Peuterey Integrale of Choss

Some would say that on the really testy outings taking good photos, or even taking a camera at all, is going to hold you back from the climbing.  That's not the reason that I didn't take a camera on our recent 5 day outing on what I preconceived to be the Peuterey Integrale of the Canadian Rockies.  It's more a combination of my respect for the Twins Tower, and the price of a new unit to replace mine which spent three months under the snow a few years ago.

So this post is short on good photos.

And it's short on a good story, which might come later.  After 5 days on the go, then two days of guiding in Jasper, I don't have the mental energy to tell the story at the moment, so if anyone is interested in the details just get in touch.

Alik Berg is the best unheralded alpinist in Canada, but is suffering from sore elbows, and texted me looking to get out on something "easy". He was quite distraught when on our first day on the complete north ridge of the North Twin I talked him into walking around the first steep towers on the ridge.  I had to guide Edith Cavell in 5 days time and I figured we would waste time climbing towers that obviously led only to rappels back onto the ridge. And I had told Alik not to bring the rock shoes (light is right, right?).  I am old and don't like climbing hard, and wanted to get on to the bigger towers down the way.  So, for the purists in the crowd the complete ascent of the complete north ridge of North Twin awaits, as marked in red on the photo.

A day of quite arduous approaching led us to the base of the ridge with the impression of a wispy, airy traverse to come.  All side-hilling on the same side of the foot.

Alik was desperately looking everywhere for a solution to the rock quality at the first bivi.  This was to become a theme of the five days.

We skipped the first steep towers by traversing to the west on easy scree walking slopes.  I don't care about climbing for climbing's sake, and would rather just get the process underway efficiently, which I was attempting to do while scraping my blue foamy against the first actual climbing on the 4 kilometer ridge.

These two, two-pitch towers remained unclimbed, so Alik is going to go back with a stronger partner.

By the end of the second day we were hiding from the wind and the rainy looking clouds, ready to go and look for any trace left by Waterman on his first ascent of the Son of Twin.

If the Son of Twin were anywhere other than in the Canadian Rockies and next to its much more famous neighbor it would be a major objective in its own right. The face that is, the ridge is a very moderate undertaking. We didn't find any evidence of the first ascent.  Alik likes to take the direct line. I figure Waterman might have taken the easier gully just on the west side of the ridge, which looks like an excellent winter outing with a two day approach.

At the top Alik generously demonstrated his complete insensitivity to exposure by walking out onto a stool-sized pedestal in order to get a better view of perhaps the biggest unclimbed rock face in the range.

And then he continued the impressive demonstration of fearlessness by leading the raps into the abyss of the Son of Twin-Twins Tower col.

At this point I was honestly attempting to think of a passable reason to give for bailing. I just wasn't that eager to take my second trip up the Abrons Route.

80$ "smartphone" shot of the sunset.

It truly is not that friendly a place to hang out, though now there is a nice bivi wall for the next party at the col.  It is, after all, the Standhart col of the Rockies, as Alik pointed out when we were camped next to the Cerro Torre of our range.

The Abrons  more or less goes wherever you take it, and Alik being adventurous we figured we would check out some new ground. By a hundred meters from the shoulder we were wishing we had taken the same line 

Brandon and i did

a decade ago.  With melting snow we couldn't climb the thin ice lines we had seen a few days earlier, and we couldn't slab climb, so we were forced onto whatever featured rock rib we could find.

No trees in this shot to show how obviously it is tilted to make me look more rad.

It always works out cause it is practically scrambling, as long as you don't slip, cause there is really no good pro.

By 2 pm on Thursday I was figuring we would have a short walk out on Friday, perfect for my day of guiding Cavell on Saturday.  We were at the familiar shoulder where 

Brandon and I

 had begun our easy traverse above 

the infamous north face

. So I told Alik, "just head straight across on the obvious ledge system", but when I swung around the arete and onto the north side I was terrified to be greated by a large snow covered face. Hidden under the wet summer's snow coating was grey ice for our two ice screws, while most of the rock protection was obscured.

On my last trip, to Waddington, I noted that unprotected snow climbing is my least favourite kind.  Simul-climbing snow covered grey ice with two pieces per 60 meter rope-length is in the running too.

But we did summit Twins Tower just as it got dark, walked to the east side of Stuttfield by 2 am, and hit the mud flats of the Stuttfield cirque by 3 pm the next day, and then the weather on Saturday was too topsy-turvy to climb Cavell, so I went and climbed Roche de Perdrix and at Hidden Valley with Keith from Reno in what was best described as a cold sauna.

Now a few days later I am planning my retirement to sport-climbing in Penticton. And Alik is still the most bad-ass alpinist in the range, even with wonky elbows. 

Waddington West Ridge and Traverse

To start at the end, with dramatic license.

“Glenn Woodsworth wants to meet you”.

“Oh, delighted. I would be delighted”.

“His accomplishments make what we've done look like child's play.”

So when we landed I left Simon to chat with this icon of old school Coast Range climbing. The disheveled PhD chic dirty-white-cotton clad bonhomme at the landing pad, a legend? Only judging from the tone of respect in Simon's voice, cause Simon is nothing if not a Coast Range legend.

How had I never heard of Glenn? How was my history knowledge so incomplete? Our traverse of the complete north-south Waddington ridgeline child's play? What had he done that measured so large in comparison? Refreshed from a wash, and letting my elders and betters chat about their shared passion and experiences, I surreptitiously fired up my moreish pocket computer and consulted the search engine behemoth, for I just barely fit into that generation that believes if it isn't on the internet it hasn't happened, unlike history, which has, happened.

Oh, U-Wall. And Pipeline. His identity popped out at me from the www.

Simon had mentioned a note on an airdrop he had come across in his wide wanderings. “If we aren't back in two weeks we have headed north from this point”; to paraphrase. It was the closest thing to communication and rescue that Dick Culbert and Glenn had on one of their trips. “1964 saw Dick Culbert and Glenn Woodsworth dedicate five weeks to the Range that summer, knocking off a dozen first ascents (including Serra Five), and barely setting foot where anyone had been before.” (The Waddington Guide, Don Serl, p. 59.

Five days or five weeks. Times have changed. I couldn't even be bothered to ask the man himself or join the conversation, relying on digital media to form my impressions.  I rushed over just in time to meet the man.

“You live in Golden? Then you know Bruce Fairley?”

“Barely. I'm not in town much.”

“Come on Glenn, we've gotta go.”

So it was I barely met a living legend. Chances delayed are chances missed.

But I did spend five days with another legend of the Coast Range.

Simon says he doesn't like to fail. Which is fine because he doesn't, at least not in the 8 trips he has done in the Coast Range, during which he has climbed a major new route on every trip. We "cheat" though, cause we fly in to the start of our routes (Culbert and Woodsworth flew in in 1964 too...), and tap the InReach when we want a pickup at the end of our five day journey.  And we cheat with a little insurance, cached bags of food and fuel at the start (Fury Gap) and the end (Rainy Knob) of the trip.  Still, Simon thought we didn't have much stuff for a Waddington traverse. 

Simon's plan (he is the man with the plan) was to traverse Waddington via some new ground, from north to south. Another brilliant plan hatched like our last new route from a John Scurlock photo.

Simon has an eye for a line.

Red- Dias Glacier/ Angel Glacier route

We thought about bringing snowshoes, but on touching down on Rainy Knob to drop our end cache there was no blowing snow. We figured the week long storm we had delayed our trip for hadn't materialized in the mountains.  Or maybe it had just been blown by the "river aloft" onto the north-east slopes.

Ohhh, this isn't going to take four hours.  Not going to repeat Colin's effort...

We weren't going to beat Colin's time, we weren't going to walk about for a month, but it did seem we had our work cut out for us.

By 3 pm Simon suggested we stop for the day.  "I am not in the habit of stopping at 3 pm when there is good weather in the mountains." "We aren't going to climb the ramp tomorrow, so why not let it clean off another day, and this is a perfect campspot."  The voice of experience.

But the Wadd still seemed a long way off.

The spot was wonderfully flat, a perfect spot to camp. Important, as Simon doesn't believe in bringing unnecessary weight.  The rad Rab two person tent is evidence, and if not pitched perfectly flat can seem a little "close".

On the second day we did much the same as on the first, climbing over peaks named artfully by the Mundays; Fireworks, Herald, Men-At-Arms, Bodyguard, Councillor. I was just silently glad we hadn't undertaken Simon's grand plan of the much longer link-up with the distant Mount Bell, above the appropriately named Remote Glacier.

Bell is in the central distant background in the photo above.  When I mentioned to my well informed buddy Paul McSorley that we were flying in to the Remote Glacier he thought I was obscuring our goal.  In fact, the usually uber-casual Paul had a tinge of worry in his voice when I mentioned that I was going to Wadd at all with Simon, for it is like bringing in the pinch hitter when you are playing away.  The Bell/ Remote Glacier/Wadd linkup was thwarted by an unusually rainy June and July, but that is the type of line Simon sees in his mind.

By the second day we were camped at 2 o'clock, ready for an alpine start for the upper section of our ridge.  Positioned across from the Skywalk buttress on Mount Combatant, I was beginning to feel like we were getting level with the big walls across the way.

I proposed afterward that we call the ridge "Tower Ridge" after the classic line on the Ben (Simon being the guidebook author). See why?

The next morning we were greeted by one of the magical moments that make such outings so memorable.

The tower ridge above, "the spine-like upper continuation of the ridge" (Serl, p.239), was going to provide us with a break from breaking trail. It's always fun going where nobody has been before. The climbing up the snow ramp on the south side of the ridge made a welcome break from the glacier walking.

There was no denying that three days of gaining elevation was starting to have an effect.

Before things heated up in the incredible continued high pressure, Simon was cresting the ridge as I passed onto the seemingly untrodden Epaulette Glacier.

Unprotected snow climbing is my least favourite kind. As we traversed through the top-out of Eamonn Walsh's Uber-Groove, we encountered just that.  Surfing the very top of the snow ridge for a rope length, Simon belayed off a snow bollard using a somewhat old-school belay technique, telling me, "If you fall, fall to the left". As I was pirouetting on the cornice in an effort to au-cheval, I had to somewhat briskly ask which left.  With no snow stakes present, we opted for a very powdery traverse of a 50 degree face.  "It reminds me of the Cowboy Traverse on the Cassin.  We just agreed that we would go as far as seemed reasonable before an avalanche would really cause you problems." With 4 screws total the math wasn't in our favor.

Simon isn't nearly as off-put by risk as I am after two years of guides' training.  I was drilling v-threads on the traverse to keep the distances reasonable.  Simon, when he took over, clearly embraced the age-old British strategy (as I believe Leo Houlding once put it) of running it out.

Then something I have never experienced alpine climbing happened. I have never down-dynoed alpine climbing before.  When I seconded the traverse, Simon called up, "You have to jump into the bergshrund." And so that was how we joined the upper Angel Glacier. I hear that dynoing is all the rage in comp climbing, so logically it is the future as climbing moves into the Olympics.  So, is down dynoing maybe the future of alpinism and Simon is just way ahead of the curve?

"Now you jump into the bergshrund"

The rest of the tale is more conventional.  We summitted the North-West summit and the false summit, we camped out on another amazing flat spot at 3800m as our friends Paul and Tony hooted at us from the col, and the next day we climbed the highly enjoyable summit tower on Scottish style ice and solid cracks.

Little tent below.

I generally try not to look down on people, especially my friends, but I have to say it was a trip looking down on the inlets, the interior plateau, and our friends who were crack climbing across the way on Combatant that day, in one of the great alpine granite meccas of the world.

I couldn't possibly think of looking down on Tony though, cause at that moment I could look out and see the far off valley to the east that is home to Mike King and Whitesaddle Air, who had flown us in.  It is also home to the Fosters ranch, from which Tony and Jason set out under their own steam to walk in, cross Fury Gap, make a strong attempt on a new route on Waddington, and then traverse far down the glaciers to the inlets I could see stretching off to the west, and the Pacific. Not to mention Paul's new route on the south side of Waddington. Respect to the pioneers come and gone, and to the youth who have the energy and the time and vision to undertake these great adventures.

And respect to Simon Richardson, the man with the plan and the Scottish climbing technique to boot. The Scottish belay technique I'm still not convinced about, but neither is he convinced about my claim that if we had tripped on the way down the upper Bravo Glacier we would have been visiting our friends sooner that expected.

Thus it is with adventure.  Our friends become our friends by spending time together and trusting each other, and respecting our differences but sharing common goals.  The genuine experience of common thrill-seeking courses through us. Something we recognize in each other, and keeps us striving on.

So, if you are interested in our adventure or conditions or going in there, why not get in touch.  Or better yet, get in touch with Simon, cause he is the man with the plan.  And we could chat, like I should have with Glenn, and we might become friends.

Mount Phillips North Spur with Simon Richardson

John Scurlock photo

We sat at Dana Ruddy's dinner table, noting how rare it was to have three people together who had climbed the Emperor Ridge on separate occasions. For I had been telling Simon's story inaccurately when I introduced him, saying that he hadn't summitted Robson due to a storm on a prior visit to the Rockies.  Of course he had, as befits a Scot with a thousand first ascents to his name.

Could we have made it to the beautiful flowered bench above the Berg Lake trail without Dana's local beta? His great grandfather, Jack Hargreaves, did the second ascent of Robson. To say that Dana is THE dark horse of Canadian Rockies climbing of the last decades is to wildly understate his knowledge of the range.  If Jesse Milner, nicest Robson Valley local and former park warden, hadn't passed on his tips for the day long approach walk would we have felt so fresh as we traipsed through the wildflowers a mere four hours from the parking lot?  Apart from that, learning the lore of the area and appreciating the sharing spirit of the Jasper locals is half the fun.

The other key to the adventure was obviously Simon, past president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, whose track record of long, adventurous outings in the mountains is incredibly impressive.  How do you find a huge unclimbed line on Mont Blanc in 2018? 

How do you find a new line like this on Mont Blanc in 2018??

 How many times can you have "good luck with the weather" in the coast rabge of BC before you have to admit that something else is going on?  When Simon showed up at Calgary airport with a photo from John Scurlock I didn't have a clue where Mount Phillips was (it is the mountain just north of Whitehorn).  But Dana and Jesse certainly did, and they said they had both longingly looked at the north face.  Which was just fine with Simon because as he put it, "I have always wanted to climb a North face in the Rockies, and to do a first ascent in the Rockies." So off we set with four days of food during the first good weather window of the summer of 2019.

Over the shoulder, a trade route, in certain circles.

We whistled at imaginary grizzlies as we approached the Phillips glacier, and camped just to the west of the Hargreaves Glacier at 2400 m.  Waking at a very Richardsonesque 12:30 (I negotiated the extra half hour) we took two and a half hours to approach the north spur, which unfortunately was quickly revealed to face the rising sun.  

Simulclimbing the lower easy ground was key to get up high before the snow turned completely isothermic.  Our weather window was about to mark the end of the spring cycle, and I was certainly glad to regain the spur at half height, even if it did take me the better part of an hour to create an anchor.

Smiles in the sun now that we are back on the spur and off the snow slopes.

Classic north face climbing in the sun.

Slithery slush avalanches would entrain more snow on the face whenever a rock was dropped, and large wet snow avalanches would appear on the glacial bench below.  Gullies that promised easy climbing would be perfect in colder spring temperatures, but with bare hands on rock once back on the spur I couldn't complain.

Simon is wise enough in the mountains to tilt things in his favour.  "How often am I going to be back here really, so why rush?"  So we had light bivi gear and could have made this gravelly shoulder a hundred meters below the summit our camp spot if we had run into slower climbing.

All smiles on the sunny shoulder.

All that was left was a cat-walk ridge to the top, with stupendous views over the wonderful wilderness to the north. Now that I have seen the views I am curious to look at a map to determine what we were faced with. Suffice it to say that the Swift Current glacier and beyond are impressively wild terrain.

By strange coincidence (?). the first ascent of Phillips was made by Norman Collie, one of the great pioneering climbers of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, so now Phillips has two FAs by stalwarts of the SMC.

Really wild mountains here.

Peak wildflower season on the way in, and peak wildflower season on the way out.

Sometimes it is worth going for a walk to see what is around the next corner.  After roughly 10 trips up the Berg Lake trail I finally ventured off the beaten track, and found some pretty amazing vistas.

Thanks to Dana for the history lesson and context, to Jesse for his unselfishness in sharing his beta, and to Simon for the idea, the psych, and the much needed organizational skills.

C-train: 200 meter mini alpine moderate above Bow Lake

The C-train.  Calgary's public transit. Could be riding the C-train or skiing across Bow Lake in a train of people, or alpine scrambling on Crowfoot Mountain.  Moderate alpine route open to all not just the elite double-M drytooler, sort of like public transit, open to all.  No overhead cables like some other venues and some other streetcar systems. Our original plan was to go the the A-Strain, but it was storming...so we went to the C-train, cause we aren't A-listers or B-teamers, more like C-trainers.

Complete Disclosure:

In the spring of 2018 we got avalanched

when a cornice collapsed above the gully.

Best done with a low snowpack.

Just completed a mini alpine route Jesse Bouliane and I started last spring.  This year Alik Berg and I  shimmied, chimneyed, and enjoyed the short approach just across Bow Lake from Num-ti-jah lodge. Dare I say I think this route is reminiscent of Sidestreet and the Slawinski/Takeda at the Icefields.  Hoping lots of people looking for a moderate day out enjoy this one.

Thanks to David Glavind and Canadian Alpine Tools for the pitons.

https://www.instagram.com/canadianalpinetools/?hl=en

Route Description:

Approach: Ski across Bow Lake from Num-ti-jah Lodge to the base of the biggest gully on the northmost end of Crowfoot Mountain, just to the left of the normal Bow Hut approach.  Clearly visible from Num-ti-jah Lodge.  Stash skis and continue on the fan through a narrowing of the snow gully until below the small daggers of  the main amphitheatre gully (looks like a science project for stronger climbers).

Rack: 70s nice for rappelling. Single set to #3. Blades, spectre, angles.  Few screws for short pillar and 1st pitch (couple of stubbies).

C-train begins on an ice smear ten meters right of the daggers of the main amphitheatre and follows a corner system to an obvious gully up and right to the ridge.

Pitch 1: WI3, 15 meters. Sometimes dry, climb to an obvious ledge and fixed anchor below a steepening in the wall.

Pitch 2: M5, 40 meters. (Fixed anchor) Drytool steep twin cracks to start, and a second right facing corner at 20 meters to a belay on easy ledges.

Pitch 3: M4, 40 meters. Start up an easy right facing corner for 5 meters, then swim up snow in the gully to a huge cave with ice pouring down its right wall.

Pitch 4: WI3+, 60 meters. Climb out of the cave to the right then up a 8 meter vertical pillar (present in 2019, not in 2018).  Exit to the far right to avoid a steep wall above. Traverse until below a short (5 meter) wall with twin cracks.  A direct up the steep wall directly above the pillar looks possible.  If the ice pillar is not in a traverse on easy ledges to the right is possible.

Pitch 5: M4, 30 meters. Climb easily on twin face cracks to the left of the belay, then swim up snow in the gully to another huge cave.

Pitch 6: M6, 40 meters. Small people could possibly tunnel up through a narrow channel at the back of the cave (Alik is too big, he tried).  Failing that, climb up to the right side of the large roof chockstone, then awkwardly turn the roof on the right onto a perfect bivi ledge (upper end of possible tunnel). Above on the left wall is a wide steep crack (M6).  At its top traverse right on perfect edges to exit right onto snow ledges. Traverse right to a fixed anchor.

Rap the route.

Looking up pitch 2

Exit the cave to the right. Pitch 6

Looking down pitch 6 from top anchor.

Steep crack on the left wall to finish off. Pitch 6.

Route topo.  Follow the gully.

Looking down first two pitches.

The Real Ice Porn

Original Ice Porn: "photo" Joe McKay

I hear that as of September 21st 2018, this climb is in again.  Once every decade...

This is a story I wrote about our original try at the FA. One of the best adventures I had with Dana Ruddy.  

Beware the original warning offered by Dave Marra (no shrinking violet himself.)

Real Ice Porn aka Polarity: Photo Jon Jugenheimer September 19, 2018

I

ce Porn is in!” said Dave Marra as he pointed toward the unclimbed north face of Mount Snowdome. Around the corner from

Slipstream

(VI WI4+, 925m) was a thick stream of blue ice

flowing uninterrupted from seracs above. What an unlikely spot for a clean line of ice—straight 

down a nearly vertical and unblemished dark expanse of limestone where nothing had ever 

formed before. Furthering the audacity of the line was the history of the fictitious ice climb we 

were referring to: Ice Porn. Five years ago, Joe McKay—a local guide—had spoofed the climbing 

media’s incessant need for hyperbole by inventing the ultimate ice epic set in the very spot where 

this new line now appeared. He had photoshopped pictures of

Nemesis

(V WI6, 160m) onto the 

north face of Mount Snowdome after climbing the former with Dana Ruddy and Paul Valiulis. 

With over-the-top phrases like “Gather about three metres of extra slack . . . then like a coiled

leopard, I launched myself out . . . aiming for the hole in the curtain out in space,” the climbing 

rags reported it as fact. Ice Porn had been etched in the collective consciousness of the Rockies 

climbing community, and here was our chance to actually climb the real thing.

“But if you guys decide to go do it, I’m out,” Dave

continued, “’cause I’m a family man now.” The three of us had

different reasons for being on the hunt for a first ascent: Dave

had a short break from family responsibilities to reassert himself

in the mountains he so loves; I had just worked every day for six

months; and Cory Richards seems enthusiastic about climbing

big stuff in general. However, three years earlier Dave and I had

nearly met our demise on the same day while climbing different

routes in adjacent cirques off the Icefields Parkway. Dave had

benn famously spat off the final pitch of his new route

For

Fathers

(V WI6, 1000m) when the serac he was climbing up

exploded. Meanwhile, I had been avalanched on at the base of

Cerca del Mar

(V WI5+, 160m). For this reason I felt a spiritual

connection with Dave although we’d never climbed together

in the mountains, and deferred to his advice on the subject of

seracs. With the possibility of heading up as a threesome ruled

out, Cory and I bid him adieu. He put us in touch with Dana

Ruddy, and made us promise not to touch the blue glacial ice

if we got that far.

Dana had been on a send-fest for the past few years in the

Rockies. Judging from the state of his boots, I believed him

when he casually stated, “I don’t think anyone has put on more

miles in the alpine in the last couple of years.” No surprise that

he agreed to climb the Emperor Face on Mount Robson with

Cory and me. We marched the 20-something kilometres to Berg

Lake, saw the snow-covered face and walked out again. Nothing

beats a backcountry marathon with full packs to make one want

to travel vertically rather than horizontally. Over the next three

days the discussion centred on whether we’d get scooped on Ice

Porn. One day we saw Celtic Reforestation trucks cruising the

Parkway. “Oh my God, it’s Guy Lacelle,” I worried. Luckily, it

turned out that the trucks were simply on their way to a poorly

paid beetle-probing contract based in Canmore, and the world’s

foremost ice soloist was not scooping us. At the time it only

managed to put more fire under my desire to get going on the

route. Dana didn’t seem worried as he argued that we were in

Jasper and climbers there weren’t competitive.

“Yeah,” I reasoned, “but if JR sees that thing he’d be up it

in an hour without a backpack to slow him down,” referring to

one of the Rockies’ better-known speed demons—Jonny “Red”

Walsh. With a whiteout up high and continued bad weather in

the forecast, Cory and I hiked gear into the base the next day in

an effort to scope the route. From below we convinced ourselves

that the seracs were not overhanging and actually rather benign.

Dana spent the day hanging out at home, unsure of whether to

go due to the obvious objective hazard. Earlier I’d said to him

that the desire to climb the route, “depends what you have to

live for.” Given that he enjoys a nice lifestyle as a “legendary”

Jasper local complete with a lovely girlfriend and a slack work

schedule, I imagined it would take some convincing. I was

happy to hear upon our return that he was keen and considered

the climbing “no problem.”

If the climbing was no problem I thought, the length of

the route might be, with its 1,000 metres of vertical rise from

the glacier to the summit, 600 metres of which looked to be

WI5 or harder. Had any of us climbed that much steep ice

in a day? Never having climbed ice by headlamp I figured we

could be shut down by time rather than technical difficulty, so

I convinced the other two to bring light bivy gear. Dana was

most concerned about minimizing time under the seracs so he

suggested going over the top and descending the glacier instead

of rappelling the route. We tilted the odds in our favour by

taking a few luxuries and going as a team of three, bucking the

present fashion to be fair to the mountain.

First thing in the morning we climbed 300 metres of

easy ice. Dana successfully rope-gunned four 70-metre pitches

of beautiful ice while I silently prayed he would somehow

continue. Pitch one: “I would have been off that one.” Pitch

two: “Wow, my arms aren’t working.” Pitch three: “Yup, my

arms are non-functional but I think I can take over somehow.

I’ll find an easy way up but hope it’s not vertical.” Dana brought

me back to reality: “Nope, I saw it and it’s vertical, but I think

I’ve got another pitch left in me.”

A couple of weeks later at the opening night of the Banff

Mountain Film Festival, I recognized the same team dynamic in

the film

The Alps

, in which Robert Jasper guides John Harlin Jr.

up the north face of the Eiger. Robert Jasper (Dana) does all the

hard leading, his wife (me) belays while John Harlin Jr. (Cory)

feeds the slack. This may sound a bit harsh, but let’s be honest

about what happened up there: Dana was “the man” and Cory

and I were the belayers. To be fair, Cory led the last WI4 pitch

up to the base of the serac, while Dana and I discussed how to

surmount the overhanging glacial ice-cliff. It was obviously the

steepest ice either of us had ever seen.

“I know,” I offered. “I’ve seen photos of Jeff Lowe aiding

the serac on the north face of Temple. We’ll just sit on screws.”

“I’ve never aided,” responded Dana, so I thought my

chance had come to pay him back for his consecutive leads.

Being the slower of the two, I arrived at the belay behind Dana

to hear that we were pulling the plug. Cory had decided that

the risk was too great. If the serac came off from the force of a

climber, we’d be crushed. A more usual level of risk aversion had

returned to our team and it didn’t take any convincing to decide

to rap. “Not the worst idea ever,” became our rally cry.

We were glad for the bivy gear two pitches down as we

settled onto a comfy protected ledge, which was better than

rappelling slowly in the dark. We had done the “first team-ofthree

ascent to the top of the rock buttress on the north face

of Mount Snowdome and shiver bivy at 3,200 metres with

associated smoking of a large celebratory hash joint”…ever! It

was the most memorably enjoyable night I have spent in the

mountains.

Descending to the valley the next morning, we returned

to a different climbing reality that includes all the details,

which I suppose matter but didn’t seem to at the time. Four

days later, Ueli Steck and Simon Anthamatten from Switzerland

repeated the route but climbed through the final serac adding

50 metres to our effort. However, they didn’t climb off the top

of the mountain either, as it was blocked by a cornice. This

prompted the question about who, if anyone yet, had done

the first ascent. At the time, Cory had chatted to Will Gadd

and Barry Blanchard and both seemed to think we’d done

the first ascent of the waterfall, but not an alpine first ascent.

Unfortunately Cory’s correspondence with the climbing media

resulted in Climbing.com’s Hotflashes (coincidentally sounding

pornographic and thus perhaps appealing to the same male

instinct) reporting it as the first ascent of the north face of

Mount Snowdome (Cory had not told them any such thing).

As expected, people let their opinions be known and correctly

pointed out that it was not the first ascent of the north face since

it did not top-out. Then again,

M-16

(VI WI7 A2, 1000m) on

the northeast face of Howse Peak didn’t top-out either. Does

that just make it some kind of cragging route?

Then there’s the nature of our climb—serac threatened.

Barry points out that there are various reasons for grading a

route commitment grade VI. Difficulty and objective hazard

are a couple of the criteria. Clearly the climbing was not that

difficult, at least not for someone in shape like Dana. Does

it deserve grade VI commitment just because the entire team

could be obliterated? It is definitely not an alpine grade VI but

is it a waterfall grade VI? I don’t know. Barry says he’s climbed

through seracs only once—on

Borderline

(VI WI5, 800m)—and

won’t ever do it again. We didn’t, and Dave Marra on

For Fathers

didn’t either (but he tried). So why is a European climber willing

to accept the risk that modern-day Canadian alpinists won’t (or,

in Dave’s case, have their sanity questioned for even trying)

Arctic Dream

(VI WI6, 500m) below the Quadra Glacier shares

a similar history. Canadians did the first ascent of the waterfall

but it took Europeans to go through the seracs. The exception is

Eric Dumerac and Shaun King’s ascent through the seracs above

Gimme Shelter

(VI WI6, 500m). I can relate when Ueli says he

didn’t know if he “would ever get a chance to climb something

like that ever again in the alpine.” Looking back, in a way I

wish we had tried the serac pitch. Having said that though, I’ve

learned to be happy for what I manage to do in this life.

Summary

Polarity

(VI WI5+, 800m), north face of Mt. Snowdome,

Columbia Icefields, Jasper National Park, Alberta.

FA

: Cory

Richards, Dana Ruddy, Ian Welsted, October 13–14, 2007.

FA

through serac: Simon Anthamatten, Ueli Steck, October 18,

2007. Note: Anthamatten and Steck did not top-out either due

to a large cornice blocking access to the summit plateau.

About the Author

Ian Welsted is lucky to have witnessed great feats of ropegunning

prowess in a variety of conditions, predominantly in

the Canadian Rockies’ winter season of late. Ambitions center

around dreams of permanent retirement from compulsory

employment with

B.C.

’s thriving forestry and mining industries.

The

Canadian Alpine Journal

2008

Planting the Flag

We attended the

Banff Mountain Book Festival

 , housed in glistening postmodern pavilions of brushed steel and glass, comforted by banking and energy patronage.  We sat respectfully through a panel of 

native leaders

 who impressed upon us that place and history and sacredness are one in the same.  Lawrence Joe told us as outside enthusiasts that when we are on the land and find an artifact we need to report it, respectful of its history, so that the cultural continuity of place may be undisturbed. We congratulated ourselves on taking a  more cerebral, intellectual approach than the standard "huck-fest" on offer at other climbing festivals.  And then we went and tried to plant the flag.

I was set to climb with 

Mr. Scottishwinter.com

 himself, Simon Richardson.  You see, as a member of the book festival jury (along with a much more 

impartial professor

and 

a professional climber

, who can not be blamed by association for my bias) I was in a privileged position to acquire for my potential climbing partner a free airfare to the Canadian Rockies at one of the prime seasons for ice and mixed climbing. Growing up in Manitoba 

where prominent native leaders were killed with seeming impunity

, I am familiar with the concept that (at the risk of stepping outside my culturally biased understanding) 

juries can not reach a universally true decision.

In his presentation for his book, 

Steve Swenson

 mentioned going to areas of the world where one casts ones glance out and thinks, "No other human has stepped here", the inspiration for doing first ascents.  Simon revealed he has 700 FAs under his belt, or more commonly "to his name".  As the days of intellectualizing were nearing an end, we discussed doing 

a recently completed drytooling route

 as a warm up and then a more typical 

Rockies rock-to-mixed route

 we had scoped a few days earlier. Inspired by Steve I mentioned we should skip straight to adventuring on new terrain. Simon eagerly responded, "that's what I do."

The process of exploring and recording our travels in the sacred mountains is slow and in a constant state of being revealed.  Had native people been up Yuh-hai-has-kun, the Mountain of the Spiral Road

 (

an uncannily accurate description of climbing the highest peak in the Rockies by its easiest route)? Were there spots that would provide interesting climbing for Simon and I that had not been visited?

In learning 

we proceed from our historically determined comfort zone

 to greater exploration.  How else do we learn about new terrain other than by stretching our boundaries while beginning at known points?  To expand the allegory to breaking and beyond, we have to take ourselves out of 

the cave

and into the mountains.  So, I scanned my memory of the range for a potentially classic line of which I had heard nobody else claiming knowledge,  but with which I was familiar, and came up with the unnamed north facing lower ridge of Storm Mountain above Arnica Lake.

The definitive guidebook didn't have a line on the map. 

So, off we went in -20 temperatures, two hours up to Arnica Lake, to our "unnamed face". What an obvious unclimbed line, moderate and climbable by many in the Bow Valley, home to many an alpine climber, almost hard to believe it hadn't been climbed.

Up the snow gully we tromped.  Simon is a year or two more experienced than me, so at the first ice step I paused to make a belay stance as he caught up, looked around and behold, two other figures walking in our tracks across Arnica Lake.

"Who's that?"

"Blompnee", indecipherable.

"Who's that? It's Ian".

"I know"

To Simon, "This never happens here.  Two parties on an unknown face on the same day, even if it is clearly visible from the highway"

Tried again, "Who's that, it's Ian".

"Toshi"

So that made sense.  Toshi was one of the few I knew who also would have a mental map of this face, having also walked past it on his way to 

the north face of Storm Mountain

.

Simon had said he didn't climb ice by choice, but seemed eager for the first pitch.

So funny that in Canada we have places like this to ourselves, with a clear view of  iconic Castle Mountain and the Trans Canada Highway and a surprising two other climbers.  Amazing more people don't do this stuff. Then again I had explained to Simon that there is a small group of people in the Rockies who search out first ascents.  Most of them are very strong climbers and are not partial to the type of moderate route we had found.  Some even harass those who pursue such routes for "scrambling".  

By the 4th or 5th WI3 step the ice was cold enough that screws had to be put in a quarter turn at a time, by slamming the side of my hand into the hanger of the screw, a painful technique I had avoided for years.  Screws were needed however as by this elevation, say 2500 meters, my hands were frozen insensitive and I couldn't tell if I was going to be able to keep my stiff fingers curled around my tools.

I was overjoyed to take this photo of Simon topping out the steepest pitch of ice.  Five minutes earlier I had peeled off the rock which hung in place of the orange bare rock in the lower right of the photo.

Topping out the ice into a bowl of snow which held a month and a half's accumulation of snow found me worried me about avalanche potential, so I looked to the rock for pro.  Finding a perfect crack I placed a nut, gave it a sharp tug to set it, and a large chunk of rock the size of Simon's 45 liter backpack departed down the pitch, with Simon about 20 meters below.  

"Oh my god, I've just gotten Simon Richardson invited to the Banff Festival and now I have killed him", I thought as I pictured the news hitting the millions of viewers at

ukclimbing

. A nervous 5 minutes passed as I yelled questions and made an anchor, but by the time I made it to the lip Simon insisted he was good to continue.  I figure you don't make it up as many mountains as he has if you aren't tough.

At this time, having clearly injured him, I felt I had to reveal the bad news, that we weren't on an FA.  A few pitches earlier I had spotted a single piton up and left of our line. Though it didn't seem conclusive evidence as it was on a different system trending away from our gully, this artifact proved that we were not the first people to pass here.  I had been keeping this information from Simon as I thought it might influence his degree of enjoyment of the route, and my main aim as Canadian host was to show him a good time.

Simon agreed that perhaps it put a dent on the sheen of our FA attempt, as did the presence of a whole two climbers on the next gully over. Above looked like easy going though. One does not put up 99 routes on Ben Nevis alone without a certain drive, and none of these qualifiers bent Simon from his goal of climbing the route to its end.

Just like our objective being determined by a culturally relative recording of past visitors, our end point was a relative maximum. By the junction of three ridges on the standard descent from the true north face of Storm Mountain we had found another piton and a nut. But there was no climbing looming over us, it was dark, and we were happy to descend.

If at first we set out with a modernist ideal of establishing our claim to this piece of terrain, to plant the flag so to say, we had passed to a post-modern realization of the relativity of such claims through our encounter with previous cultural artifacts and the relative nature of our goal.

And then it passed into that which is 

after postmodernism

, or it's other name, internet post truth commercialism.  For it was on the same day that our friends Greg Boswell and Jon Walsh climbed an indirect ascent of a route which had  been traveled previously. As Jon posted to Facebook:

The Silmarillion Indirect

Yesterday, Greg Boswell and I set out to climb the upper ice of the Silmarillion (E. Walsh, Delworth, Edgar) on the Storm Creek Headwall, via a mixed start up a snowed-up ramp system that gains the ice from the right. In the photo, this is the right most hanging smears. I don’t think this route has formed again as a pure ice route since the season of its first ascent which was 2004. It seems like the mixed start to get to this ice was someones project as there were lots of bolts on the first pitch and half. Perhaps it has even been done before, but judging from the locking biner left on the last bolt, I’m going to guess project. I’m also going to take a guess that Dave Thompson may have been involved, but if anyone knows any history here, it’d be interesting to know.

Regardless, it was a fun day, despite the cold temps. The protection was good, the rock was generally excellent, and the climbing interesting despite not being very steep. Obviously not the type of line for everyone, but some will undoubtably enjoy it. By Storm Creek standards, the overhead hazard is even reasonable, and on November 5th the snow was only boot deep at the base of the wall. Approach time was 2 hours; car to car 11.5 hours, and we felt the cold slowed us down a fair bit.

Regarding the bolts, about 5 hangers were missing, although I believe they got replaced today, by a team that climbed to the end of the bolts, but bailed due to the cold. I don’t think they brought a wrench though.

Anyways, here is the beta:

Pitch 1: start just left of Rectal Squirels (currently not in), and follow a left trending, low angle weakness, past many bolts. Not a lot of natural gear to be found on this pitch but there is some, and you will want to bring the rack. Belay at a 2 bolt anchor or even go a few meters further around the corner to belay. M5, 55-meters

Pitch 2: Technical climbing up the slabby corner past 4 or 5 bolts and good gear. Obvious route finding continues left on natural gear. A belay after 20m on a small ledge worked well for us. A good fixed angle was left in situ, and can be backed up with cams, nuts) M5+/M6-, 20-meters

Pitch 3: A rising traverse left gains the ice. Bring a couple stubbies, and belay screws with you. Belay in fat ice below roof (we left a v-thread here). M6, 40-meters

Pitch 4: 35m of WI5 gets you to the original Silmarillion finish. We rappelled from here. If you were still in need of more, a sketchy-looking run-out slab traverse to the right, gains the right-hand ice flow, and about 15m more meters of WI4 would get you to the top of what I believe is the Will Kahlert direct finish.

Rappel note: from the thread at the end of P3, we rappelled about 50m to a rock anchor. It was difficult to find good gear and although it’s 2 pitons and a nut, all three pieces were mediocre at best. The ropes ends hung out in space below this. You may want to look a bit higher. It was about 50m to the ground from our rock anchor. We saw a piton rappel station about 10 meters above the ground if you do this and come up short.

Rack: Ice screws; Standard mixed rack (set of nuts and single set of cams from yellow X4 to #3 camelot, including a few pitons) was what we used. We would’ve been happy to have had doubles in .5 to #2 camelot. Bring some extra runners if you want to attempt to link P2 and P3.

As Alan Kirby notes:

The pseudo-modern cultural phenomenon 

par excellence

 is the internet. Its central act is that of the individual clicking on his/her mouse to move through pages in a way which cannot be duplicated, inventing a pathway through cultural products which has never existed before and never will again. This is a far more intense engagement with the cultural process than anything literature can offer, and gives the undeniable sense (or illusion) of the individual controlling, managing, running, making up his/her involvement with the cultural product. Internet pages are not ‘authored’ in the sense that anyone knows who wrote them, or cares. The majority either require the individual to make them work, like Streetmap or Route Planner, or permit him/her to add to them, like Wikipedia, or through feedback on, for instance, media websites. In all cases, it is intrinsic to the internet that 

you can easily make up pages yourself

 (eg blogs).

So, here I am blogging, after ironically posting the following false first ascent claim, which overlooks the existing cultural artifacts:

Unnamed Direct (WI3, M4, 500m)

On November 5th, Simon Richardson and I set out to climb an unclimbed line on the unnamed ridge on a lower branch of Storm Mounta

in above Arnica Lake, via an obvious gully line which bisects the face and tops out at the junction of three ridges on the standard descent from the summit.. In the photo, this is the most obvious central gully. I don’t think this route has been climber as it is not listed in Dave Jones Rockies Central guidebook (It is just to the right of route 7 on p. 236, Northeast Spur (Greenwood/Lofthouse). It seems like the lower gully to get to the last few pitches to the ridge was someones project as there were two pitons and a nut spread apart in the first few hundred meters of the route Perhaps it has even been done before, but judging from the tat left on the last nut, I’m going to guess project. I’m also going to take a guess that an old Rockies hand may have been involved, but if anyone knows any history here, it’d be interesting to know.

Regardless, it was a fun day, despite the cold temps (estimated -30 at 2700m at our ridge topout). The protection was good, the rock was generally excellent, and the climbing interesting despite not being very steep. Obviously not the type of line for everyone, but some will undoubtably enjoy it. By Storm Mountain standards, the overhead hazard is even reasonable, and on November 5th the snow was only boot deep at the base of the wall. Approach time was 2 hours; car to car 19 hours, and we felt the cold slowed us down a fair bit.

Regarding the pitons and nut, we added considerably to the fixed gear on rappel, so it is now obvious the line has been climbed.

Anyways, here is the beta:

Pitch 1-5: Short WI3 steps up the gully interspersed with snow slogging and the occasional mixed bit.

Pitch 6: Head to the right hand narrow slot which leads straight up then slightly right. An exit to the lower ridge left is possible.

Pitch 7: 35m of slogging gets you to the last signs of the original finish. We did not rappel from here. Simon is an obsessed first ascentionist and was still need of more, so we slogged up the gully and then headed out left in growing dark to gain the left hand ridge about ten meters left of the main gully. About 20m more meters of M4 got us to the top of what I believe is the unclimbed direct finish.

Rappel note: from the topout at the highpoint of three intersecting ridges (intersected with the Greenwood/Lofthouse), we rappelled about 50m to a rock anchor. It was difficult to find good gear but we managed. We saw a piton rappel station about 10 meters somewhere on the descent, but often opted for threads in order to conserve gear.

Rack: Ice screws; Standard mixed rack (set of nuts and single set of cams from yellow X4 to #3 camelot, including a few pitons) was what we used

Thanks to Jon Walsh for the reporting template I modified in creating this route description.

Red in the one photo is 

Toshiyuki Yamada

's new line, which he climbed on the same day as we were there. Lots of activity around Storm Mountain ion November 5th, good to see.

Please note: my claim for a first ascent is tongue in cheek and somewhat cheeky.

With a furious publishing schedule and the imperatives of market driven commercialism behind him, our friend at Gripped, Canada's climbing magazine of record, promptly responded with 

an appropriately pseudo-modern article

 after we plyed him with scotch.

So, there is the entire pseudo-modern truth of attempting to go where nobody had gone before in the Canadian Rockies. 

The Mandrill Mothercorp Mafia in Search of the Secret Scotch Synthesis

“I ken nay help yee”

Ensconced in our silver wedge hybrid conveyance Team Mandrill peered outside into the dank murk at our Talisman, a Scot houndstoothed pantleg to deerstalker, puffing pipe.  The Scot was cool in his belonging, calmly comfortable inside his natural fibre wool suit from sheep that had roamed these green mountains for millennia. Impervious to the rain, too confident in his belonging to react to such obvious new worlders, he didn't quite recoil from the surge of conditioned synthetic air we emitted, but a sly mocking grin crept across his lips. He recognised us for what we were.

Our Bleeding Edge poured from the lowered window. We sported our bright, primary colour Skittles suits. Skittles, the protectively packaged sickly sweet high fructose corn syrup sugar pellets, fun in a pill. The Mothercorp adopted the colours to mimic the rumps of that most colourful of primates, the Mandrill. Key to the sexual appeal of the old world monkey, the colours were copied by the marketing minds at the Mothercorp, landing us like circus performing new world monkeys in the old world of Scotland.

Back at the factory in Vangroover the chemists of The Mandrill Mothercorp were all in a tizzy. Rumour had it a new petrochemical formulation was in the pipeline. Mad German scientists at the chemical conglomerates were working on a new formulation, Imipolex G, or IG for short. It promised to insulate hydrocarbons from water.  Endless uses could be imagined; oil spills into waterways would be rendered innocuous, pipelines under river-ways could burst asunder with nary a public comment, school aged kids would stop painting fishes on stormwater drains.. Our Skittles suits would soon be perfectly waterproof, isolating us further from our surroundings. City slickers in their trench-coats would be comfortably protected from the autumnal deluges on the wet coast.  Imipolex G: it had become the grail, the elixer vitae at the end of  the rainbow, like the magic protective suit of armour the Scot apparently possessed.  The only stumbling block; the IG remained to be found.

Boatloads of fleeing hot cash were washing ashore in Vangroover, feeding a frenzy for real assets; condos, apartment buildings, city blocks, art works, park benches, advertising spots on park benches, all being bid up mercilessly.  From the great boreal forests of the north, energy laden sands skidded their way east through the port and the pipe. The Mothercorp, through a virtuous process of recycling, dipped into the flow, headquartered as they were at the east/west nexus of the trade. If they could only find the Imipolex G the returns would make its present trade as merchants of Mandrill Skittles suits a pittance in comparison.  Our homeland replete to overflowing from the Drillers' success, we were on a mad hunt for the plastic.

 Basquiat, Morrisey, Andy and Otto peered out the window, dubious of our mission. Tasked with testing our new world mettle in this land of sheep, grass, North Atlantic gales, the Drillers' goal; send and track us on a Slothropian quest to confirm the promise of petroleum, “Plasticity's central canon; that chemists were no longer at the mercy of nature.”

As Andy said back at The Factory, “I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

The Mothercorp courted the plastic Hollywood look. Images of youth, beauty, and power were its current commodity. The Skittles look sold it, the immediately recognisable look that said,

“We have more money than you for we are Canadian at the beginning of the 21

st

century. We are rich in resources and we are young. We have petroleum, we are privileged, we have fish and timber and gold and diamonds, and we don't mind you knowing. We have been sent by the Drillers to produce images of youth shining through the old world murk with the brilliance of our plasticity. We have plaything-like petroleum products protecting us from your populace pleistocene political problems.”

Morrisey, our Hollywood visuals man, didn't enunciate as such but the Scot knew us none the less.

“We are seeking the bracks”, Morrisey admitted.

“Aye, Glenelg” the Scotsman assented. “ I hope you find what you are looking for”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uisdean had welcomed us to the lands of his ancestors, land of marauding pirates wagering island castles on drinking competitions, of faeries and magic stones, sheep farming and enclosure, ghosts, peat distilling and hostility to mercantile southerners. Uisdean had nobility of blood deep in his roots, was cool in the Farris Thompsonian sense, like Barack Obama is cool. As the comedian said, you hear the name Obama, you picture a tall warrior holding a spear. You hear the name Uisdean (U I S D E A N), you hold a mental image; hunts deer for cash, freezers full of black pudding, doesn't spare words or idly spread sea foam spray further than needed, tells jokes in calm half-sentence dry replies.

“I grew up in the Bracks of Glenelg.”

What makes one more Scot than mangering in a 2000 year old stone tower?

“We would sit on top and toss stones down on visiting tourists.”

“Aye, twas good fun.”, smiled the young celt.

“The Bracks hold a special power, maybe they hold what you are seeking”

“The oldest bracks in Scotland; undoubtedly the oldest Bracks in existence”. This last a typical example of humour that Uisdean occasionally shared.

We found the Bracks. Dark ruined turrets of stone, lichen black tubular protrusions from the oak cloaked croft fields, homes from the age of Christ. Their lumpen soaked forms reeked of discomfort, arthritis, gout. Passing a youth here required a force from before the current age. No laboratory substance could possibly fend of this weight of wetness.

Basquiat, the natural athlete, did as he was born, he climbed the Bracks, laid his hands on and tested the tone of the stone. A visual tug of war, the Skittles suit outshining the senescene colors of the oaks, but overborn by the ancient strength of the black stone.”

“I this disrespectful?” from Otto.

“How are the holds?” Andy.

“I feel the power Uisdean spoke of”. Basquiat was entranced.

“Enough of these lowland wanderings. The Corp wants us to seek the Imipolex G up high. It rises above all other substances, will be high in the towers. These bracks are much too crude for our needs. We must refine our process.” Morrisey peered from behind his black Ray-Bans. As the acquirer of the images, the commodity, he held the purse from the Mothercorp, the producer of the product. Calm, quiet, competent, and responsible, he was the sensible side of the team, with his eye on the prize. And he had his gaze firmly fixed past the image to the treasure in the hills, motivated by the mission of the Mothercorp.

Our Moveable Feast went seeking the furtive molecule in the highlands.

Hurin the Tall opened the door to the keep below the Ben. Mole on his cheek, his bulk framed the small guarded entrance behind him. His gaze quickly registered our panoply of primaries. We explained the Mandrill Corp had sent us on this Team Canada trade mission, unnecessarily as word had leaked. .

 “I don't believe in the mythical Omipolex G. I accept that I will be as my ancestors, wet as nature in the Isles has it. By moving through the mountains I remain warm. Those new fangled clothes of yours, the Mandrill mania, they only work for a few outings then wet through. It's like everything these days, planned obsolescence, works for a year then you get a new one. It's just the Samo.”

“My true love, my Paramo, my mistress, this suit has kept me dry for a decade without infidelity. Everyone wants the new look, but my baggy pants have an assuaging valence in my mind.”

“All very well,” says Morrisey,” but the semiotics of the Corp represent a new era of expressionism, it peddles the stylish cut. We want to show the clean lines of youth cutting through this old world sentimentalism.”

Andy breezed in, flattering in encounters, lubricating our entrance with easy bonhommie. He had a way of holding his cigarette low between the crotch of his two fingers and scratching his nose lightly and repeatedly with the same two, giving the impression he had been to all hours hoovering cocaine up with the film set he at the same time associated with and denigrated. He was rewarded well for his whiplash looks and had featured in front of the camera, but was more happy as a fixer, a social actor. He was a personification of the IG molecule itself, smoothly easing our admittance.  Upstarts traditionally were not welcome at these high mountain bolt holes. Generations of Scottish bloodlines previously were checked before entry was granted but the rich Mandrill crest and colours, like a club tie, opened many doors.

In every corner hung a Mandrill competitor in ersatz Skittles pigments. Humidity of a jungle, a westcoast marijuana manufacturie, or a Scotch hut jammed to capacity with cups of tea on high rotation, an ideal laboratory for testing our latest amalgams; we were practically the crude material in a fired heater, paused ready to shot up the towers.

All settled in.

An eager youngster, new to the pursuit, effused, having spotted one of the stars of the sport.

“GADD...IS your name Wyatt, the minister's son?”

"I had a down day due to weather, and was just reading a heavy tome I found in the pile of literary detritus on the shelf in the corner, along with the usual Climb and Alpine Journals. It is thick and difficult to understand, and I suppose someone did not want to carry it out. There was no cover and the title page was missing, so I don't know it's name, but somehow I thought I was having a recognition."

“No, my name is Jean Michel.”

The rest of the hut crew were cool enough to accept Basquiat by whatever name he chose to go by.

“Wow, I like your jacket. I love the Mandrill colours.”

We took her to be a starstruck philistine.

“Yeah, they set us up. But it's the same as yours...”. Jean Michel, the quiet type, more a man of action than words, was never confrontational.

She missed witnessing the next day;s performance as Jean Michel settled into his natural setting. Unhindered by team, irrespective of audience expectations he climbed into the storm straight from the keep. Jacket flapping wildly from blown zipper, shambolically traipsing through the swirling jets of vitality robbing moisture, skipping up the Ben. Veritably, he was not a suitable test subject for the Drillers' substances, studies; his numa protected him, his drive innate, anima complete from an unknowable history, the Skittles merely colours on his palette.

Moments of numinosity flowed through Jean Michel, his transgressivity revolutionary, not following the recognised rules. He was playing the organ to crash the cathedral, the bird blowing his sax, brush strokes of brilliance, his emanation powerful, his protective halo (his afro hair in wind rime) enough to repel the spectres, the puer eternus floating up and down out of the heavens, encycling the mountain at gathering speed.

Below, Morrisey masterfully captured the required images in monochrome, to be edited later to highlight the colour signifiers. Jean Michel in his Skittles suit contrasted starkly, differentiated from the grey of the old Ben, location chosen by the Mandrill minds for its severity, its harshness, its threatening unhindered brutality of climate. The uninitiated viewer would associate the colors with Basquiat's growing repute, his otherworldly performances. The Mothercorp usurped Jean Michel's morning energy; just as the art critic takes ten percent for a positive review so it cost the Drillers a small tip to the youth to claim association with him.

Paul of course knew this; he had read his Propaganda; he even prepared a sauce a la Bernays the evening before to butter up Jean Michel. He needed, but had failed, to convince Jean to tie in with Andy. There had to be a way to make Jean Michel's feats comprehensible. The Corp needed less an ascending angel, too holy and venerated, more a griot, that travelling storytelling musician of African lore. For a moment or two Jean Michel had acquiesced and partnered with Andy but the result was much too banal for him. Sensitive to his true calling he had reneged. At a moment of rapture he backslid to his solipsistic ways, addicted to the high.

Spied passingly through the cyclone, Jean Michel encoded the Corp's product; the claim of spirit, verve, youth, enthusiasm, freedom in nature, energy. The Drillers spent entire lifetimes prospecting, extracting and processing energy in the new world; they even had a term for it, they called it their “advantage”. By the suggestive dichotomies revealed through jet travel, here in the old world Jean Michel held the advantage, that he had a pure talent others idolised. He represented all that the Drillers desired.

And Jean Michel was willing.. Conscious of his critical reception he knew the path he had followed with singular righteousness was unsustainable; he needed to make the crucial commercial tie-in. He was a worldly prophet, not aloof to profit.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Through the day Jean Michel's movements were lost to the Team, like a club kid ecstatically dropping in and out of a show. Mid afternoon, a scene developed in one of the alleys high up on the west side. Andy, Otto, and Paul Morrisey were there for a performance by two Scots, a happening that attracted an eager crowd of actors, photographers, media types. Wealthier patrons were at hand, their gallerist dealer guides pointing what was what, who was who.

In slid Jean Michel down from the heights in the cloud, alighting the event. Heads turned, whispers spread.

“Is that the guy who was alone on Point Five?”

“He fourth classed that Cerro in Argentina a few years ago, that's him.”

Juxtaposition with the audience was stark; they stood soaked, shivering, damp with inaction. Clutched hoods, numbed digits, they were the Mandriller's dream consumers. Basquiat was a radiant child in comparison.

Whispered discussions within the critics.

He has an “innate capacity to function as something like an oracle, distilling his perceptions of the outside world down to their essence and, in turn, projecting them outward through his creative acts.” (Fred Hoffman)

"He is certainly prolific. He has already produced 7 masterpieces today alone.”

“Call it a seventh sense. Certain artists intuit they are going to die young, so they produce huge bodies of work in condensed periods of time.”...”But fast and furious by themselves are not enough ...There has to be an unexplained and original edge to this velocity and ferocity, an element that transfers desperation and desire into something new and compelling.” (Jerry Saltz)

“How does he do it by himself, without the safety of a partner?”

Yet another critic offered his answer.

“What identifies Jean Michel as a major artist is courage and full powers of transformation. That courage, meaning not to be afraid to fail, transforms paralysingly self-conscious “predicaments” ...into confident” outcomes. (Robert Farris Thompson)

Hearing the critics fueled Jean Michel further. He could not contain his energy standing around. His “vitality in motion” (RFT) required an outlet.

“Andy, what is that dark tower?”

On the far side of the alley stood a dripping dark tower, removed from the spotlight of the happening.

“They call it the Dark Lord. The German chemists might call it a schwartzgerat, a black device to separate the wheat from the chaff, the crude from the lighter elements among us. Only the highest grade reaches the top.”

“Locals say it is infamous, that under great pressure you get stuck in the chimney, like a vapor stuck in a stack. To continue upward you reach a sidecut, only the lightest fraction continues upward.”

“Are you thinking what I am?”

“They say the Imipolex comes from a dark source, that it is lighter than all other molecules. The Corp would love us if we found it.”

“Somehow I feel drawn to the ascent. Whether it is the flesh or the spirit I don't know. But if there's a treasure to be found up there they'll give us all blue ribbons.”

His internal dialogue was obvious.

“I have achieved a lot but,”

“When we reach the peak and look down at what we've come from, see mists and clouds, not the base of the mountain”(Rene Ricard) ,

“I feel I need to achieve more. I need to have the Corp behind me. If we find the Imipolex G we'll be set.”

“It is important to form the right connections; for your own protection you need to trust someone. Someone else has to have a personal commitment to your work- so that it isn't shopped like merchandise.” (RR)

Sometimes he thought of himself in the third person in his mind, using the zen mind of the observer trick when in action,

“Can I trust you Andy?”, Jean Michel asked, returning from his reverie.

Up he began, avatar in modern king's clothing, wearing his crown and carrying the torch of old and new alike, the until recently undiscovered genius of the Fraser River delta.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Everything is covered in a carbonaceous sludge, blackened”, he called down. “Yet all the sidecuts are covered in a light white powder. I can practically touch the next level, I almost have to talk myself out of getting higher.”

This as Jean Michel made the effort to pass the channel which would separate the one heavier fraction from the others.

“Only do what you can get away with”, Andy's advice form below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Uh. Are you guys leaving? I could use some help here.” A faint childlike voice came from the dark gash.

Without questioning, Andy and Otto walked around to the top of the alley and dropped in on Jean Michel, picking him up along the way, saving him from the heights and his predicament.

On the way down past the dispersing, gossiping crowd he summed up the dichotomous forces pulling at his psyche. Everyone wanted to know: how did he risk so much in pursuit of his calling, why did he do it?

“You've got to realize that influence is not influence. It is simply someone's idea going through my new mind.”(Jean Michel Basquiat)

“But I don't want to die young and leave a beautiful corpse.”

“I don't want to be blown off by the Drillers once they have refined out of me what they can take.”

The last word went to Andy .  "We, who have always thought of happiness as climbing or ascending would feel the emotion that almost startles when a happy thing falls."

The "Wrong" Mountain

"Maybe it is a good thing we didn't make it onto Storm Mountain".

Alik and I agreed we had fortuitous misfortune when I got us lost at the Twin Lakes. Twin Lakes. Imagine, there are two of them.

I had jogged up the trail a few days earlier with Corinna.  Something had seemed a little different than I remembered but memory is not my strong suit. Last year at this time I approached Storm Mountain for an enjoyable alpine outing.  I shrugged off this year's faint impression of non-familiarity. With Alik we repeated the approach and began the traverse around the lake.  It got a little steeper than I remembered.

The next morning, looking closely from above the opening slush pitch I realized that indeed, we had contoured the wrong lake.  Upper Twin Lake leads right and to the north face of Storm Mountain, home to the infamous unrepeated Wallator route we were aiming for. A year earlier we had approached our first ascent Canoeing to Cuba from Upper Twin Lake. We found an easy route with some spectacular settings. It was about 100 meters to the start of the Wallator route; you'd think a year later I would be able to find my way back.

 Contour the wrong lake, the Lower Twin Lake, and you get to the base of an unastounding wall. So unastounding that the Dave Jones Rockies guidebook just calls it Unnamed 3021.

At this point I was profusely apologizing to Alik. I had finally spotted the south ridge of Storm Mountain a kilometer to our right, and realized we were faced at 6 pm with a very unappealing traverse.

"Honestly, I don't understand how we got here.  Last time we just traversed around the right side of the lake and it led right below the face."

"Twin Lakes though hey.  I guess there are two lakes.

Maybe we went around the wrong lake?"

"I've been to Upper Twin Lake and it's not below the north face, but on second thought that might have been Arnica Lake.", pondered Alik. "So many lakes!".

"Well, thanks for not losing it on me for getting us lost"

"Yeah, maybe I should be more goal oriented now that I work half the time", Alik ruminated after his recent adoption of a somewhat normal work schedule, a relatively uncommon thing for him.

"Well, should we just climb this namby pamby gully, or do you want to try to traverse over?"

"There's no way we are going to make it to the base of the wall in two hours."

The lassitude of being lost caught ahold, and we settled under our little tarp as there was snow in the forecast.

Seconds later, we were glad to be under cover. Monday night and winter was flashing its presence.

The next morning we had a leisurely 6 am start, as it was an easy snow gully we were aiming for.  I'd already dismissed a couple of much more intimidating route suggestions as too "namby pamby", a British expression my younger friend was unfamiliar with.

It is never a good idea to form the idea that a route is going to be a push-over.  How I didn't guess the ice strip would be slush I don't know.  Then again, I got the wrong lake so underestimating the difficulties of a pitch is a minor misjudgement in comparison. It was easy enough that I wasn't too worried about Alik coming up on a dubious slush based anchor I described as "probably good enough for top-roping." When three out of five pieces are in slush, the integrity of the two nuts placed in choss is essential.

 "I think it's good as long as you get a solid piece in before whipping."

"Oh, I have no plans on whipping."

Well, no one really ever plans that.  We also don't plan on drytooling around 5 meter steps of showering slush on downsloping feet with questionable cams and a "cammed" angle looking "reasonably solid".

Luckily Alik is an expert on camming angles.  Who else have you ever seen stack a leeper and an angle to make an anchor?

We were being drawn onward by a mysterious force. There was no astounding climbing, just plain snow gully slogging.  

"Take a photo. No, hold on, put your helmet back on, photos with people standing on ski terrain with their helmet in their hand just doesn't look hard core."

Near the top of the gully we spotted the black hole that had been sucking us upward. And, incredibly, an ice pillar.  

On closer inspection the pillar wasn't so climbable. We could have gone around but we figured we might as well climb something vertical.  The rock step was surprisingly fun with good hooks and pro. There's even photo proof that it was steep enough I had to drop knee.

"Time to go spelunking"

"I don't know, looks pretty tricky. Let's traverse and see what happens."

What happened was a trip to the ridge, an epic view of a storm blowing in over Storm Mountain, and an easy descent to the larch filled valley.

Spot the climber.

The story of the traverse back to the bivi spot is not documented due to darkness falling.  There was a debate over the presence of a cliff (Alik was right), its traversability (Alik found the way) and its potential lethality (high in my estimation).

By midnight we were squeezing tighter under the tarp as thich snow crowded us. By morning 4 inches had fallen and winter was on.

We had gone winter climbing, maybe not on the right mountain but in the mountains none the less.

Excuses

You know when you are posing this hard at The Back of the Lake in the "weekend warrior look" that you likely are not sending any time soon.

Of course, we all want our climbing exploits to end in situations like that pictured above. Sometimes, and sometimes for an entire summer, that is not possible.

Sometimes weeks are spent like this.It's not all roses.

When all is said and done, and a summer has passed and I haven't climbed anything worthwhile, it is time for excuses. So, without further ado, and quoting widely from The Art of Climbing Down Gracefully by Tom Patey, a summary of my summer.

One great excuse is 

The 'Ice-Man' Ploy.

 "I'm a Snow and Ice Man myself!" is a fairly safe assertion...Show me the Englishman- Yes; show me the Englishman, I say- who can stand upright in his steps, square set to the slope, and hit home hard and true, striking from the shoulder! There must be a few of us Ice-Men left around. Ice-Manship may be a forgotten craft but it's still the Cornerstone of Mountaineering.  Never forget that! Any fool can monkey around on overhangs...

It was unmistakably not summer but the three weeks I spent in Scottish conditions last winter likely set back any summer plans immeasurably. Goggles, gore gloves, and wet pants.

This fear of the weather, and its concomitant usefulness as an excuse is neatly summed up as

The 'Fohn Wind' and other Bad Weather Ploys

the next time I went up to a hut I determined to follow the advice of local Alpine Guides. If they don't know , who does? Thirty two Guides slept at the Couvercle Hut that night, and they all got up at 2 a.m. like a major volcanic eruption. One Guide, with an attractive female client in tow, walked out, prodded the snow with an ice-axe, sniffed the air, and without a word retired to bed. It later transpired that this was the celebrated Armand Charlet. Thirty one silent Guides looked at each other, shook their heads, and retired likewise.  We woke at 8 a.m to find brilliant sunshine. ....

The last time I saw Charlet he was headed for the valley with the attractive blonde in close attendance. It was the first day of what proved to be a ten-day record heat wave.

Returning from the immaculate rock of southern Spain I decided it was time to reassert myself on the limestone of the Bow Valley.  Fish out of water? Is this 5.8? Am I going the right way? How do I protect a second on this pitch?

There is

The 'Greater Ranges' Ploy

Historians tell us that Frank Smythe only began to function properly above 20000 feet. This adds up to a pretty considerable handicap, when you consider how much of his time he spent at lower altitudes. It is all part f the mystique which surrounds The Men who are expected to Go High. 

For this ploy some previous Himalayan experience is essential... Once the aura has formed, you can hardly go wrong. You can patrol the foot of Stanage with all the invested authority of an Everester. No one expects you to climb. It is enough that you retain a soft spot for your humble origins.

"This is all very different from the South Col!" you can remark crisply, as you watch bikini-clad girls swarming over the rocks like chameleons.

As the aura never seems to die, this excuse can be used even if your last trip to altitude ended somewhat short of the summit.

On a few occasions I employed 

The 'Chossy Climb' Ploy

'Poxy', 'Chossy', 'Spastic' and 'Rubbish' are all terms characteristically used ...by climbers to denigrate ..routes which they have either failed to climb or failed to find(without searching too minutely)

This is of course very useful in the Canadian Rockies.  In the photo below I am well established at a belay stance on a Yamnuska classic.  Solid.

Then we get to the crux of the matter, the

'Responsible Family Man' Ploy.

The little camp-follower who cooked the meals and darned everybody's socks is suddenly transformed into an all-demanding, insatiable virago whose grim disapproval makes strong men wilt in their kletterschuhe. Climbing weekends become less and less frequent...In many cases this is the natural end of all things, but a few diehards still put in an annual appearance- pale shrunken ghosts, who glance nervously over their shoulders before they speak.

Now, in my case it is not marriage or kids that is making me responsible, but I do have a girlfriend and a dog. I seem to go running more days than I go climbing.

Fatefully I took the decision to be responsible and move into a house.  Of course, when the basement, which is going to be a suite and make it affordable to own, ends up looking like a war zone, days climbing seem like they could be better spent.

When you get friends' daughters who are in grade two to wear masks and wield crowbars, you know it has gone too far.

And then there is the decision to forsake a life of selfish climbing and take up the noble profession of rock guiding, letting me legally share my love of the rock and rope trickery with others.  With this amount of rope-work, it is a push to fit in time in the mountains.

Finally, when I did make it through all the choss wrangling, the rope twisting, and the responsibilities of becoming an upstanding citizen, I was bowled low by the dreaded

'Weak Member on the Rope Ploy'

A Past-President of the Aberdeen University Mountaineering Club used this ploy with such remarkable success that he was never once crag-bound during his entire term in Office. "

No hard climbs for me today, Tom," he would sigh heavily. "I'm afraid I've got a weak member on the rope- can't afford to extend myself."

I had it all lined up, a big trip to the big mountains, to make up for this summer of climbing trade routes. Even announced it to my classmates in the Apprentice Rock Guide Exam class of 2016.  My one partner called in sick with a sore back.

The second decided to go climbing in 30 degree 90 percent humidity, technical slab at that.  Currently assessing whether he'll be up for the 25 km approach, we'll see.

At the least I am having fun working on

The Art of Climbing Down Gracefully.

El Botri, Spanish Travel, and Questioning What I Know.

Mad genius who did the FA of Niagara Falls and half of those other routes too? We are not in Chamonix but this definitely is El Botri.

I recently attended the

Mashup

exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery with Sam Eastman (thanks for the brief tour Sam!)  Let's just say this post is not about 

alpinism in Chamonix.

Corinna and I visited southern Spain in January for the first time.  The trip was so full of new experiences that it has taken until now to process.  Stephen King says any good writer should write 4 hours every day, so that stories do not get old and stale.  For me it has taken a month and half to order my impressions.  As 

memory is a subjective faculty

 it is not surprising that the story has become murkier along the way (a 

link

 which perhaps explains why my memory and my campusing are so poor?).

At 10 am, sat on bar stools, in the Mari Jose in Redovan, I didn't pay particular attention to the stubbled wirey Spaniard with the statuesque, made up blonde on his arm.  This was our second bar stop of the day.  We were surrounded by older men who were hand-poured various licors along with their java.  All before a brief day sport cragging at

El Rut

.  From many trips to Mexico, and from the literature of 

the greatest Latin American writer of our generation

,

I should have known to be aware of my surroundings in such an unassuming venue.  I didn't put two and two together when my friend Sergio said that El Botri had done half the first ascents on

La Pancha

.

 The legend has two routes named specifically for him, La Botri 1 and La Botri 2. He used his fortune made in Spain's building boom to climb the world over when he wasn't on his local cliffs.   

 " I think of the Botri, opened in only one day during the fiesta of the patron saint and in infernal temperatures (the only time I thought I would die of dehydration).  45 celsius and only one liter of local vermouth to drink."

We headed to El Cantalar, a small seaside crag developed by Javier Cos Baviera.  Amazing that in Spain you can climb 8b and be humble as pie.  We were warned about the long downhill approach.  A half hour, at a very nonchalant stroll. The locals don't really visit too much, but for us 

guiris

 they made an exception. To the north of Murcia are Sierras, covered in forest, but the locals figured we would be more intrigued by the Med.  They weren't far wrong, what a view!

The giant bay of Cartagena is one of the most important harbours on the Med.  Now, as two thousand years ago, it really is the 

new new thing

, as the

Romans humorously named it

. All we are waiting for in Canada is for our prices to deflate like the tech bubble did, and the Spanish real-estate boom has.  Then we'll be enjoying tapas and drinks at $5 a person too.

 Corinna is a champ, from recovering from death defying accidents, to putting up with lots of guys talking way too much about climbing, in Spanish, and for suggesting we come back the next day to run from Cartagena (the mid-point in the photo) to the 

Castillitos point.

    That evening we were regaled with Javi's paella, his high bottle pouring antics with local ciders (essential to "add air" to get the full flavor), and his next climbing project.

Only in Spain:

"My next project, it is with a boat, it is 15 kilometers long, it is a deep water solo.  But it takes me 4 days, so I need a boat driver."

 "So, if you fall, you fall into water? Really, deep water solo?"

" Yes, I fall between, mmmm, 1 meter and 7 or 8 meters."

This photo shows the more familiar, garden variety type of Spanish climbing scene.  It's sport climbing, and it's what all North a'mericans think of when the think os Spanish rock. I am above Mullas and Bullas, home to lots of vineyards, at El Ferrari.  Later we would sample some fine 1.7 Euro quality vino tintos and 4 liters of the finest vermouth served up in plastic juice bottles.  Plenty of the famously unemployed Spanish youth were pulling down in shocking style. Just down the way is another crag with "a couple of" 9as.  

The diversity of climbing available in the Iberian peninsula is amazing. Pictured is a popular guidebook to climbing areas in Spain.  Each area only gets a brief few sentences to describe the overall aspect of the area.  There are 900 zonas, and it is a select guide. Sergio pointed out that all the visitors go to the crags in the latest Chris Sharma videos.   I was quite happy to have locals to show me around some of the lesser visited areas, where we rarely saw other guiris. 

One of the locals we had to show us the lesser visited treasures was Jose Luis Clavel.  Here he is on his route Eiger on the south face of 

Leiva

.  Jose Luis is a doctor.  He works one 24 hour shift in an ambulance making house calls.

"It saves money on hospital bills" he wisely noted when I mentioned house calls don't happen in Canada.  

Then he takes 4 days off and goes climbing, and lives. I told Jose Luis about the standard 23 on 4 off patch shift in Alberta. His reaction reminded me of the footage of euros in disbelief in Michael Moore's

latest

movie.

We visitied the adjoining summit, saw wild sheep, and were on our way out when I thought I'd ask Jose Luis about his climbing. 

"Jose Luis, Sergio said you had done some first ascents on the face."

"Yes."

"Which ones?"

"Well, the one I was on, Eiger."

"Any others?"

"Well, the one you were on too."

"Any others?"

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"40 years ago."

It was heartening to see how well people climbed, that it is a part of the culture, and that people don't seem to need to boast about it.  Something else to learn from Jose Luis was when I asked him about bolting natural features.  He said all the routes were put up in the 60s and 70s using aid. Then in the 80s they started to free climb them, and they thought they needed to bolt them.

"But now we don't bolt them so much, we have learned we don't need to."

This is Jose Luis on the crux pitch of 

Rockabilly on the Tozal de Levante

.  The pitch has a few bolts, but it also has in situ pitons, and slings, along with crazy huecos and steep shattered rock pillar pulling.  In the Rockies, can't imagine it.  Put up in 2012, it shows the progression of Spanish climbing, weaving an intelligent line through huge roofs at a reasonable grade.  And the Rock, if only we were so lucky!

Having done one great adventure climb Corinna and I went and climbed above Finestrat, where we narrowly avoided the British climbing scene at the Orange House.  The orange groves of Valencia glistened in the fields below, as we basked above the very strange sight of the 

towers of Benidorm

.  Remember, 

"Only Guiris eat the oranges growing in the streets."

 Only Guiris would ever want anything to do with Benidorm, like a pustule of the worst of UK and Spanish culture exploded on a beautiful sandy coastline.  Just a touch further north, slightly downsized, and preferred by the Russian oligarchs, is Calpe, home of the impeccable  

Penon de Ifach

.  It was very nautical.  There were seagulls screeching, fishing boats passing.  Our route was called Pirates, and earlier I had climbed Navigantes.  All very enjoyable! 

On the summit I had one of my traveler's misunderstandings. An older Brit couple were descending, accompanied it seemed by their couple of domestic house cats.  I knew a woman in Canmore who would take her house cat ice climbing.  Stranger things have happened.

"Are those your cats?"

"No."

"Huh.  Will you take our photo?"

So that is how we have some summit shots of the Penon with cats, and some without.  

The traveler's misunderstanding was truly realized when I saw the following sight.

From decades of traveling, I have become familiar with the following scenario.  The first time one experiences something new, totally out of one's sphere of reference, the conscious mind does not know how to classify it, and one is prone to overlook it.  Then by the third or fourth experience, one's mind has begun to construct a pathway which can absorb and deal with the experience.  It is at this moment that one first becomes aware of the new experience. Only on reflection does one realize this is not the first experience with the new thing, as memory flashes back to previous unconscious memories.

When we first saw these flocks of brightly colored birds we thought a load of parrots had escaped.  My Spanish is quite good, but Sergio's explanation escaped me at first. On one of the last days in Spain I was driving along a small rural road when I spotted both a flock of bright birds and a motley collection of men of various ages, some in cars, some on scooters, others on bikes.  I raced to get my camera, but by the time i returned all trace of the sighting had disappeared.  Returning to Sergio's I heard a faint cooing over the fence.  Lo and behold, next door was the scene depicted above. 

It turns out there is a

cult like sport

 in Murcia and Valencia.  The game seems simple.  Men get a load of male pigeons, and paint them bright colors so they can discern one from the other.  Then they scent the males on a single female, whom they release.  The human males then bet on the prospects of their male pigeon counterparts.  And whichever male first "covers" the female wins.  Like an allegory on life.

The other inexplicable sighting, the roundabouts, are a sign of that other truism of human existence, political corruption.  From the looks of things something needs some explaining.

That is the great thing about traveling.  One's mind gets expanded by trying to absorb new concepts and experiences.  The town, Al Cantarilla, which in Castillano (there is no language named "Spanish" I learned) means "the sewer" named such by the Moors as to them it meant water container.  The oldest boat in the world, to be found off the coast of Cartagena. The "nun's bush", a prickly plant which it is best to avoid touching. Rock climbers who climb 9a and above who are not known by sight, and are mere unsponsored amateurs ("lovers of", in french).  Tapas at $3 a plate, fine vino tinto at $3 also, and vermouth by the plastic jug.  55-year-olds who have been establishing routes for 40 years and now laugh at their mad bolting sprees.  

And one mad rich construction boss named El Botri who says the worst thing about climbing in Nipigon was that he had to lead everything in his duvet, but that when he climbed Niagara Falls as a lark it was only grade 4.

Amazing the things one learns when one travels somewhere new.  So much more than climbing, so much of interest.  

Trying to Climb with the Big Boys

Jeff making the key chossy moves to the right

I'm sitting on the couch licking my wounds after spending a week trying to climb with the big boys, Jeff Mercier and Marc Andre Leclerc.  It has been a while since I have been so obviously outclassed, but it's good to get a harsh reality check once in a while, and good to get out with such humble and naturally talented senders.  The highlight was Jeff's first ascent of an awful new variation in the Whiteman Falls chasm, a mini venue which packs a mighty punch.

Jeff was at Glenmore lodge a month ago when Raphael Slawinski and I were at the BMC International Winter Meet.  In the question and answer period after a slideshow he gave, Raphael was asked about the future of climbing in the Rockies.  I interjected that I thought climbing was advanced by the injection of fresh blood when visitors came to our home range, giving the example of Ueli Steck putting up the unrepeated Cock Fight, and Josh Wharton rampaging around the range.  To top it off I said, in an off hand challenge, "Now we just need Jeff Mercier to come and visit."

It was only a brief week later that I received an email from Jeff asking if I would want to get out as he was headed over.  I'd really put my foot in it.  For years I've associated with the

type of climber

 who can win 

Ouray

 and

enchain multiple routes

 in Kandersteg in a day.  Now Jeff was on his way over and I was going to have to step up to the plate.

The perfect storm came together at Jesse Huey's condo in Canmore, when Marc Andre Leclerc, fresh back from 

Scotland

, also happened to be in the Rockies.  Jesse's buddy David was only on his 5th day using tools and 

didn't seem to have any problem

 with the mixed game, and I'm a local, so again I thought I'd better step up.

Jeff was eager to come along as Marc and I avoided terrible avalanche conditions by going to the Real Big Drip.  Marc onsighted the first mixed pitch, and admitted that there were some "powerful moves", the secret to which I couldn't quite grasp.  With Jeff as the second party I had to motor along after falling off, just in time to fix the static line for his photographer.  It was quite revealing that neither of the world class athletes along that day seemed to have much trouble with a pitch that seems to spit off most of the local senders, leading to significant griping on conditions forums.

Marc was kind enough to wait til I wasn't hanging to take the photo.

The safety conscious wouldn't be on the Real Big Drip anyway.  Alex Lowe climbed with no helmet, and it seems like Marc is the one having the most fun, so he's doing something right.

Maybe what I enjoy about climbing with total crushers is that they don't seem to mind my minor foibles of self doubt in the face of failure.  Marc did have a certain note of surprise in his voice when I quietly asked for a take on my lead when I couldn't see how to proceed after about 5 minutes of hanging about.    Neither Marc nor Jeff seemed too bothered by my effort. Jeff even encouragingly noting that I was "only a few moves away" on the RBD.  Well, a few moves and about ten minutes of hanging on the bolt.  Maybe I like the fact that the rope goes up in record time when climbing with world class athletes, and that I get to climb outrageous things, but it's also nice when people don't make fun of you for not being as good as they are. It often seems the best are comfortable with their abilities, while it is those struggling to keep up who make the most noise about how good they are

The same went for the next day when we headed in to Whiteman Falls. 

I kept asking Jeff what he thought of the climb, and he kept things positive by noting what an incredible venue it was, what amazing ice formations, and how impressive the ice was.

 I've lapped the icefall a load of times by now, but seen through fresh eyes it was fun to hear Jeff's appreciation for it.  It was a good thing too that he was in a good mood once again, as it was the second day in a row I had forgotten my helmet. 

Down on the ground I mentioned that Steve House had an unrepeated variation connecting the top of Redman Soars with Whiteman Falls, named 

Whiteman Soars

.  It's interesting how Jeff refused to be baited by any challenges I threw out, rather choosing to follow his own intuition.  For example, I had mentioned that Will Gadd had a few standing hard cave routes. I thought Jeff might be just the man for them.  Seemed he hadn't traveled half way around the world to drytool drilled pockets as they have loads in Chamonix. He'd eyed up a new natural line. I couldn't believe I'd never noticed, it was staring everyone straight in the face.

The red route line is Redman Soars, The White line from the top of Redman's to the top of Whiteman's is Steve House's Whiteman Soars.  And the tricolor, the red white and blue is in honor of the nationality of the ropegun on that day.  

I was enjoying watching Jeff's skilled climbing as he started up the initial layback thin crack, making it all look so easy.  But even Jeff had known what yellow rock usually means in the Rockies, and the fine thin crack led only to a chossy roof.  Suddenly a stream of rock came cascading down as he made the most athletic moves of the day.  He had the presence of mind to take out the piton hammer and swing away at the choss, clearing the way to pull over the roof.  

Balancy crampon smears gave way to a bit of burliness. 

 I prepared a joke about

super strong Frenchmen

 who tag up half the rack mid pitch and are sponsored by Totem cams, but the climbing was obviously too serious for that.

I loved the first 20 meters of the crack on top rope.  Just enough feet and some techy pick torques.  At the traverse the feet blanked out, but there were amazingly mouldy patches which accepted steel, fed by the sand coming out of the chossy roof.  It was a sandy "hold" which defeated me as my pick dragged through as I made the crux pull.  Joining Jeff I had to admit he'd done a great job linking about 10 meters of rope into enough gear to make a solid belay.

Now, Jeff works as a

secouriste

 in Chamonix.  Usually he is rescuing tourists, though he has mentioned that some of the rescues are a little more daring.  So it was really not my intention to back off my lead on the second pitch. I really should have trusted the 000 that I put upward in a chossy crack, but I just couldn't.  The ice which would have made Steve's traversing pitch appealing was useless, and the rock it left behind was abysmal, even by Rockies standards.  I went right, I went left, and almost found a neat escape route back to Whitman's, but I just couldn't commit to the moves given the pro.

Not only did Jeff have to take over, I had to give him back his helmet.  With a hop skip and a jump he took a quick glance at the rock, judged it correctly to be horrible, and took off hard left on the traverse around the arete I had balked at.  At the end of the day I had to admit that I was too scared to do it.

"I was just too scared to do it given the pro".

"Well, I didn't look at the pro and I just didn't think about it".

One of the most endearing things about Jeff was that he would race down from the climbs in the evening to get news from his family.  His three sons are at various levels of involvement with their hobbies, and Jeff just couldn't wait to hear their news every day.  So, how you manage the risk when you have a full fledged family I don't know.  I guess the simple truth is that if you climb M14, a short unprotected 5.6 traverse is no big deal.  Still, impressive mind control.

If the cam had come out there would have been about 10 meters of slack in the system, enough to cause some serious problems.  At Jesse's that night I looked up the guidebook description of Whiteman Soars.  It reads in part, "If the ice half way across the traverse is not thick enough for screws, then the pitch gets an X rating because rock gear potential is minimal."  

The ice wasn't in, I wasn't in, and that I guess is what differentiates me from the big boys in this game.

A big thanks to Jeff, and an apology for making him work on his vacation.  As he muttered as I apologized for my performance, "This is what we do for work".  I'm not sure if he meant as a sponsored climber or as a securiste, but it was none the less very impressive to see, and fun to participate, if only with the rope safely above my head. Seems the police in Cham know how to have 

fun.

The next day I did something I have never done before; I hung on a screw.  By the top of Drama Queen my arms were useless.  Rather than fall on ice, I took the safe way out, again.  Poor Jeff, I'd been hoping to get him onto a genuine Rockies dagger, but he was so cold after my molasses paced lead that he declined the delight.  

I was done, done like dinner as they say.

Thanks to Leonhard Pang for some of the photos he took while on Whiteman's.

Caution: Fresh Coconut Juice, Tropical Temperatures, and Tigers can be Hazardous to Your Mental Health

For years, the object of my desire.

I truly believe that if you haven't seen this view, you are wasting your time in the Canadian Rockies.

My wife was sleeping with another man. It was not a situation I could liberally turn a blind eye to. She told me she was falling in love with him, her married-with-kids boss at the fancy heli-ski lodge where he'd wanted her as more than an employee. She told me not to come back. How it had come to this I had no idea. I'd left the mountains two weeks earlier to head to the coast on my seasonal migration for work. I was faced with months of straight labour and my reality was shattered. Something had to be done to change my mental state. As before, I turned to the mountains for peace and solace.

At work on the remote west coast of B.C. my mind raced looking for a solution. I would wake with a heart rate of 120. Like an animal caught in a trap, I manically searched for something new to give my life meaning. Always attracted to alpine climbing for the deep spiritual experience it offers, my mind took me back to the next most intense experience I could recall, to the North Face of Twins Tower in the Canadian Rockies

The most impressive spot in the range.

I had met my wife in the days following my first attempt to climb the Twin. I returned to my climbing partner's rental home with a hand the size of a softball and a new respect for rockfall. It had made an impression on my psyche, bailing down that face with a broken arm. My jalopy van was parked at my buddy's. The owner of the rental home...my future wife. I guess there are some benefits of being an addicted alpinist. That was 5 years or so earlier.

Early on any Twin adventure you realize you are entering a special zone.

By the end of the summer I finished a purgatorial 110 days of coastal tree-planting. My new reality as a divorced man was about to begin. My coping mechanism was simple; head straight to the spiritual well, the Black Hole of Mounts Alberta, Stutfield, and the Twins. After moving my stuff out of her house I would avoid contact with anything that would remind me of my ex and head into the mountains to meditate. Trip after trip had me hiking the short 3 hours to the MacKay hut, and then further in to the Black Hole to stare at the North Face of the Twins. Could I find renewed meaning on that dangerous limestone canvas?

It gets more real as the sun rises.

She had told me she was attracted to me because I was pursuing my passion. We dated, went to the climbing gym, went ski touring, did all the middle of the road activities most couples can do together. None of which were as exciting as attempting the North Face of the Twins. But really, I hear Kevin Thaw dragged his girlfriend up The Wild Thing for its third ascent, but that wouldn't have worked in our case. I grew to accept and began to revel in the idea that I was beyond taking absurd risk, that I had matured and grown into my true self.

The rockfall relents once you exit the gully.

Slowly, as before, the mountains of the Rockies began to bring me peace in my heart. Little by little I began to relearn that there is joy in the mountains. They serve more than to be a place to challenge one's existence. One day I saw massive spontaneous rockfall explode from one of the vertical walls mid way up the Twin. Anyone anywhere on the lower half of the Blanchard route would have been instantly killed. I abandoned any idea of climbing the wall. With a renewed lust for life I realized there was a more moderate option, the North West Ridge, the unrepeated Abrons route. It was a perfect compromise for my older, wiser, mature self. It fit the person I knew I had become, rather than the impossible caricature my ex had taken me to be.

Not many established routes take you to this vista.

She had told me she had jumped ship for her older, established ACMG boyfriend because she felt secure with him. I scared her because I took too many risks. What? I was the guy who'd broken my arm on the most notorious North Face in North America, and she was surprised I took too many risks? Well, forget about that, I had a new life to live.

Some absolutely abysmal Rockies choss. Takes a  special person.

Returning to town after my mountain seclusion I rediscovered the warmth and magic of making climbing plans with new climbing partners. By the second attempt with the second new partner we got it right. On the rope was the editor of this magazine. I'd always made fun of Brandon for being so boisterous about his climbing, so psyched and loud and jazzed about it. He made lighthearted company up a serious route. Laughing at the rock quality was the only thing to do. As the rockfall floated by some of my stress and worries of the summer fell off my shoulders too. Years earlier on the North Face I had not understood what Steve House meant when he wrote of the “mind of the observer”. Now I accepted the rockfall for what it was. I accepted Brandon for who he is. I accepted my ex for whatever it is that makes her tick. And I accepted myself for whatever risk I choose to take and whatever mountain I want to climb.

The famous Black Hole.

That night saw the most amazing meteor shower I have witnessed. Many wishes were made.

We crossed the Columbia Glacier having made the 5^th ascent of the Twins from the Black Hole. Getting lost and sleeping on the glacier in the early morning, we returned to the highway to make a two day trip highway to highway. It wasn't the most rad climb ever, it wasn't the North Face, it wasn't “world class”, but it sure was fun and adventurous. It brought peace to my mind and new friends to my life. And as a younger wise friend put it to me after, “That's what it's about anyway”.

If climbing doesn't make you smile why do it?

6 months ealier:

Caution; Fresh coconut juice, tropical temperatures, and tigers can be hazardous to your mental health.

This story first appeared in Gripped Magazine. See gripped.com

Now You See it, Now You Don't.

Notice the blue rope tied around the snowy pillar.

“Do you think we should untie the anchor from the pillar?”

“Hey Alik, the pillar's unsupported at the bottom”

A few taps and Alik manages to reduce the foot wide pillar to a dagger. Chris and I are sandwiched into a tiny alcove behind the most solid ice we have seen yet on the route. I glance around and take in two tied off knifeblades, a small C3 cam with one of its three lobes fully expanded, and the ropes tied around the now freehanging dagger. I try not to portray my concern, but I'm looking around for gear. The simplest way to escape the consequences of the dagger peeling off and loading the anchor is to untie. It's only the second time I can remember doing so when unhappy with how we are all anchored to the mountain. We're 5 pitches up the unrepeated mixed route Zeitgeist, and I figure my chances are better just huddling in this little alcove while Chris and Alik figure out what they're going to do next.

WI4 usually implies some ice.  Are we in the right place? It's storming, why are we here?

We'd started the first pitch in the dark. The route description says it's WI4, but Alik only finds slick waterworn quartzite, which makes for slow movement.We're not sure if we are in the right place as we skied in to Taylor Lake at 4:30 a.m., but when we all regroup we are at two fixed nuts.

http://canadianalpinist.blogspot.ca/2007/11/new-route-on-nw-face-of-mt-bell.html

150 meters of bottomless snow excavating makes me insanely sweaty. Have you ever been in a gully where it is easier to drytool the sides and campus your legs out of the snow that to try to break trail up the slope? Above Chris gets an easy looking ice lead, which turns out to be unconsolidated, narrow, and tricky.

Why does ice always look so easy while belaying?

“I wanted more gear, it just wasn't there”.

The Scottish snice gully.

The same is no doubt true of the anchor.

Tap tap at the pillar/dagger.

I never know how to react in these situations. Am I just overly worried? Untying the loop around the dagger is definitely a good start though. How much does a foot round tube of ice 5 feet high weigh? Would two tied off pins and a tipped out micro cam hold that impact? Why is it Alik is so calm about the situation?

Alik spots a cam in a crack just above the anchor, and asks if we've investigated. We had discounted it as it's got ice and munge in it, which is typical of limestone cracks on alpine routes. I can only speak for myself, but once one of the lead lines is running through it everything seems a bit more reasonable.

Spot the difference.

A light swing at the top of the dagger, a body height above the belay ledge. And it's gone down the gully. About the size of a falling climber's body, but seems more dense.  Good thing we untied that loop of rope that was around it. Alik is not at all flustered. Something about soloing A4 in Yosemite when you are 15, calms the nerves. He does a great job of stemming the steep moves out of the cave. I try to talk myself down after the dagger debacle. I tie back in to my end of the rope.

Route description says, "Drytool around pillar". Not an issue now.

By my lead on the next pitch I've begun to clue in to the fact that the ice is not as fat as when Rob and Steve put the route up. Alik tries to talk me into going up a thin veneer which follows the path of first ascent. After unconsciously considering his risk tolerance and mine, I decide to go for a steeper chimney system which promises protection. It's 3 pm, we've already mentioned that we are not going to make it up the route today, so I don't even care if it takes me off route. I jam myself hard into the corner, determined to make myself feel secure on the pitch.

The route description says to go up the "ice" in the corner in the left of the photo.  I had had enough of trying our luck.

View of the same pitch on the first ascent.

From the comfort of my living room I reconsider the day. On Rob's old blog I see a photo of the ice on the crux pitch, described as WI5. It is, no surprise, fatter than when we were below it. His blog also reminds me that he is a strong and bold climber. I'm glad I decided to give it a pass. We turned around just below the photographer's viewpoint. We didn't make it up the route, but I feel some “good learning” took place.

Maybe I was making myself overly secure in the chimney.

Above Canmonix

Sitting down mid pitch to appreciate the surroundings. Photo Alik Berg

“There are no routes on the face of Lawrence Grassi”, my well informed buddy mentioned at our lazy downtown coffee hang.

Really? It's the tallest alpine peak above Canmore. There is a road, a school, and the most popular tourist spot in town named after this famous climber, trail builder, miner, guide, and local hero of the 20s. And not one of town's climbing population had thought fit to go see what the face offered?

“Want to go drytooling at the Playground?” It was 11 am.

Bring your warm jacket.  The Playground on a slow day. Positive pulling on drilled holes.

“Nah, I can't get motivated for that hike. Let's go to the Elevation Place, get a better workout anyways”.

Dragging myself out of the leather seat and away from my 4^th coffee I stepped out onto Main Street. I turned my gaze past Ha Ling to the easy looking mixed face above town. Hard to believe that the man himself hadn't soloed it on one of his days on strike from the local coal mines back in the day. These days, however, if it wasn't tweeted and hashtagged and filmed it wasn't fact, so I set my mind to exploring this crag.

Red is Perpetual Spring, yellow The Gash (unclimbed) and blue is The HOle. Photo John Price

When I'd first moved to Canmore I'd heard through the rumor mill that the face of Lawrence Grassi had seen an attempt. Two of the top dogs of the day, Rob Owens and Sean Isaac, had been up there in the winter. The route had already informally been named, The Town Gash, and it's reputation had grown. It had to be formidable if it had turned those two around. Both those guys have now reverted to a more normal lifestyle replete with kids and successful businesses. I figured young blood was the best bet for this mission.

At the local climbing store it wasn't a hard sell to young Sam Eastman. I'd heard Sam could crimp with the best of them, and he sure was itching for some alpine action. He wanted to get past his Ontario background of single pitching, and I could use a partner who could make up for my climbing.

“Hey, come over to the window”

“Really, we could climb that?”

“Yeah, and no one's ever climbed anything up there, so we'll be famous. You'll be able to point it out to all your friends when they visit.”

After an hour and a half of hiking from the trailhead , a shorter hike than to the local drytooling crag I might add, we were below the face. I got us in position through some whiley old-guy choss chimneying and pointed Sam up a blank wall. Soon he was lightheartedly chatting over his shoulder about fine chert crimping before the 20 foot run-out off the piton had him downclimbing to me. The youth was ready to head down when I suggested,

“Why don't we just walk along this grass covered sidewalk here and see where it leads”.

Sam crimpin and pimpin on chert, which he seemed to enjoy.

From Mark Twight I've taken to the suggestion that when in the alpine and in doubt...traverse. Sam later said he was impressed with my amazing alpine intuition. Our talents were overlapping nicely. After that there was some “overglamorized scrambling” as one of town's better known crushers has called what I like to do. It was solely for Sam's future benefit in town and with sponsors that I Facebooked from the face. I should know better as this method has only ever gotten me cold shoulders at the local supermarket but I couldn't resist. “Miner's Waltz in C (choss) with a Minor” is a better route name than our scramble deserves. Having moved on from Ontario, Sam was even legally quaffing a pint at the end of the day.

First time through the HOle.  How is it Raph is so often on the coolest leads?

The highlight of this first route wasn't the climbing but that we had spotted an amazing feature half way up the face, a huge hole (The HOle) puncturing the wall. It was to draw me like a warp in the space time fabric. And who better to investigate with than the astronomy prof? Raph was looking for long days of cardio training in preparation for his next trick, a new route attempt on the big E. For me, the draw was doing the first winter ascent of the face and the bragging rights it would confer to my ego. I got us lost on the starting pitches. We traversed and were faced with... a giant hole in the gully above us. A small dribble of an icicle at the start of the pitch let us pretend we were legitimately on a mixed route. The waterworn smooth topout of The HOle, above a rattly cam placement, had Raph excited momentarily. It was fairly selfish that later I argued that we had only added two new pitches to my effort with Sam, so it didn't deserve a new route name. Really, I just wanted finally to do an FA without Raph's name attached. It was the first time we had to return a call to the K-country wardens who had been advised by caring Canmorons that there were headlights from missing “hikers” on the peak.

Gets deceptively steep and waterworn smooth.

Next, in spite of being a committed married man, Raph decided it was worth paying a visit to the Town Gash. Raph is super successful at what he does best, new routing in the Rockies. As a result sometimes it is difficult to convince him that he is wrong in this pursuit. Thus we found ourselves traversing around the front side of Ha Ling peak, negating one of the prime features of our newly-loved crag, it's short approach up a well established backside trail. Sam seemed to think he was witnessing high performance alpinism, but really it was a go look see sojourn for Raph to plug in a bunch of bolts on a very steep roof and then bail back down the climb.

Trying to look cool like 18 year old Sam. and hide from the rescue forces at the same time.

As a projecting day Sam and I were battling it out trying to one-up each other in our dismissal of practicality by sporting our best skater-turned-climber style. When you are 25 years older than your 18 year old friend it's impossible to outdo him in questions of style. I tried with my used army surplus camo pants but Sam won with his triple oversized hoodies all hanging akimbo as though he were on the street corner. A second call to K-country rescue was made as they tried to guess which one of the town's likely suspects was triggering the alarms this time around.

Cool perspective on the HOle direct, with David Lussier and Jay Mills. Canmore below.

By now I was intent on sending the direct route through The HOle. A no nonsense approach was required, and who can beat ACMG guides for no nonsense practicality in the mountains? The style changed from urban/mountain to dead-bird with blue and white club patches.  No big deal for Jay Mills who was establishing a couple of new alpine routes a week in his work shoulder season. David Lussier, visiting from Nelson, did comment on the amount of “scratching” required, but there are photos to prove he had a smile on his face.

Jay sets off on the easier but run-out second pitch, the n thinks better of it and traverses left.

Third time lucky. At the top of the Town Chute ski run David started asking about avalanche conditions but Jay tipped it over the edge and started down the convex lee slope without discussion. I figure he has to know something, he's sat in those classrooms in Revelstoke and knows all of those acronyms. We found the direct start, comprising one short overhanging chimney and a second run-out moderate face pitch. After placing a stubby in the two feet of ice on the route it took me a good bit longer to commit to the crux exit of the hole than it had the prof.

It's around this time David phoned Kananaskis rescue to tell them we weren't lost hikers.

 The payback was not so much in the climbing but in the amazing photo potential of the spot. Truth be told, one can easily traverse around The HOle on a huge ramp. When Steve House and Rolo Garibotti comment favorably on your Instagram feed though, who cares what the climbing is really like. David being a very thoughtful guy phoned his wife and the wardens from half way up the face. We joked about cragging in Canmonix with the lights of town burning brightly as we topped out.

Red is Perpetual Spring, blue is Kurihara (bolted descent). Photo Noel Rogers

By mid winter the guides were busy working, Sam was off to a future in Vancouver as a cutting edge contemporary artist, and Raph was training lungs and legs exclusively. I needed a new strong young ropegun for my next, most obvious, can't-believe-it-hasn't-been-climbed natural line above town. A little convincing was needed before Alik Berg agreed that there was an obvious winter line on the Canmore Wall, a first winter ascent to boot. Alik comes with a special pedigree. About two decades ago I met a dad and son combo who made me question what was normal. In the Grand Wall parking lot in Squamish was a cute kid with a bowl cut who was maybe 4 feet tall.

Alik Berg has done a lot of sketchy aid climbing since I first met him at the age of 10.  He laughs in the face of loose Rockies choss.

“My son just rope gunned me up the Grand Wall”, said the obviously proud father.

I wondered whether I should be contacting Child and Family Services.

This was Alik when he was 10. He only factor two-ed onto his dad once so it was considered a success, and he repeated the task once more when 12. Since then Alik has climbed 19 El Cap routes up to A5. Having that special calm demeanor that comes of hanging off tiny pieces of metal poked into irregularities in granite, one has to coax these astounding facts out of a self deprecating talent.

The start of the route showing the resevoir above town, a popular location for summer SUP yoga lessons.

Two hours uphill from Lawrence Grassi Ridge Drive we started up the natural line, again with not a scrap of ice on it. We were dubious of our chances of success. The forecast was for a five day storm arriving by noon. Waves of spindrift washed down the face, as we laughed at our worsening wet glove situation. By about two pm I was Facebooking away again only to be informed that we were next to an established bolted rock route, Kurihara. Simultaneously, Alik called out that he had spotted a bolt. Well, we had to be on route then! I missed the two bolt anchor on the next pitch but by staying on the natural line got us to the bottom of the corner we had come to investigate.

It got a little stormy on the first attempt.

Only two pitches separated the easy ground we had climbed from the upper weakness we were aiming for. I started up perfect corner cracks plugging in gear at will, beautiful and plentiful positive edges for front points everywhere. And then as though specially placed to thwart drytooling, a five foot section devoid of edges for the feet appeared. First my sidepoints were on the wall, attempting to smear, then my knees were on, attempting some unknown technique, then the inevitable happened and I was doing my best impression of an El Cap bigwaller, hanging from the gear. It is always key to have ones excuses ready at hand before starting out on a day of climbing, and the weather couldn't be overlooked as atrocious.

Paste the feet and mantle sideways at the crux.

The move that Raph pulled out of his repetoire at the crux section on our successful visit is the second most bizarre move I've seen climbing in winter, a sideways mantle with the tools only for show. Good thing Alik had his camera at the ready to capture the move. I was suddenly distracted by the popping piton no longer in the anchor, a great cue for strong laughter among some. Looking at the image I still can't figure out what Raph is standing on. I had spent considerable time hanging there investigating precisely this issue on our first attempt. Next came the easier but more adventurous pitch. Our special invitee pinch hitter cast out left for 8 meters following a series of edges with no gear beyond the corner. Alik got the glee of leading the 7^th pitch and cleaning choss for trundles which could have been clearly seen from town.

By my leads it was a foregone conclusion that we would summit. In the dark I chimneyed through easy corners choked with spindrift. This was the upper snow-filled weakness that I had glassed from town, curious if the pitches leading to it could be climbed. We named the route Perpetual Spring after the winter that wasn't of 2014-2015, or alternately for the never-ending supply of first ascents of natural lines possible within sight of Canmore. An obvious ramp at the bottom of the face, a huge chimney at the top, unclimbed in winter.  Somehow Raph was flip-flopping between buying it as a great new-route experience and being unconvinced.  My case seems unassailable to me.  We put up two new winter routes in four days out.  And while the Town Gash has seen upwards of 10 days on it, and the hole count is growing, it is yet to be climbed.

Guess there are different offerings for different climbers.  To paraphrase the drunk guy from the bar in Team America, 

              Being a gear climbers isn't that bad.  In Canmore, there are three kinds of winter climbs. Peg boarders, bolt clippers, and gear climbers.  Bolt clippers think everyone can get along and peg-boarders have never seen a hole they don't want to drill.  And gear climbers just want to hammer our tools into everything.


Canadian Alpine Journal 2015

Blue is Perpetual Spring.  Red is Kurihara, used for descent.

Route photo The Hole: Red is original line with Raphael, yellow is direct start , orange is unclimbed Gash.

Soloing and Roped Climbing; Both Fun, but Different.

Juan Henriquez high on the ridge, on a hot, low snow year.  When I had visited the upper ridge years earlier, the gargoyles were rather larger.

The Emperor Ridge was calling one summer. With more desire and spare time than climbing partners, I decided to climb it alone. It was an intimidating prospect but the idea was fuelled by my history which gave me an understanding of the mountain. The magical display of the thin red line of sunrise I saw while soloing the easier Kain Face had begun my infatuation years earlier. I came as close to dying as one would like on one of three attempts to solo the North Face when the entire face avalanched above me. Bold though the idea seemed, the Emperor Ridge as a ridge was safe from rockfall and avalanche danger which threatened the face routes. And what a route the ridge was. It was arguably the longest feature on the highest peak in the Rockies. The Berg Lake approach trail I would follow is justifiably renowned: the scenery is Alaskan in scope with huge glaciers pouring into the lake gained after 22 kilometers and two spectacular waterfalls. For directness the line could not be rivalled as it rises straight from the western foot of the mountain as a knife-edge to the summit. And it was said to be a perfect training ground for the greater ranges for which I pined. The route was technically easy enough to solo predominantly unroped. Of course there were the famous gargoyles of the upper ridge which sounded dangerous. I had to go and see for myself.

One of the bigger routes in the Rockies.  As Juan, a former Aconcagua guide, noted, it's like climbing a technical route on Aconcagua in a day.

Making the decision to attempt the route was the most difficult part. Once in motion, the beauty of the activity drew me on. At 3:20 am I took a photo of my wristwatch at the parking lot. The idea was to complete the route and descent in 24 hours so as to claim a one day ascent. I jogged full of anticipation to Kinney Lake through a floating blanket of knee high morning fog. Crossing the icy braided fan of the river below Berg Lake I left the tourist trail behind. From there to the foot of the ridge lay interminable scree slopes. Two steps up one back , but I was so enraptured by the immensity of the terrain that I hardly noticed the effort. Too engrossed and distracted by the looming ridge, I missed my last opportunity to get water and spent the rest of the climb without liquid. I arrived at the foot of the ridge at 10 am. Ominously, the rock had changed from steep but passable scree to nearly vertical scree.

Almost a decade after my solo I did the route again, with Juan Henriquez and Raphael Slawinski.   Not as scary as soloing it, and more laughs.

Route finding was easy. Left, right, avoid anything difficult. My mind raced ahead, bounding up the blocky and ledgy terrain of the lower ridge. It slowly got more solid and narrower. At one point my doubts got the better of me and, hauling my backpack, I self-belayed up a ten metre step using the minimal 15 metre piece of rope I had brought for tricky sections. Being alone made for fast movement and intuitive decision making. I felt the solitude which was both exhilarating and disconcerting. At mid height on the route I took a step left onto the vast expanse of the famed Emperor Face itself and into the shade. A roughly-bounded ice gully was coldly dark and gloomy but afforded speedy passage. Suddenly I was 600 metres up the face. Retreat would be difficult.

At various points you actually have to climb.

The extreme exposure here hit me. After once glancing past my crampons I made sure never to look below me again. On the ridge proper a fall was conceivably non-lethal but here one would stop falling only at the flats at the base of the face. Time slowed and my scope of vision narrowed to focus on each swing, each step into the old and brittle grey ice which shattered with every movement. The mental aspect of such a climb seemed tantamount with action following unconsciously. Doubt battled desire and I drove on.

Upon exiting the gully and regaining the sunny ridge, I encountered a perfect bivouac circle of stacked rocks. What a relief it was to encounter a touch of civilization, a perfect time to rest, eat, and recuperate away from the huge exposure. No longer mentally gripped by the action my mind leapt to the idea that the mountain gods were showing their pleasure with my passage by providing this sign of previous human activity here in this lofty eyrie. I reflected that the bivi circle was probably the work of the man many consider to be THE Rockies mountain god, Barry Blanchard. By an incredible coincidence of fate, years earlier I had witnessed Barry, Eric Dumerac, and Phillip Pellet on the first day of establishing their new route which I had shared since the gully, Infinite Patience. At the time, sitting in the meadows below the Emperor Face, I had succumbed to severe FOMO ( fear of missing out). A familiar lonely, self-pitying jealousy had gripped me. As a new arrival in Canmore and a bit of a loner, I felt myself to be outside the crew of people who climbed at such a level. Now, by foregoing the need for a partner and practicing self reliance, I felt like I was sharing in the pantheon at that moment on the ridge.

The upper ridge with very little snow.

The gargoyles beckoned above. It was the hottest part of the day when I was in the midst of them. A magical fantasy land of snow sculpture enwrapped me. My worries about the hazards of soft snow did not materialize. Styrofoam-like snow made each axe placement as secure as a belay. With no partner to act as counterweight, the usual advice to weave the rope through as many formations as possible did not apply. I did not think it hazardous though. The features were so large that I was never forced to peer over the Emperor Face itself but climbed on the highway side of the ridge or on the crest itself with perfect snow the whole way. Enchanted, I wandered and weaved and climbed until the last mushroom flattened out into the mellow grade of the summit plateau.

Arriving at the summit was stereotypically anticlimactic. The summit plateau was broad and featureless in contrast to the unique forms of the upper ridge. As I had already summitted previously, there was no special elation. Parched by the effort, I would have given anything for a sip of water but made do with sucking on icicles. Realizing just how alone I was, my solitude suddenly struck me as a potential problem and I was only half way through my journey. Due to the time of day, 6 pm, as the air and my body cooled my mind turned to the descent. As much thought had gone into the descent as the climb. The known terrain of the Kain Face was topped by a cornice for much of its length and, from above, finding the correct spot to begin descending would be tricky. I had decided to downclimb the normal south face route instead. In the cooling temperatures of late afternoon, a misty whiteout had formed on the glacier just below the summit with not a breath of wind to clear it. With no visibility, I feared falling into one of the few crevasses. By 9pm I was getting decidedly cold but had no option but to take the decision to sit down and rest. In a small wind trough, I climbed into the black garbage bag that I had brought as an emergency bivi bag. The inevitable sleep was not restful.

Older, wiser, and glad to be on the summit with friends and a sleeping bag.

I woke from a dream of helicopters and rescuers flying up to my position. I was on my own on the summit of the Rockies and I had no one to look to but myself. No one even knew where I was, part of my man-on-a-mission ethos of the time. Far removed from the established Squamish-Canmore axis of the Canadian climbing scene, the summit of Robson felt very "real" and far from the madding crowd. I was learning that it truly is a stand-alone world. Lights on the Yellowhead Highway 3000 metres below made me realize my situation and that the whiteout had cleared. The watch read 3am and I was convulsing involuntarily from the cold. Time to get a move on!

Face out down the slopes of the south face I heel plunged gulping the massive open air at my toes. It crossed my mind that if I fell I would end in a heap at the flats by Kinney Lake. As I ran below threatening blue-green seracs, a strangely intense wind kicked up tossing stones, not just pebbles, through the air. Everything above my elevation was capped suddenly by a thick summit cloud. Crawling on my knees had not been part of the plan for a speed ascent but it was the only safe way to proceed toward the Ralph Forester hut. Finally sipping water, I resisted the urge to sit down.

Spot the climber.  Undoubtedly the most dangerous part of the outing , on the Shwartz ledges. As Raph said, "At times you just have to shut your mind off". At least when you have partners you only have to turn it off briefly.

Some parties fly in to Berg Lake or out from the hut. I had more adrenaline than money and so continued jogging down the gravelly trail. Eventually I got off route and ran down the belly of a massive avalanche gully to the blessedly flat valley. How sweet and easy normal, everyday terrain seemed after my mountain circuit. Thirty-three hours of adventure had elapsed when I returned to the parking lot having experienced hallucinations, delusions, unforgettable climbing, self doubt, and visions of what is possible with a little self-confidence. It was a highpoint of my time climbing in the Rockies, a joyful day of adventure which still fuels my love of the "King" to this day.

The Times are Changing

I love getting away from roads, phones, and coffee. Managed to do this a couple of weeks ago, with Maarten Van Haeren and Jay Mills. Came back, put it n Facebook, and within two days it was online at the American Alpine Journal.

Maarten is relatively new to the first asscent game, and wanted to know why the story was getting so much attention for such an easy climb.  Big fish, little pond?  Slow news day?  Who knows.  Sure was fun.

What have we here? “Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature. “ -Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada (1968-79, 1980-1984) Times were changing in Canada. We were celebrating the end of the ten year reign of Canada's Conservative party and their fear based policies. They'd been trounced by Justin Trudeau, the son of one of Canada's most revered leaders. It was October and the mountains were dry. Things were headed in the right direction. Jay and I spent a day approaching, then a day and a night getting high above Moraine Lake, featured on the old twenty dollar bill. . The road was closed. We road our bikes in ten kilometers and had the valley to ourselves. That's the amazing thing about alpine climbing in Canada; you don't even have to go anywhere obscure to have the first ascents to yourself. There are only three alpine routes on the side of the valley we were interested in, and the last one was established 30 years ago. We didn't make it up our objective in the Valley of the Ten Peaks. But it couldn't be beaten as a backyard adventure There is nothing more Canadian than a trip into nature, no matter how brief. It seems to have been put aside in climbing circles, this need to commune with the natural world. A friend has challenged her mixed sport climbing friends to try establishing one new non-sport route each this winter. In 1988, just down the range, Ken Wallator had spent 4 days out on Storm Mountain. He and Tom Thomas were getting chased around by wardens for pirate camping, so they figured they might as well spend the time up on the mountain. It was a route that had grown to mythical proportions, partly due to Ken's widely reputed hardman abilities. I had been talking about going for a look see at the face for at least five or six years, the same period I and all of my friends had been wishing for a change back to a more Canadian attitude in our national politics. We'd managed to get rid of the might-as-well-be-Texan Alberta politicians; maybe we could get up Ken's route? Jay was chatting with our new team member, Maarten, about whether Alaska or Cham is better. Maarten works in a wilderness centre for addictions recovery, helping troubled young men find solace in nature. He had spent the last 6 nights camping out. “Come on, look at where we are, we've got it the best”, I interceded, “where else do you have the entire trail to yourself as soon as you step off the highway?” We'd just managed to climb an easy gully up the center of the Northeast Face of Storm in 13 hours camp to camp. We hadn't revisited Ken's fierce looking effort from the 80s. Instead we'd shocked ourselves with how easy it was to get up this face we'd all looked at so much. It seemed like we had created an insurmountable problem in our minds, rather than just going for a look. Like how Canada had veered into scary xenophobia from the Conservatives as they tried desperately to hold onto power. We'd voted the fear-mongers out of power, just as we'd faced our doubts and found a path of little resistance. Sometimes the way ahead is just staring you in the face if you'll only take it. “Can I name it 'Canoeing to Cuba' after Pierre Trudeau? You know, he tried to canoe from Florida to Cuba to visit Castro. He worked in the cane fields there when he spent a year traveling the world when he was young”, I recounted. See more photos at:

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201213534/Storm-Mountain-Northeast-Face-Canoeing-To-Cuba

24 Hours of Balzout

Here's a short story I wrote partly about being a belayer to the stars on my first climb with Raphael Slawinski, when he freed the bolts on Balzout Direct.  It's obviously partly about other things too.

Jon Walsh paid me the compliment of saying it was one of the best pieces of climbing writing he'd read.  It was fun to write.

Eamonn Walsh on the first ascent, a week or two before we climbed it Photo: Dana Ruddy

The 24 hours of balls-out

I T WAS THE MOST AMAZING 24 HOURS. Is it not what we seek,why we

 come to the Bow Valley? Forget the trophy homes and  the picturesque 

 views. The fast women, the fast climbing — that’s what it’s about. 

By 6 p.m. at the end of the day, I was back on the couch at

the 4th Street Manor, enjoying the debriefing and cocktails. It

had begun the day before at the same hour. The most eligible

bachelorette in Banff was in our living room, drinking red wine.

That she wasn’t single was a minor moral dilemma, as I knew her

boyfriend; but in sex, as in climbing, sometimes one has to throw

caution to the wind.

We stayed up all night, as we had done every night together.

As preparation for the second ascent of Balzout Direct, the sexiest

route in Canmore, it couldn’t be beat. Balls out, that’s the way to

go. Balls out in bed, balls out in climbing, balls out in Banff and

Balzout on EEOR.

That I was going multi-pitch climbing for the first time

with Raphael gave me some performance anxiety, but the compliments

were flowing so fast and furious that that was quickly put

to rest. As Raph is no slowpoke, I refrained from getting inebriated

for the first time with her, which made the night’s activity

even more vigorous and memorable. We did not refrain from

testing the limits of core strength, so crucial for mixed climbing.

Woken at 5:30 a.m. after a few exhausted winks, I was eager to

apply myself to a new challenge.

LEAVING MY BEAUTIFULLY TIRED FRIEND wrapped in warmth,

I made the short walk downtown for a 6 a.m. meeting and

coffee. The climb passed in a blur of sleep deprivation, save the

one pitch. The pitch where Raph hung on like a spider for an

hour, on-sighting for the FFA. With my friend’s going-away party

on that night, I was determined to prove Raph wrong when after

the crux he mentioned that we were sure to finish in the dark.

Big smiles on the top, only 10 hours removed from the comfortable

reality I had been questioning up on the windblown face.

What could be better, what more could I want? The sexiest

woman, the sexiest climb, and a party to go to, all in one day.

What to desire? Only more.

A week later, the blur of drinking, slaying and climbing was

over, as she left the country. Vitality sapped by the all-nighters,

I was left making excuses and telling tales at the base of the sport

crags. That’s the thing with lustful affairs: women come and they

go. The routes, they always remain.

ian welsted

the canadian alpine journal 2006

Here's a link to the original route description:

http://gravsports.com/Ice%20Pages%20Folder/Route%20Descriptions/Balzout_Direct.htm

I climbed the second ascent of Great White Fright a week after these photos appeared online.

Little Karim: What makes a climbing hero for me

This article was a finalist in the Banff Mountain Book Festival in the Mountaineering Article category.  Gave me a good excuse to hang out in Banff for a few days.  It was great to see Jon Griffith for the first time since Pakistan.  Congrats on picking up the Mountain Image award.

It was also a great opportunity to chat with Bruce Kirkby as he described his trek with his family and 85 various film people on his way to a three month stay in a Buddhist monastery.  Had a chance to ask John Vaillant a few questions, saw Cory Richards for the first time since our Ice Porn bivi, congratulated Ed Douglas on taking the award that was meant for me,  and just generally partook of way too much Tasty Talking.

Thanks to Brandon Pullan and Raphael Slawinski for the help with editing, and to Joanna Croston and Christine Thel for the encouragement.

To get the article in its original form, check out  Gripped Magazine, Aug/Sept 2015, or

http://gripped.com/

Being entertained by incredible climbing tales in basecamp.

Meeting Little Karim of Hushe was magical, like being a tourist in Iceland and actually seeing a fairy. In previous trips to the Karakoram I had brief glimpses of the abilities of the locals. Humble and diminuitive at 5'2”, Karim's tales of unrecognized high altitude exploits put me in my place. My climb of K6 West that summer received considerable attention. In contrast, Karim's many achievements are barely known. Karim's happiness and warm welcoming aura drew me to him, to find out more. I came away with an appreciation of what makes a true climbing hero for me. It made me feel that in Canada we are missing out on the story.

Little Karim was guiding a Spanish trekking group. A journalist in the group was surprised that we didn't know Karim's reputation and encouraged us to speak with him. Karim grabbed my hand. Within minutes of sitting down for tea with Karim it was clear his climbing career included many highlights. Karim has a humorous story for almost every year spent with westerners in his local mountains.

Karim, and his favorite mountain.

1978: 1800 Balti were at the polo field in central Skardu to apply for portering jobs with Chris Bonnington and Doug Scott's K2 expedition. Little Karim was dismissed as too small, at which point he hoisted a rather larger Bonnington onto his shoulders and paraded him around the field. He got the job.

1981: Karim was head high altitude porter for the Japanese West Ridge expedition. He was above base camp for three weeks when he heard that the summit duo of Nazir Sabir and a Japanese were out of oxygen and gas at their high camp at 8100 meters. They would not summit. Karim hiked up these supplies from 7100 meters. The next day Sabir said Allah had brought them supplies and they summited. Karim says, “not Allah, Little Karim.”. Nazir Sabir went on to become Pakistan's most famous climber.

1985: Karim carried a hang-glider to the summit of 8035 meter Gasherbrum 2. Jean Marc Boivin had promised him an extra $50 to carry the load so that he could become the first person to fly off an 8000er. Karim was not paid. Laurent Chevallier, a French filmmaker accompanying Boivin made a film, Little Karim, and later Apo Karim. As a result Karim visited France as the chairman of the jury of the Autrans Mountain Film Festival.

1987: Karim climbed to within 100 meters of summitting K2 on a Spanish expedition.

1988: Karim carried a monoski to the summit of Gasherbrum 2 for Henri Albet. Albet was suffering altitude sickness. Karim tried to convince him not to ski. Albet mentioned he had to as he had to please his many sponsors. The monoskier slid to his death. As Karim put it“You like the money or you like to die.”

The stories went on and on, too many to list. It was surreal sitting with a 60 year old teddy bear Balti and hearing this record of ascents which put him near the top of the list of world mountaineers. Such is the world of high altitude climbing as seen by westerners. Too often Asians do the majority of work, and yet receive no recognition, and are deprived the chance to summit. In journals, Karim's ascents are usually listed only as “accompanied by high altitude porter”, the euphamism for paid Asian climbers. I left our conversation feeling like the wool had been pulled from my eyes.

There is not a hint of bitterness on Karim's part at his lack of fame or fortune through climbing. He only laughs when talking about being underpaid by foreigners. He was all smiles and congratulations for our successful climb. He was happy to be accompanying visitors and showing them the beauty of the mountains in his back yard. Proudly standing in front of a poster of K2, he enthusiastically traced his many trips in incredible times up his favorite mountain.

Raphael, Iqbal, Karim, and the lodge owner, in Hushe.

I felt like I had met authentic climbing royalty. But that is what makes climbing special. We get to climb and hang out with the heroes of our sport. I was reminded of this upon the death of Dean Potter. A friend of mine, Nick, had moved to Yosemite to climb full time when Dean had just done the first solo one day link up of The Nose and Half Dome. Dean was the ruling king of North American climbing. Within a year, Nick was roping up with Dean upon his first visit to Squamish. I met Nick around this time and it was this lesson that partly drew me to climbing. In other sports there are athletes and an audience. Climbing is different. Armchair climbing is boring.

What does Dean Potter have to do with Little Karim? By a few degrees of seperation they both show that the magic of climbing is in the doing and not the perception. Dean become a well known name. Little Karim is known only to a small clique of high altitude climbers. But they both reached high levels of climbing success by doing what they loved most in the mountains. Dean spent years in obscurity climbing full time in Yosemite. Little Karim continues to live a simple life in a small pastoral mountain town. His climbing hasn't taken him anywhere other than up and down a lot of tall mountains.

I hope this aspect of climbing never changes. Superstar climbers are more prominent now than ever. Some climbs heralded as groundbreaking are nothing but carefully staged advertising events. I wonder, am I a target market here? Would that climber really be doing that if all the cameras were not there? Is this climb really interesting?

Advertising is designed to make us feel inadequate. Make the audience feel unfulfilled, offer them a more desirable outcome, and associate a product with that desire. Then, offer the product as a substitute for the desired outcome. Climbing is meant to make us feel good. So, more and more I try to ignore the climbing stories which are only designed to sell an overpriced nylon shell or sports drink. Instead, I go climbing and pay attention to the people around me. Who knows what might happen, I might get to climb with the next Dean or share tea with another unheralded Karim.

It's kind of obvious, but it has to be said.  Without the locals, visiting climbers would have...

Death was on the mind a lot

I just wrote a piece for an instructional ice manual on epic-ing less and climbing more.  It took me back to this early lesson I was taught.

dead

ian welsted

Sunset over Mount Alberta

I thought I was dead. Not in some metaphorical, hypothetical sense, but literally. Or rather, I felt dead. Before my mind could process a thought, I realized that I was seeing stars against a black backdrop — that the mid-morning light had been extinguished, as had any desire or care as to my destiny. Standingin a chossy limestone coffin, I reckoned that being hit by rockfall a second time was to be my last memory. It took a few seconds for my mind to refocus, at which point I understood that I was indeed alive, but that my toes were tingling. I’ve been paralyzed, was the next thing that came to me. Like a hypothermic animal caught in a leghold trap, my subconscious decided to accept its fate and simply not care. To give up like this two thirds of the way up one of the biggest faces in the Rockies is not a good survival strategy. Or is it? Maybe not caring was the key to my fortunate outcome.

In reality, though, my continued existence as a living human is due to the effort of my best climbing buddy, Chris Brazeau. Like a knight in shining armour, here he came from above, rapping our single fifty metre line to arrive at my presumed death stance with less than his usual smile. How was it that Chris could chuckle about what had just happened to him while fixing that rap? “I thought I was going for the big one,” was his comment as he described the ten foot fall he had taken while jugging to free our stuck rope. A calm mind, that was the differentiating factor. It was not the first time I realized that there was a difference between Chris and me: he enjoyed the thrill of danger while I all too often did not. But let me leave the lessons learned till later and describe how we had gotten into our predicament and how Chris got us out of it. As Dave Cheesemond wrote, “It would be an impressive and expensive descent ….” (Pushing the Limits, p. 209).

Looking out after the first day

Really, it all centers around a keen climbing and personal friendship. Chris and I began climbing at around the same time. When a couple of years later Chris moved to Squamish to slum it at “the River”, it sounded like such a riot that I couldn’t resist. But while I kept working and maintaining some kind of material quality of life, Chris would do such things as work 17 days in a year so that he could climb as much as possible. Over subsequent summers, I got rope-gunned up the three hardest “multi-pitch routes of quality” in Kevin McLane’s guidebook, always feeling sheepish when leaving the ground with either the unspoken or even the explicit understanding that the crux pitches would not be mine. After all, I only lead 5.10. On our first trip to the Rockies, we figured we would train for the hardest route in the book “’cause it’s only 5.10.” Luckily, we were kept from our intended goal by a snowstorm. So, in the summer of 2004, when we decided to slay dragons and attempt the unrepeated Blanchard-Cheesemond route [North Pillar] on North Twin, I was not in the least surprised when Chris offered to lead what he figured from the route description was the crux of the route. That we didn’t “flounder in the first rock band” was not of my doing. 

Our preparation was complete after seeing North Twin on the way to doing Alberta’s Northeast Ridge. Perhaps we didn’t have a full “training diet of big limestone rock routes”, as Dougherty suggests, but Chris had on-sighted Astro Yam without the aid of the #4 Camalot (I’d forgotten it in the car) at the beginning of the season. With my impatient, now-or-never attitude and Chris’s skills, how could we fail? That we didn’t wonder after avoiding the North Face of Alberta due to its reputation for rockfall in the summer is a bit of a mystery, but obsessions are obsessions. 

We’d been e-mailing about strategy, getting psyched. The fact that the Eiger had been climbed in four hours, combined with my recognition that I couldn’t lead .10d with a pack, somehow made me agree to the suggestion that we go for it in a day. “Light is right,” they say these days, so we took a tarp, two puffies, one rope and a five-millimetre shoelace pull line “cause we’re not going to use it, anyway.” Never mind that we’d tried the Salathé in a day the previous fall and it had taken us two and a half; hitch yourself to a madman and see what happens, I figured. So it was that we headed over Woolley Shoulder — and promptly headed away from our objective and to the shelter of the Lloyd McKay hut. Chris had spent the day before humping loads for pay in to the Elizabeth Parker hut, where his girlfriend, Kitt Redhead, was cooking. Similarly, I’d jogged into Berg Lake to retrieve a pair of sandals from the base of the Emperor Ridge as an excuse to visit my girlfriend, who was finishing the Great Divide trail that day. Being slightly shagged both, we figured the one-day push would require all of our energy, so we might as well start well rested. The extra day gave us the chance to enjoy the beautiful meadows below the north face of Stutfield, eye up a 3000-foot waterfall for future winter reference, and be psyched for the 3 a.m. start.

Yup, he’s a madman, I was thinking. We’d just trundled some rock at our first belay, promptly chopping our rope to fifty metres. And here he was, run out maybe eighty, maybe a hundred feet, already a good way up the face, since we’d soloed the easy choss. I couldn’t watch, only looking up to take a photo, because here we were on the pitch that had drawn my attention after seeing the photo from the first ascent in the American Alpine Journal. It had looked so stellar that I promptly sent a copy c/o Poste Restante, Chamonix, trying to lure  Brazeau back to Canada. Our belay had  taken a #2 and a #3 Camalot, so all Chris had left for the wide crack was one #2 from the anchor. It didn’t want to swallow the #4, which only got put in at the overhang at the top of the pitch. So on that pitch there were two pieces a long way apart. Later, friends and those “in the know” (e.g. Don Serl) suggested that the epic to follow was due to our being on the face when it was too hot. Well, wet limestone a hundred feet run out is one thing; maybe sopping wet it’s another. From my vantage no real problems were encountered for a while, although Chris was twice hit by rockfall. Interesting how, until it happens to you, such objective hazards can be dismissed. My inexperience showed when, crossing the “sinister gully”, I stopped to build an anchor and Chris called up to just hip belay, after the second missile from above hit him on the lip. Pitched-out climbing on the left side of the gully led through some enjoyably solid cracks to an overhanging wide crack (.10d) mentioned in the route description. My conscience got the better of me at this point and prevented me from pulling my usual gambit in such situations. Many times before, I have simply stopped my lead blocks before such cruxes, handing over the sharp end to my rope-gun friend. Somehow I talked myself out of it. As I climbed up to the overhang, I had to manoeuvre around a loose block my own size perilously hanging out from the wall.

Solid cracks with loose blocks

Later I would read Steve House’s description of a loose killer block on their ascent, and of his climbing past it with equanimity. I, on the other hand, was terrified. What the hell am I doing up here; if I fall we’ll both die, was my overwhelming thought. Never mind that I’d read the Buddhist text No Death, No Fear in preparation. In hindsight, I realize that it is the “mind of the observer” that separates those who send these biggest of routes from those, like me, who are haunted by their failures months or years later. Wanting to build an anchor just above the block, I called down my intention to Chris. An encouraging response came from below, and I resorted to aid. At that point our upward progress slowed considerably, like a climax before the foregone conclusion. Finally, the rope-stretcher pitch ended and I was rewarded with the opportunity to try a classic Rockies technique that I had only read about before: for want of a solid anchor, Chris jugged the line off my harness.

Being two working-class non-locals with little Rockies experience, we figured that 8 p.m. was a good quitting time for the day. When the next party gets to this point, they will be amazed that two thinking people could choose a bivy away from the face, unprotected from falling rock, for the night. Perhaps as amazed as we were when we found a Knifeblade in the left-hand wall at the base of the final headwall — the only sign of human passage in the 3000 feet of the route which we completed. Later, I came to believe that the pin was put in only as an anchor for a bivy up against the rock, safe from rockfall, unlike our sandy ledge fifty feet out. Luckily, the mountain gods didn’t hurl anything down on us in the night, although they did treat us to some amazing scenery.

The next morning, entertaining me in one of our usual debates over route finding, Chris obliged my fancy for a first pitch straight up from the pin. You see, I always claim that I complement Chris equally in our partnership with a greater “mountain sense” even though I’ve spent much less time in the mountains. "Oh, the number of times he would have started up the wrong crack if I hadn’t put him right,” is my line of reasoning. I now know in my heart that we would have been safer on the steeper ground to the right which Chris favored. Rereading the route description has made me realize my conceited error. Mostly, however, it is the continued reality of recovering from breaking my arm while seconding only three pitches after “winning” our debate that makes me aware of my mistake. 

Jiugging with a broken arm

Thus it was that we began our epic 30 hours after leaving the ground. Reinhold Messner wrote in Big Walls that hebelieves that climbers at the  peak of their game avoid such eventualities, while others — let me say “imposters” — fall victim to the same forces. Does the “mind of the imposter” act as an attractor, a black hole that draws in negative energy? I think it does, for I will never forget looking up and seeing those missiles curving in towards me from perhaps six or eight pitches up. “I can only think how different the outcome would have been if the rock had been a foot the other way,” I wrote in the hut book on the way out. But which way? Left, and we would have continued with the climb and, hopefully, completed the second ascent. Right, and the rock would have hit my helmet. And what if we had gotten an earlier start that morning and finished one more pitch by the time the sun was hitting the upper slopes of the mountain? For we were within one pitch of the overhanging portion of the upper headwall, where we would have been protected from above. All rather conjectural when one is an El Cap height off the ground with a broken arm. An unenviable choice stared us coldly in the face. Our first decision was to make an effort upward, for the easier terrain above was definitely much closer than the ground. As I jugged the next pitch, I could not balance properly and raked the rope across a loose block while swinging after removing a piece. Like a sitting duck, I hung on as the block floated past me. After two hours, I reached Chris and we reassessed our decision. A list of factors: two hours to jug one pitch; Chris would have to lead every pitch; if he got hurt, I wouldn’t be able to help; overhanging jugging to come; pain… Down we went.

Sometimes you have to lie back and take it all in.

The editor of the CAJ said, “I’d like to know how you got down.” What can I say other than that Chris engineered a retreat with all the care and experience that he could muster. The first few raps to our bivy spot went well. Next we had to go off the ledge where the previous day I had found no solid anchor. Using a V-thread and a few slung loose blocks, we made it down to my “death stance”. Let it be known that “light is not right” if you ever have to retreat and use a five-mil accessory cord to pull a knot over a loose edge. At least take Spectra or static or something, which we two dirt bags figured we couldn’t afford. No kind of pulling would get the knot to move. To remedy the situation, up went Chris for his free fall when the knot slipped back against the anchor. And down he came to rescue me from my fatal fear with one 50-metre rap line to rap let’s say 750 metres. Thirty raps sounds about right.

Rapping, I am told, is statistically more dangerous than climbing. That we made it attests to Chris’s great ability and his love for life. Only once did I wonder — no, make that twice. The first was when we seemed to be rushing to make it to the lower ledge system on the face before dark. We had crossed to climber’s right of the sinister gully on a loose ledge system. Some of North Twin’s vertical cracks are impeccable, but the low-angled ledges are definitely choss. Out of these little bits and pieces of shattered rock, Chris had made an anchor of two pins, in part to conserve our dwindling rack. As he rapped off, he said something about “direction of pull”, but I missed it; upon weighting the anchor, I found myself leaning back on one very dubious Knifeblade. To my undying shame, I yelled at Chris for his (read my) recklessness as I rapped over the edge. By that time I had become completely dependent on Chris for my rescue. When he asked me for my input on our final rap in the dark that night, I did not understand what he was asking. He had rapped to the ends of our rope and could find no good anchor. As I was coming down second, he asked me to build an anchor, tie off, pull the rope, and then continue down to him. It was such a shock to be asked to take responsibility for myself, and I was enjoying being babied so greatly, that I simply refused. After I rapped to Chris and the ends of the rope, we spent our second night on the face on a non-existent ledge. Throughout the night, we would wake to air-tearing, screeching volleys from above and flatten ourselves as much as humanly possible. Sheltered only by our tarp, I found myself scared by this sound like no other. A breakfast of chocolate-covered coffee beans greeted us in the morning — the last of our food.

The second time I wondered about Chris was when we had reached the safety of the northeast ridge by the middle of the third day. There was finally no mountain looming over us, ready to let loose a barrage of limestone. My idea was to wait it out for the wardens to fly in and rescue us, as friends would phone to report us missing in three or four days. What was Chris thinking? He was worried that Kitt would have to hitchhike back from her work, since he had borrowed her truck to drive to our trailhead. A thousand feet up, with a rinky-dink leftover rack, and he was worried about someone else. It was all I could do to refrain from saying, “F--- Kitt, my arm hurts and we’re still not down.” A better friend you couldn’t ask for.

Luxury away from the face

On the third night, we lounged in luxury on a large ledge system to the north end of the mountain. After we had considered all kinds of traverses off that would have been possible for able-bodied climbers, I finally convinced Chris that I was unable to function at a level that would allow for downclimbing. Some wild hanging belays in a waterfall below a hanging glacier brought back the fear factor, but they also brought us to our ledge. The impending darkness led us to delay our ground-coming until the next day. Chris claims that he was never so jealous as when he heard me snoring that chilly night away after I finally unfolded my emergency silver bivy bag now that we only had one night to go. When we finally reached non-technical ground the next day, I think that Chris was more relieved than me, for he no longer had the responsibility of caring for an invalid. This thought occurred to me as I let out a great “whoop” of unbridled joy when I knew our epic was behind us. Having not shown any outward signs of stress during our descent of two and a half days, Chris suddenly called out, “Ian, how do I get down?” All that remained between Chris and a scree slope was a ten-foot-high chimney that even I had downclimbed. Now that he knew we were down and safe, Chris could finally show some weakness and ask me for help. How he handled the stress, I don’t know. Probably the same way he deals with the soloing and the wet, 100-foot run-outs — with the calm mind of the pure climber. After all, as he put it, “Death was on the mind a lot.”

Thanks to Dr. Mark Heard of Banff, it is fully functional and only aches occasionally.

My many thanks to Chris, Kitt (for not asking for her rack back and for

insisting that I go to the hospital when I was in delusional denial) and

Dr. Mark Heard (for fixing me up).

The Canadian Alpine Journal 2005