up towards the final section of the glacier up the ramp

The ramp was quite narrow and definitely had a few holes to watch out for

Into the sun! Above the Athabasca Glacier now

The classic Columbia Icefield views starting to show up

The Twins! Only South Twin and North Twin visible from here

Forbes, The Lyells, Alexandra, and Bryce making an appearance

Still quite a ways out, everything's always further away than it seems on
the icefield

Warren & Brazeau visible in the distance

A few steps away from where we set up camp

Troy's first time on the Columbia Icefield! Stoke was high

The Stuts & Cromwell, Cromwell definitely doesn't look close from here!

The next morning we woke up to some high winds before sunrise so we decided to sleep in a bit longer before heading out for The Twins. Each of The Twins ascents went pretty much as we would have expected, although Twins Tower actually felt quite a bit easier than we had anticipated because of a large guided group that did it before us and set a solid staircase track all the way up. The only real surprise was a bit of ice on our ascent line of South Twin but we had all the equipment necessary to protect it so it didn't end up causing any issues for us.

Headed for The Twins! The lower angle glacier on North Twin used to access
West & South Twin visible here

Mount Alberta! The best view I've had of it to date

Columbia & South Twin rising impressively behind Troy & I

A look back at the massive Columbia Icefield

Unfortunately you have to lose and regain this elevation, makes for a few nice
turns though

Son of a Twin, Mount Alberta, Twins Tower, and North Twin!

Looking back at Brent with South Twin behind

Troy & Brent started heading down while I took a few more photos

Headed up North Twin, the impressive east face of South Twin visible behind

The foreshortened climb up North Twin, reminded me of the Snow Dome

Tsar, Tusk, & Clemenceau on the distant horizon!

Taking a much needed break before the most exciting part of the day! Our tracks down North Twin visible at high right

Twins Tower looks a bit less menacing from this angle but still looks serious!

Insane views back towards Brent, North Twin looking impressive from this side

The view towards the other high point on Twins Tower to the north

Twins Tower summit! #7 for Troy, #18 for Brent, & #25 for me!

Me on Twins Tower's alternate high point

Brent & Alberta, stoked on an awesome climb!

Now the ski back to camp on some seriously cooked legs

Following our full day of bagging all four Twins and arriving back to camp late we were all pretty gassed but I was still considering going for the Stuts & Cromwell the next morning before our exit. Brent and Troy weren't interested and I wasn't stoked about the idea of soloing a sizable amount of glaciated terrain but I didn't want to have to do the long approach again if I didn't have to. Had there been no other groups out there with us I might have scrapped the idea but Jan Tol and I got to chatting and him and his partner had gone for the Stuts and Cromwell that same day. They were able to provide me with valuable beta on conditions and they had set a fresh track so that was enough to convince me to go for it. Although it was definitely a bit reckless, the solid snowpack, increased surface area with skis on, and the pre set track had me feeling pretty comfortable soloing so the extra early wake up time was set.

My sleeping bag had gotten damp the night before so I slept like crap and when my 4:30am alarm went off I was already awake and quite cold so it was nice to get moving again. I had planned to do Cromwell first to get the furthest away objective done with and then would go for the Stutfields on the way back. I had scoped out the terrain on Stutfield Peak the day before since I'd need to get around it to get to Cromwell first and it had a sizable amount of ice on it. I ended up taking a line that gained the steepest section from the Twins-Stuts col on the way up before contouring right until I was headed towards Cromwell to avoid the ice entirely. Time went by fast while it was dark since I was still half asleep and once there was enough light to see without a headlamp I was about to head up Cromwell. The ascent was nothing special but there was a lot more exposed rock on Cromwell than I had seen in reports so this took me by surprise, and there were pretty bad cornices at the summit so I had to watch out for those. I brought my skis to the top but the snow was quite thin and there were a sizable amount of sharks on the upper slopes so it definitely wasn't the most enjoyable of ski descent. Next up were the Stuts and there wasn't much exciting about the two of them aside from increasing my 11000er count by another two and some good views of the other nearby peaks. It was as simple as skinning to the top of each of them gaining a few hundred meters of elevation and that was that.

After getting a few turns off each of the Stutfields and returning to camp around 11am I got to packing up my gear quickly since we wanted to be out by the evening. An hour later we were all fully packed up and I was feeling the full effects of the past two and a half days of exertion. Thankfully the majority of the exit was descending so although it still hurt like hell it didn't last long and less than four hours later we were back at the parking lot.

Mount Alberta in the early morning light

Getting closer to Cromwell with Engelhard & Woolley to the left

Not far to go now, lots of exposed rocks

Cromwell summit! Looking NW towards Alberta, Woolley, & Diadem

Looking back at the Stuts with a bit of North Twin & Twins Tower visible

Athabasca, Andromeda, Kitchener, Snow Dome, Alexandra, & Stutfield East

A bit of annoying elevation for Cromwell

Stutfield East summit, the Stuts are a bit anticlimactic

A short rest before the last 11ker of the trip

Part way up Stutfield Peak looking back at Stutfield East & Cromwell

The icy summit of Stutfield Peak, 28/58!

View towards the Twins & Columbia, a bit of the wild rocky north face of Twins
Tower visible

And one last look at Twins Tower & North Twin

I was properly messed up by this point, head down & one leg in front of
the other

Nearly back at the Athabasca Glacier, one last exciting part to wrap up the trip!

We could definitely use some pratice with the whole downhill skiing while roped
up thing

Before I started going for 11000ers I remember looking over the list thinking about the idea of linking up all the peaks on the Columbia Icefield to reduce the number of trips. While getting the entire icefield in one trip is definitely unrealistic, I wouldn't have expected to be able to knock out 7 of them in a 3 day window, and with the proper fitness and ideally another day of good weather I could definitely see Snow Dome and Kitchener being doable on top of that. The Columbia Icefield really doies have the highest concentration of 11000ers on the entire list and a solid trip up there will get you far!

Following this trip I was headed up to Grande Prairie for a couple weeks of work but the 3 huge days spent in the alpine were more than enough to tide me over for its entirety. That being said, when conditions are good I can only go without the mountains for so long, and before I had returned to Canmore I was already scoping out a weather window and a couple days after getting back the next mission was lined up and it was time to get after it again!