Rockies ass kicking

I grew up in a part of the country without mountains, in fact it was 6 years ago this month that I saw mountains for the first time. I was visiting because my partner’s mom had just turned 60 and we had rented a house in Canmore to celebrate. I still remember the car ride: rolling over the last hill and finally getting my first sight of the rocky mountains. I went completely silent. To this day I can still feel the afterglow of that first drive past Yamnuska, the Sisters and Ha Ling on an early December day. I still remember thinking, wondering, wishing I could go up there. It felt like looking at a different planet.

Jed and I freezing our asses off, this was my first ever mountain outing.

My first attempt at mountaineering here was actually on that first visit, I got so excited by the mountains that I somehow convinced my partner to try and hike up Middle Sister in Canmore. In December. Without any proper gear. Yeah. We managed to get enough equipment and hubris together to come up with a 2 day plan: we would hike up the backside to the base of the scrambling route, pitch a tent and scramble to the summit the next day. We somehow did get to the base of the scramble, as it must’ve been a low snow year. But, very obviously, we started to get extremely cold as the sun went down and had one of the most uncomfortable nights I’ve had in the mountains to this day. The next day we were scared off by some snow (if it was a horror story this would be a foreshadow) and hiked back down. 

Since then I’ve climbed a lot of rocks, walked on a lot of glaciers and have had a lot of hard won lessons and hard fought summits but have always remained scared of the Rockies. Like most climbers I felt overwhelmed by the loose rock, the scale and complexity of the terrain. It’s all o-so different from the splitter granite I’m used to where I can see at a glance that my gear will hold me and that the rock I’m yarding on will stay in place. I’ve also become accustomed to a certain level of information: pitch by pitch description and grades, straight forward (and usually short) approaches and descents and don’t get me started on conditions. Whenever I tried to climb in the Rockies I got my ass royally kicked and usually went quietly back to my usual climbing destination with my tail between my legs never to mention I tried climbing something here.

North face of Little Sister solo attempt

This all changed last spring, I was coming out of winter hibernation after driving from Montreal through the United States and felt incredibly motivated. I had spent the last 4 months training and scheming my season and was itching to go climbing so decided to attempt the North face of Little Sister in Canmore. This was in early June after a particularly heavy snow year so I reasoned that travel would be decent where snow covered the scree slopes.

My bivy at the base of Little Sister

My somewhat minimal kit. It was my first time soloing an alpine route, I'm still dialing the systems.

I was dropped off at the trailhead in the evening. My plan was to hike up to the shoulder at the base of the route, have a full night's sleep and head up in the morning when the snow would be firm. I was feeling pretty terrified the whole time but I felt compelled to keep going just to “see what’s up there”. I felt no commitment to the route and no pressure to climb. 

The morning was relatively warm and so I managed to solo the lower rock section with my gloves and crampons off for the most part. I was moving very slowly and tentatively, afraid of the loose rock and intimidated by the size of my undertaking. By sunrise I had reached the snowbowl that in summer marks the end of the difficulties. At that moment I strapped my crampons back on and took out my tools, I soloed through somewhat steep snow and the odd mixed step until I had reached the ridge. What a wild place to be, clouds were moving in and I was alone on top of this impressive corniced ridge. It’s not much by most alpinist’s standards but at the time it was the most out there I had ever felt. I continued to follow the ridge until the point where I could not find a good reason to keep going anymore: the weather was going to shit and the snow was warming up and, to be frank, I was really scared. So I bailed, down climbed and rappelled my route then walked back to Canmore and ate the biggest burger I could find.

On paper this climb was a failure. I failed to summit after being done with the most technical climbing. Though I felt otherwise. I had pushed through at every step, I had dealt with my own mind by simply being curious to see what lay around the corner, made a decision to turn around when I had reached my limit and was able to safely descend by myself. In retrospect, at that moment I had opened Pandora’s box. I think this day steered me toward the goals I’m chasing today.

Top of the mixed section.

On the way down.

Come September I had moved into a new house in Calgary and was looking forward to learning the intricacies of winter climbing. Around that same time I saw an instagram post by Ian Welsted looking for people to take out on a mentorship weekend, I emailed him immediately and in early October I drove up to the parkway with him for my first visit up there. It was awesome to get the chance to chat with him for the weekend, I learned so much about alpinism and what it takes on that long drive up and down the 93 and I’m now fortunate enough to have someone much more experienced than myself to bounce ideas off of. The number of times I’ve asked his opinions about routes and snow conditions since that weekend is endless, so thanks Ian ! We didn’t really climb anything that weekend, even though we had great weather. With 2 other mentees I approached the north face of Athabasca. We got on the route but unfortunately one of my partner was already very tired from the long approach and even though we simul soloed the lower part of the face we decided to turn around because things were moving too slowly. A great outing nonetheless. Our next day was spent working on piton craft and trying to build solid anchors in terrible rock. Something that would prove to be very very useful.

Blurry descent off the Slawinski/Takeda

After this outing I proceeded to go out as often as possible, unfortunately without much success. Together with my friend Mateo and Nat we attempted the Slawinski/Takeda on Athabasca. We actually got quite high before deciding to go down because of time. The lower couloir was terribly dry and proved much harder and time consuming (another foreshadow) than what was promised.

More of the same happened for the following weeks, lots of walking and not very much climbing, except for the occasional cragging day at Haffner.

Mills/Holeczi or Coire Dubious on Loder peak

At the end of November Nat and I had a day free to try and climb something, our plan A was a repeat of The Hole on Canmore wall but a heavy snowfall the day before forced our hand into something with less avalanche hazard. Loder peak’s Mills/Holeczi, 600m WI2-3 M5, seemed like the obvious choice. Being on the front range it hadn’t seen much new snow, if any at all. We left the house in the morning and drove the short hour to the trailhead. By 7:30am we were roping up at the base for the short initial ice step. Once that was done we unroped and front pointed up the hard windslab up to the first rock band.

The real climbing started here, the mixed pitch of Coire Dubh being busy with another party we decided to go up the first pitch of DOP, a very cool and very verglassed M4 that I was very stoked to lead. The other party bailed from there because of icy unprotectable cracks, leaving us alone on the mountain. From there Nat and I swapped leads up the rest of the route, going between being scared shitless and absolutely stoked. We fell into an incredible flow state and climbed the route in style. It was an incredible day out and what felt like a well deserved success after all our failures.

Nat front pointing up hard snow.

Slabby dry-tooling higher on the route.

Slawinski/Berg or The Manhole on the Fist

  A few weeks later saw myself, Nat and Jonathan attempt the rarely attempted Manhole on the Fist in Kananaskis. We didn’t really know of the reputation of the route apart from Slawinski’s blip about lots of people trying it before he finally succeeded climbing the couloir with Alik Berg a few years ago. Our only apprehension was the infamous Slawinski grading, but again, it’s M5, how gnarly can it really be ?

Post-holing to the base of the route.

We all met at the trailhead for 6am, for a 2 hours ski uphill to the base of our route. We arrived near the base at dawn and left our skis at the bottom of the bowl. It took us a good hour of waist deep post-holing to get to the base of the route and by 9am we were climbing.

The climbing was loose and hard, and I was very grateful for the few bolts the first ascent party left on the first pitch as all three of us fell climbing the pitch. A stiff M5? I’m not sure, I’ve never had to hook a bolt on an M5 before and I’m probably the weakest mixed climber of the group! Nonetheless Jonathan proceeded to finish his block, taking the first three pitches: the stiff 5, M4 and a more normal M5. The route conditions were incredibly challenging on the day of our ascent. Cracks were filled with hard packed powdery snow and our route was riddled with overhanging snow mushrooms that the leader had to chop out or gingerly climb around. Certainly made me wish I had brought gore-tex pants !

Jonathan taking off at pitch 3.

At pitch 4 I took over the lead, charging into a steep squeeze chimney. Because of my pack and enormous mixed climbing rack I wasn’t able to squeeze through and had to use offwidth technique to get past the worst of the squeeze, felt pretty full on. Night fell after the section and I had to dig out my headlamp mid pitch in order to keep going. After that came a series of steep snow choked chimneys that soaked me down to my underwear, and marked the beginning of the real suffering for me. Nat took over on his lead, with more of the same: snow mushrooms and steep chimneys. My pants froze solid and I started to shiver, the next 4 hours were a complete blur of trying to stay warm at the belay stances, listening for falling rock and trying my hardest to stay present. I had to remind myself many times that I do this for fun, and that it’s a privilege to be here, suffering by choice, suffering well.

We topped out around 2:30 am and descended the back side of the mountain. Our descent ended up being much more involved than the “go down the gully and contour right” our topo said. It took us a few more sleep deprived hours to reach our skis and a couple more to reach the car. All in all we had a 25 hours car-to-car push. About twice as long as Slawinski and Berg, but they’re them and we’re us so I’m not worried.

We were informed after the fact that this is possible the second complete ascent of this route.

Yup !

Now I’m off to warm-ish and solid-ish rock in Patagonia !