Athlete • Speaker • Guide 
Athlete • Speaker • Guide Date: February 4th, 2025
“You know, sometimes I sit at home, you know, and I watch TV
And I wonder what would be like to live in some place like
You know, The Cosby Show, Ozzie and Harriet
You know, where Cops come and got your cat outta the tree
All your friends died at old age
But you see.. I live in South Central, Los Angeles
And unfortunately… SHIT AIN’T LIKE THAT!!
It’s real fucked up!”
-Ice T, not talking about the mountains but it resonates…
The below article first appeared in Explore Magazine in 2024. Recent events in the climbing world made me want to share it publicly again. For me, hazard should be a spice, not the main meal in life and mountain sport. But today I’m reading more celebration of climbs where the only thing that made them special was the hazard taken, and I think that, generally, confusing hazard as accomplishment or commitment is the same as celebrating hanging one-handed from a crane without a rope or playing Russian Roulette. Neither “accomplishment” requires a great deal of co
mpetence, and I respect earned competence, not taking extreme risk and pretending it’s either competence or an accomplishment. To confuse the situation further, I do think we need to take real risks, but soloing El Cap after a tremendous amount of work and thought is not the same as most of what I see in the mountains today. The current body count reflects this…
This piece wasn’t written about any one specific event, but a bigger problem in our mountain sports world. The photo is of my dad, who survived 50+ years of climbing. That’s the goal, not just taking hazard to take hazard.
Scrambling to Death
“It’s a hike on Alltrails, I downloaded it, we’re good.” The youngish man telling me this was absolutely confident that he and his party of older (I’m older, and they were significantly older still) “hikers” were on an established trail with some “scrambling well within our abilities.” I knew because he’d just told me after I asked if he knew there was technical climbing terrain above him. I’d just come down the same “trail,” where we’d done two roped rappels down steep cliffs I would not comfortably climb up without a rope and some gear. I tried to politely engage as I do often in the mountains while guiding or climbing on my own: “So, ah, I just came down this ridge, and it has some real rock climbing above us. Have you been up here before?” But Mr. Confidence was not deterred, and promptly showed his non-impressive climbing abilities by latching onto the steepest piece of rock in the immediate area, indiscriminately yanking on holds like he was in the climbing gym with a thick matt directly under his feet instead of 50 feet of air. But this is the Rockies, and holds break as often as they stay put. His, and I use “his” as he seemed to be the nominal leader in volume if not experience, group started looking for an easier way up.
After decades of climbing and guiding I now can’t watch anyone climb without automatically assessing their base movement skills and understanding of the rock. This judgement really matters when I’m about to tie into a rope with someone who may kill me if they fall off, so I have an intense interest in how people move in high-consequence terrain. A few moves told me that Mr. Confidence had climbed very little on real rock, and his crew less. The climbing above was not going to be easy or smooth for them. I tried once more to engage, but Mr. C overrode my mild questions with a loud voice directed toward his crew. OK then, I shrugged internally, and continued scrambling down with my partner. But the situation really bothered me: I’ve picked up after a lot of serious mountain wrecks, and I just didn’t like what I saw coming. I’d tried and failed to engage, but I didn’t want to have to respond to screams shortly, or see the bad news and wish I’d done more.
The last few years and months in particular have been especially lethal for “soloists” and “scramblers,” words that need definition because they can mean a lot of things to different people. Traditionally, “scrambling” means moving through steep but non-technical terrain where a fall will usually result in “bumps and bruises” to maybe “hospital” on the scale my kids (and guests) and I use to assess any hazard in the mountains. A scramble might have a very easy “death” move or two, but “scrambling” terrain isn’t where most experienced or even novice climbers would use a rope. “Soloing” means doing climbing moves without a rope that would normally be done by guides or climbers with a rope. There are a thousand shades of grey in this, but generally “scrambling terrain” is primarily a consequence, not difficulty, rating for relatively steep and relatively easy mountain terrain punctuated with enough ledges to stop someone who slips. Most “scrambles” still have a lot more “Hospital” terrain than a mere hike, but the people above me were not on what the popular and often genuinely useful but also often wrong Alltrails App described in the title as a, “Pleasant but strenuous hike.” I’ve changed the words a little to keep this anon, but close enough. Oddly the “AI generated summary” read, “This is not really a hike, more of an alpine rock climb, and you should bring a rope and gear and know how to use it.” These AI summaries are relatively recent, and reflect the user comments, not just the person who submitted the “trail” to the App.
The user reviews of the “trail” ranged from, “Easy scramble, don’t know what the big deal is” by a user with the username, “I.am.cooler.than.you,” to, “We almost died, this is NOT a trail, WTF Alltrails?” to, “Scrambling level is 5.4-5.6 … stay calm , be patient, one wrong move and you are dead.“ That last comment is close to verbatim and close to insane. It’s NOT a scramble by difficulty or consequences. But apparently Mr. C had focused on what he wanted to see, and was now intent on showing off his “scrambling skills” to the group he was with. He had veered from a “trail” right through a “scramble” and was now charging hard on “solo” terrain, while still proclaiming they were all on a hike.
But it’s not just erroneous “trail” descriptions on Alltrails. We climbers (ropes and clinky bits, falling doesn’t equal death generally) have taken to social media with photos and captions of ourselves “scrambling” technical climbing routes such as the NE ridge of Ha Ling, 450M 5.6 (those are absolutely climbing, not scrambling grades, and you will die if you fall without a rope). It’s become common to fashionable among the elite and not so elite climbers to refer to soloing relatively easy but still absolutely technical multipitch routes where a slip will result in death as mere “scrambles.” The term diminishes the real hazard and consequences of normal human error. People make mistakes, and in scrambling terrain that generally shouldn’t kill them. In the risk management world we’d call this “normalization of deviance,” meaning it becomes culturally OK to do high-hazard or “stupid” shit because it’s “normal.” Generaly this collective slippage is obvious in retrospect, but seems “normal” at the time. The number of deaths and bad accidents this year in particular and in the previous five years cumulatively is way beyond “normal.”
Solid statistics on scrambling/soloing deaths are hard to come by (and the quote, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics” is 100 percent accurate,) but the endless stories of yet another young man (young men are special) dying without a rope on are way too frequent to ignore. The well-respected if academically reserved editor of Accidents in North American Climbing, Pete Takeda, wrote in the most recent issue, “Free solo deaths are becoming alarmingly frequent.” I try not to confuse reality with social media, but a recent post noted that there were more solo/scramble deaths in the US than in the last three years than the previous 10 or so put together. I dug into the author’s methodology and roughly corroborated it through another source. I also believe Takeda’s view is accurate, although it could use a few less-reserved expletives in front of “alarming.” Something is going on: a LOT of people are dying soloing/scrambling.
Alex Honnold, the guy who free-soloed Yosemite’s El Capitan and starred in the hugely popular “Free Solo” documentary film, has also often used “scramble” for soloing a lot of easy (technical with fatal falling consequences but easy for him) terrain. The El Cap solo film has often been blamed for popularizing solo climbing. A few years after “Free Solo” came out another excellent film profiled the late and larger than life Canadian climber and soloist, Marc Andre Leclerc. And there are innumerable social media reels celebrating ropless soloing. These are similar to the “influencers” hanging one-handed from cranes or leaping between buildings; they die too. The social media for the climbing publications regularly celebrates the most recent “Super rad solo of mega alpine route!” with a beautiful picture and story of the protagonist’s daring feat. But the deaths usually get only a brief black and white mention for a GoFundMe page. If “normalization” of high-risk deviance leads to poor outcomes then what does full-throated celebration lead to? Maybe guys like Mr. C confusing their abilities with Honnold’s?
I was once a guest on Honnold’s podcast and remain a listener because I respect his take on risk and reward, and agree that people are, and should be, free to make their own decisions. Alex has thought a lot about the extreme risks he takes, and is a genuine, caring person. But I think he, and other social media/cultural leaders, may be under-estimating the effect their words and images have on people like Mr. C., or the many other “scramblers” who died lately. I don’t think we can directly blame the films or social media wanna-be solo stars any more than we can blame the fallen; it’s now a cultural problem, and needs a cultural solution.
If people are truly at peace and honest about the risks and rewards of any outing then I have no issue with that. But it’s hard to reach that state of calm reason about insanely fun activities, and soloing/scrambling is absolutely exhilarating if you’re in the mindset for it. Some interesting research covered in, The feeling of risk, by Paul Slovic, makes the point that, “When we desire a benefit/reward then we see the risks as lower than they actually are.” Behind that dry language is a hard truth about risk: Climbing mountains without a rope feels marvelous, until it doesn’t. And social media doesn’t show the SAR teams recovering the broken bodies. And I think that the positive hype for high-consequence behaviour without also showing the real downside of the same, combined with the deliberate minimization the risks, has caused much of the surge in accidents and deaths that concerns Takeda and that many SAR groups are also reporting.
The above and the multiple recent horrible “scrambling” deaths in BC and Alberta went through my head as I started down the ridge, and so I turned and scrambled back up toward the group of fellow oldsters. “Um, sorry to bother you again, but I live here and do this a lot, and I’m concerned about that big storm cloud up the valley. Has anyone looked at the weather radar lately?” I had, and that cloud was turning into a savage, feral example of the aptly Latin-named, “Cumulusgonnafaqus” by the minute. But Mr. C was still confident: “Yes, the forecast last night was rain by 2, and it’s only 1. We’ve got time, don’t worry.” There was still at least 200M of steep to vertical terrain above them, and given what they’d managed to get up by 1:00, the summit, and descent, weren’t looking likely in a dry state, never mind with some lightning for bonus atmospherics. Wet rock complicates climbing fast, and lightning always adds effective but non-helpful urgency. “OK, the weather radar is showing that storm hitting here in about 30 minutes potentially.” I could see the gears turning under the grey hair and large packs of the older members, and upward progress stopped. Mr. C wasn’t phased though, “Well, radar, forecast, whatever I’m sure it’ll hold off, we just need to keep moving.” This comment was finally met with some discussion by the group, one of whom said, “Ah, that’s a really black cloud headed our way, maybe we should get back down into the big trees?” “No, we’re fine!” More discussion ensued, but I felt I’d done what I could, and faded back down.
The mountains aren’t safe, and neither Alex nor I nor the social media posters are responsible for any one outcome. But, from Alltrails to Alex to me and you, we make our own culture, and I feel we’ve gone seriously off-route with our risk assessment and portrayal of scrambling and soloing. The very classic and very wrong comment that, “The drive is the most dangerous part of the day!” is on the same continuum of calling technical rock solos “scrambles.” We really do often minimize the real risks when the outcomes are desirable. I just hope my culture, from the old to the young, can get a little more realistic in our mountain risk taking, and stop normalizing the wildly abnormal. Risk is essential to growth and meaning in life, but so is being honest with ourselves about those risks.
PS, I have no idea what happened to that group, but I didn’t read about them that night, and don’t think I will in Accidents In North American Climbing. Maybe they’re calling me the “roving pessimist jerk”, but I’m OK with that compared to doing CPR.
Posted in: Blog
Date: November 15th, 2021
Note – If I’ve left your favorite place off the list please drop me an email I’ll include it.
Canmore has really taken off in the last 15 years–better food, coffee, more choices, and of course rapidly rising prices–most everything has gone up about 50 percent in the last few years.
Communitea: Canmore is too expensive for hippies, but Communitea is where they would go if they could afford. Really nice owners, best cappuccino in town, organic foods, a really good addition to Canmore Downtown. A good “rest day” place to chill out. Healthy organic bowls and such, lots of moms with strollers and people using the place as an alternate office (free wifi). They also book some surprisngly good acts in the evenings too.
Summit Cafe: Good breakfast food, crowds of active people scheming activities every morning, nice atmosphere, good morning sun on the deck. Canmore’s best breakfast place. Lunch a little variable but the chicken club is solid. No dinner.
Bagel Bakery (two locations): Good prices, good food, weak coffee, open late on main street (busy during the day), occasional live music in the evening. Their breakfast bagels are great morning food.
Beamers (two locations): OK coffee and simple food, open very early in the morning, fast service (a rarity in Canmore) zero attitude. One locaiton on the 1A, one right across from the post office (Rusticana on main street). Common meeting place for guides and clients.
Harvest, beside Switching Gear: A bit limited menu but good food, the “Stuffed French Toast” seems like an odd idea but is awesome. Popular with locals, unknown to tourists in general.
Bella Crusta: Best deal in Canmore for lunch, good and reasonable bread-style pizza (toppings on big pieces of round bread, excellent) lunch stuff across from the huge Stonewaters furniture store just off main street. I sometimes take some of his “heat and bake” pizzas, cook ‘em up, and take them climbing, excellent lunch. The owner is a Canmore classic and good guy.
Valbella’s Deli: High-quality and great tasting food, surprisingly reasonable given what you get. In the industrial park near the police station on Elk Run. The lunch special here is a real meal; usually something like a big plate of curried chicken and rice, or some Euro thing, but definitely the best “real food” lunch buy in town. They also make their own meats, great place to get trip or BBQ food.
514 Poutine: Low-end, friendly, Quebec-style awesome food! Poutines of all styles, hamburgers, steamy hot dogs, limited tourists, always popular and just an awesome greasy slice of something different in Canmore. Inexpensive, and where you want to go after a day out in the mountains. No beer is the only drawback.
Ramen Arashi. My favourite. Great food, people, and as spicy as you wanna go!
Red Rocks Pizza: A really good value, nice owners, also have good beer on tap, local favourite for when you just want a decent pizza without feeling gouged or dealing with a scene. Limited seating in winter, but a big deck in summer. If you get one pizza the second one is a deal or something, so you can get two large pizzas for $45 and eat lunch for the week.
Georgetown Inn: Good climbing memorabilia, decent food, Brit-inspired pub. Cosy, chill, good for a mellow dinner and a few beers. Nice place to stay too.
Spice Hut: An informal, post-climbing reliable go-to, always popular with my friends. Order it “Extra Hot!”
Grizzly Paw Brewery: Good solid middle of the road pub food and beer. Not greasy, not gastro-pub, just good pizza, burgers, salads and a good staff.
Iron Goat: Up in Cougar Creek (the sunny side of the valley). A really good place to go for a pint in the bar, or a solid meal on the restaurant side of things. This restaurant was started by a friend of mine–he reportedly invested a lot of money because he was sick of not having anyplace in town to go to get a good beer and good food in the evenings. I think he succeeded in solving both his problems.
Wild Orchid: One of the best places in Canmore. It’s a sort of pan-Asian vibe with really creative food, best sushi in town (limited selection, but good), and a great evening deck. The bill for three people with some wine is really reasonable given the quality of the food.
Sage Bistro: On the 1A in the old log cabin. Creative but “real” food at good prices, good wine selection at reasonable prices. All in all a surprisingly good place to eat given how it looks, with that rarest of rare occurences in Canmore, really good service.
Crazy Weed: Expensive and worth it. Reliably good food, solid wine list, this is where you go when you want to get your big city on but mountain style.
“Special” Food & Needs
Late Night and Early: Tim Horton’s is open when you need it to be
Good Healthy Takeout: An Edible Life sells ready-to-cook meals and snacks, great to take on the road or cook up.
Vegan: Go back to Squamish, this is Alberta y’all!
Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge: Good owners, nice rooms, good people. Was my friend Guy Lacelle’s favorite place. Kitchens and such in rooms too.
The Paintbox Lodge: Nice boutique-style rooms and scene. A friend of mine was staying there and wound up in a wedding, it’s that kind of fun place. Good restaurant as well. Owned by the Grandi/Renner team, good people.
Alpine Club Hostel: Hostel-style, but clean, cheap, good place to find partners. Just outside town (you can walk if you’re a European, Americans will need a truck).
Canmore Hostel Great location, reasonable prices generally, young scene.
Georgetown Inn: Non-chain, nice kinda frilly rooms. Close to the hospital if all goes bad, good food too.
Where NOT to stay: No really bad places in town, with the possible exception of our futon. Lots of chain hotels and good basic places.
Tavern 1883: Replaced Zona’s, good scene for adults, decent cocktails.
Sheepdog Brewing: Good local scene off the beaten path in the industrial park. Good beer, basic snacks but you can bring your own.
Hy5. Music, drink specials, young stoked crowd. Still a bit of a “dive bar” it used to be back in the day, nice owner and scene.
Georgetown: You may risk falling asleep in your beer, but it’s good beer and a nice scene.
The Canmore Hotel: usually has the best bands in Canmore – now it’s smoke free, which is a great thing! There is still the occasional aggro youth (the crowd reflects Canmore’s mix of yuppification and whatever the opposite of yuppie is) but the bands make it worth it. Let’s just say the “Ho” has cleaned up its image as the town’s primary source of police reports but still has a way to go before it’s a family-style institution. You’ll probably end up putting the final touches on a solid night of it here.
The Drake, Rose and Crown: Unpretentious bars with food. Right across the street from each other. Beer, food.
Banff: is where you’ll need to go for serious night life, Canmore just doesn’t have it.
Climbing Gear: Vertical Addiction, near Safeway, is a true small specialty store with just the right quantity of maps, shoes, ropes and other outdoor hardware. The owner, Benoit, has worked really hard to make this place a success, and it’s great to have it here in town. Prices are usually competitive with MEC in Calgary too, a rarity in Canmore.
Valhalla Pure has a much larger selection of clothing, travel stuff and pots and pans, and also sells a decent selection of hardware.
Climbing Gym, showers, weights, stretching, library, kid care. It’s all under one roof: Elevation Place is our Taj Mahal of a town rec centre, and it’s a great addition. The climbing wall is a bit low angle and the bouldering sketchy when the wall is busy, as it often is, but the route setting has improved dramatically in the last couple of years, and the manager and staff are really solid people.
The Canmore Climbing Gym is our bouldering gym run by the illustrious Sonnie Trotter and other local legends. Everything you need to climb 5.15. Avoid the after-work hours, it gets really busy, but chill the rest of the time.
Gear Up: rents most ice climbing and mountaineering gear (boots, ice axes, crampons, etc) if you need some in a hurry, nice to have this service in a local shop. The staff there is also knowledgable about touring gear (re-does skins, mounts bindings, etc), good people.
Grocery Stores: Sav-On (used to be Sobey’s, before that IGA) and Safeway are both monolithic big city style stores; Safeway does have the better selection. Nutters (in the strip mall across from the Drake and the Rose and Crown) has a lot of organic produce in a small space (well, it’s about 1/500th the size of the average Whole Foods but at twice the price). Valbella’s has good meats, bread.
Rusticana is a downtown convenience store that’s open early and late, and has some “real” groceries at a decent price. Good selection of Red Bull too :).
Fergies is up near Cougar Creek Canyon, and beside the Summit Cafe so convenient to have breakfast and pick up last-minute stuff before recreating.. Great Quebecois owner too.
Cellar Door: Most of our small, independent liquor stores have been bought up by big chains. This sucked, but the Cellar Door is really good. Strong on great value wine, expensive craft beers.
Buy Cheap Outdoor Gear: Switching Gear often has great deals due to local sponsored athletes surreptitiously selling surplus sponsor swag (seriously).
Laundry: On main street beside the Grizzly Paw.
We have three solid shops in town. The Bicycle Cafe is good and the “cool” shop in town (and has arguably the best coffee, worth visiting for that alone). Rebound has gone increasingly Roadie, good staff (the owner fixed up a 20-year old burley with parts he had lying around, pretty cool.) Excellent mechanics. Outside is a no-nonsense working class shop, solid mechanics and bike selection. It’s a bit like going to church, find where you feel at home.
Recommended Guides:
Me. But more on this list soon!
Posted in: Blog
Tags: Canmore, Climbing, Food, Gadd, Gear, Hotels, Restaurants
Date: November 14th, 2021
Welcome to the Canadian Rockies, home of big ice, expensive beer and stoked people! I often get asked for information about climbing here, so I’ve written a few documents that I hope will help you have a good trip. For a general understanding of our season and ranges, check out this link. We reliably have ice from mid-October to early May or later. Yeah, it’s a great season!
If you’ve read the “ice season” link then you kind of know the basics of what forms first and melts last, etc. There’s also a page on “Canmore Resources” with places to stay, eat, drink, etc. I’m not paid on any of those.
Sample Daily Routine For Where to Climb
1. Check avalanche.ca for avalanche danger forecasts. That danger level and the terrain determines where to climb, not what we want to climb. Also look at it for winds, new snow, general mountain forecast, MIN reports, etc. etc, it’s great. Check ACMG site too.
2. Look at the public weather forecasts for Canmore, Lake Louise, Jasper, and maybe Radium.
3. Look at social media, see below.
4. Research. Use the App for location info etc.
5. Pull a Spot WX specific forecast for your potential climb. If you don’t use this already learn it, it’s great.
6. Check road conditions, links below.
7. Avalanche Gear?
8. Coms?
9. Ice Climber’s code?
10. Send it!
Note: This is aimed at someone with a basic avalanche class or who has read a book or two, it’s not “pro” or “zero” knowledge. If you’re a visiting guide there are some pro-level forecasting tools available, contact the ACMG about that.
If you’ve had some avalanche training then the following will likely make sense. If you haven’t then please get some training, read a few books, and stay on the ATES “Simple
” routes. The vast majority of the routes in the Canadian Rockies have some avalanche hazard. There’s a list of “simple” routes in the Ice and Mixed App, as well as on the Parks Canada page. This page is excellent information in its own right for anyone coming climbing here. . The list for Kananaskis Country is currently unavailable.
Avalanche.ca, start here.
If you start with avalanche danger then route selection is much simpler, and safer. At the beginning of every season I start reading the avalanche bullets on avalanche.ca. I read them every single day for Kananaskis, Banff Park, Little Yoho (Field), and Jasper National Parks. If you read them as the season develops you’ll also develop a sense of what the problems are, and how the local professional forecasters look at the snowpack. This is important because avalanches kill more ice climbers than anything else. So, I read this religiously, every day. In general, if the hazard in an area I want to climb in is “considerable” I pretty much don’t go climbing in challenging or complex terrain (see ATES notes below) terrain. Yes, a lot of variables, and these are huge forecast areas, but you need a lot of training and local knowledge if you’re going to push it, and climbing in avalanche terrain even with a good forecast is already “pushing” it. We are just so exposed for so much time… If the rating is Low then I’ll likely be comfortable with most objectives. “Moderate” is the trickiest. There have been fatalities here with a “moderate” rating where I didn’t think the forecast was wrong. If you have a fair amount of training you may be OK with some routes in “moderate” or some routes are not going to be OK even in “low.” But if you read the reports at least you’ve got an idea, and there is always something to climb that is low hazard. Here’s a refresher on the different ratings.
But there is a lot more information on Avalanche.ca. In the upper left corner there’s a drop-down menu bar with three other critical pieces of information: The Mountain Information Network (MIN), real-time weather stations and a “mountain forecast.” The MIN is an collection of user-generated reports, and you can sub-sort them by type. I look at both the ski and ice climbing reports (how cool is it to have that feature!), and if you look on the map each report has a blue label around it. Often there are reports for the more popular areas, but I look at all of them. If skiers are reporting afternoon class 2 slides on features below treeline then that is excellent information!
The Av Can weather stations are an often-overlooked resource. See the screenshot, but each little mini weather station logo has a variety of information. For Field I check the Bosworth stations, for the Parkway the Parker’s Ridge Station, etc. These are vital because they tell you how much it has snowed recently, and how windy it has been, trends, etc. If it’s snowed more than a few centimetres or it’s windy above about 20 kmh then there are likely to be wind slabs growing, bad. The forecasts may lag this information by a lot–the stations are real time. As noted in the Guide’s report on the Masseys fatal avalanche two years ago, these stations can be useful for monitoring winds/snow in real time. High winds and snow are just a bad combination in the Rockies, especially if you’re an ice climber under slabs that are forming rapidly over your head. If you’re low in the valley it can be really hard to see what’s happening at the ridge top level. Somewhere around half the alpine/ice climbing accidents are natural slides from above, not triggered by the climbers, so you’ve got to think defensively at all times.
The Ice and Mixed App has the Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale for 99 percent of the climbs in the Canadian Rockies, as well as suggestions on where to go in higher avalanche conditions.
Let’s say the hazard is “Considerable” in most areas at all elevations, and there’s a storm coming in. I’m going to be thinking about climbing in Simple terrain at most, and what roads are going to close so I can get home in the evening, and will definitely NOT be out in bigger terrain. Even if the forecast is “Low” everywhere you’re still using your judgement, “Low” does not mean give ‘er here. But Low/Moderate is a, “Yeah, I’ll research bigger terrain, what types of hazards, terrain.” “Considerable” and above has me on the low hazard, low exposure routes. “High” generally means Haffner or other “never seen a slide there” terrain, or maybe going skiing at the hill, it’ll be good!
If you do the above then you’ll have a handle on the biggest hazard ice climbers face, and can choose your terrain appropriately. Often the forecast for the Parkway is quite different than for Kananaskis, don’t be afraid to drive, we do a lot of that here. If I have doubts then I start scaling it back. Note that if you have specific questions or concerns you can call Banff Park Dispatch or Jasper or K-Country and ask to speak to a “Visitor Safety Specialist.” Don’t do this if you’re going to a very common route with low avalanche hazard, but if you have concerns about a bigger route or something obscure, then don’t be afraid to call them up. Please be organized and succinct with your question as they are busy, but they like talking snow and hazard, good people we’re lucky to have.
Also check the “General South BC forecast.” Very useful. And the “Backcountry Resources,” more great info!
Public Weather Forecasts:
How cold is it going to be, any big storms forecast, sun? If it’s below about -15, maybe -17, I don’t go multi pitch climbing. It’s miserable, and if there is an accident the temps could turn a broken ankle into a fatality. Go run laps in a single pitch area, stay warm, have fun. If it’s March and sunny then sun–effected slopes are going to be an issue. In January it’s probably where you’ll want to be on a cold day. It’s often warmer just over the continental divide (Haffner, Field, Radium, Golden) than it is to the east of the divide, check out the public forecasts.
Research, Social Media
I then hit social media for reports on what has been climbed and not. Facebook is about the best place for this right now, and there are two groups: Rockies Ice and Mixed Conditions is straight up conditions reports, usually pretty solid. Canadian Rockies Ice Climbing is more random, and you may get some insight into local drama, but there’s a good thread on Ghost Road Conditions (very relevant) and often some decent info. Scroll back through both, there’s a wealth of information there.
One resource that’s often overlooked is the ACMG Mountain Conditions Report. These are reports submitted by guides, so generally solid. A lot of ski conditions, but also ice info. The “Regional Summary” is also very useful, I check it all year for alpine climbing etc.
Research Access, Descent, etc.
There unfortunately isn’t a good guidebook to the Rockies in print. But there is an App, which has every route in the Joe Josephon’s out of print Waterfall Ice guidebook, all the routes from Sean Isaac’s Mixed Guidebook, and 99.99 percent of all the new routes done since then. It also has GPS parking and route locations for about 750 of the 1500 routes in the book, and GPS traces for several hundred. It will save you a LOT of time. Please consider sending in a trace if you do a route that doesn’t have one, thanks! It’s continually updated. Mountain project also has good info, and of course search the internet, a LOT out there. If you’re looking for a paper guide Brent Peter’s nice “Ice Lines” has some classics.
Terrain Angle in Mapping Apps/tools. Many now have shading for slope angle, which can tell you a lot about the snow collection area and slide potential above a route. CalTopo is currently my favourite, but also available in FatMap etc.
I like to do a route plan, with rough times on it, descent notes, (number of raps, station location), times for various points, alternatives in the area in case people are on “my” route, etc. This just helps me stay organized, and think ahead. Grades are really arbitrary, but the big idea is to climb something you’ll enjoy, and not whip from. I’ve written lots on why falling on ice sucks, enough already, but try to choose something that seems like you can enjoy it. Or go toproping and enjoy that, yeah! I generally try to under-call the day a little bit so I have a margin in case something goes wrong. It’s much more fun to be back in the bar saying, “Yeah, we sent that, could have done another one!” than, “Shit, it’s dark, let’s snuggle while we wait for light…”
I could write a book on all the rest of the pre-trip planning stuff, but this is getting long already so let’s keep moving…
Pull specific Spot WX forecast
This looks confusing, but spend a few minutes, it’s not as weird as it looks, and it has far more information than the public forecast. I like the GEM LAM forecast generally, but find one you like ha ha :). The precipitation line is VERY useful, same with wind direction, temp, just great.
With the above you’ll have a decent idea of what’s going on, and can start scheming. If a route is posted on Social Media then it’s likely going to get mauled, so I more use it for thinking, “OK, X and Y are in, both north facing at 2000M so that’s a good zone to look in, Z and A are south facing and low, not in, avoid those” etc.
I may also call friends, or post on social media if I’m trying to figure out what’s going on out there. The better information you have the better decisions you can make.
Avalanche Gear: If there’s enough snow to slide I bring it in the car just in case, you never know where you’re going to end up. Even on climbs such as Whiteman’s (very narrow canyon with small-seeming side chutes coming in) I’ve seen slides big enough to bury someone. So I bring the gear at least in the car and usually to the base if not up the route, and this has become common practice here.
Communications: Cell phones work in Field, most of the Bow Valley (if you can see the road), but not generally in K country, 93 South (Radium parkway), or 93 North (Icefields Parkway). If you break your leg in winter and can’t call for help your odds of dying are really high. Nights are long and cold here. Almost everyone here goes out the door with an InReach satellite coms device both for the SOS function, and to text the boyfriend/dad/whatever that you’re OK but running late so don’t scramble the rescue just yet. These are awesome tools, just get one. Radios used to be the standard before satellite coms, but unless you’re pre-programmed with the repeater frequencies they are near-useless. Just get and bring an InReach.
Road Conditions:
Alberta
British Columbia
And we mostly play by the “ice climber’s responsibility code” up here, good info. Leave a note on your car, don’t climb under other people, that sorta thing.
Oh, and you can hire me :). . I’m also happy to recommend other guides if I’m busy, please hit me with an email.
Posted in: Blog
Date: October 23rd, 2021
Canadian Rockies Climbing Cycle: Ice, Alpine, Rock, repeat!
By Will Gadd, November 2021
I’m often asked, “So, what’s the best season to climb in the Rockies?” I wrote the following so I wouldn’t have to keep writing it for people.
Big Picture For Visitors: The Canadian Rockies are a relatively narrow (about 100K) band of peaks that run along the continental divide from the US border north for 1000K or so. Generally they are quite dry on the eastern side with a solid continental climate, and somewhat warmer and much snowier on the western side. Most of the “famous” ice, alpine, and rock climbing is found between the US border (Wateron/Glacier national parks) and Jasper, but there is a lot north of Jasper to be found! The highest peak is Mt. Robson at just shy of 13,000 feet/4000M, but most peaks are in the 9 to 11,000 foot/3 to 3500M range. Valley floors range from 1500M to 800M, so big peaks despite low elevations. Generally speaking, we are about one month “colder” than Colorado/European Alps/New England, so a Canadian October is like their November, and our March is like their February etc.
The Cycle
Mid-October to Mid-November: Stoke for the Ice Freaks, Melt/Freeze ice season, creeping despair for the Rock Freaks. Increasingly good ice, normally low avalanche hazard, normally not brutally cold.
Right around October 14th the ice season reliably starts in the Rockies on above-treeline North facing aspects. This isn’t due so much to dropping temperatures, but sun angle. In mid-October the days start to get a lot shorter, and the sun just stops rising high enough to hit most north-facing terrain. This means that all the sheltered above-treeline north-facing terrain (ATNF) starts to freeze, and once the ground is frozen ice starts forming on top of it. Often there is still plenty of moisture, either from springs that are still running, glacial ice or melt-freeze snow in the sun, so a lot of the thin “smear” ATNF routes come in surprisingly fast. If there’s too much water then the latent heat in it won’t allow it to freeze to the ground, so the larger flow routes don’t freeze until the temperature really drops.
You can still climb rock on the lower and south-facing sport and even alpine routes fairly reliably until about October 15th, but you’ll have to start later as overnight lows are often below freezing at the tree-line areas. Sport areas such as Acephale generally get too cold around Oct. 14th, but you can push it if you’re really stoked. For rock, Echo Canyon, Lake Louise, the Columbia valley cliffs, stuff that faces some version of south is excellent from about Oct 1 until it’s mostly done by Nov. 10 or so.
Multi-pitch rock season is pretty much over around Halloween with the exception of the occasional day on Yam or other south-facing protected crags. For me the Banff Film Festival, in the first week of November, kinda marks the end of rock season. If you’re really motivated you can still find the odd day, but there are way, way more good ice days than rock days. What exactly is in when will vary, but by November 10 there’s enough ice for good ice climbing and guiding regardless of the valley temperatures. Generally you’re looking for north-facing routes above 6,000 feet (1800M). The good thing is that avi hazard is normally low, but not non-existent: Take gear, and be aware that we have major slides here in early November. Many of the early-season ATNF Ghost routes come in, this is the time to get them before the smears sublimate into snice or just fall off by mid-December. Ghost driving is good (remember you can’t drive into the North Ghost until Dec 1). Kananaskis Country is also a good bet, routes such as R&D are normally in by October 15 for sure, but it can be really busy as everyone charges up there. Take the very early or very late shift, I find this tactic takes care of the worst of the crowds. The crowded conditions will seem OK to anyone from Colorado, but it’s not so normal around here. The routes in behind Fortress also come in early and are far less crowded as you have to, gasp, walk! Normally a few new longer alpine rambles get put in around this time of year, and if you’re motivated there is a LOT to do. The smear routes on the Stanley Headwall, storm Creek, ATNF routes in Protection Valley, etc are good to go.
If this were Colorado we’d have a dozen new routes every October for sure. Not generally in: Field, anything with a hint of southern exposure on the Parkway or elsewhere, most stuff below treeline
The classic “Big Rigs” normally don’t totally form up until at least mid-November, with a few exceptions such as the Sorcerer, Hydrophobia, The Terminator Wall, and Slipstream. I’ve climbed on the Terminator Wall as early as late October, but it’s pretty easy to see if there’s any ice up there, and how good that ice is if you have a pair of good binoculars. In fact, binoculars are pretty much essential this time of year… Slipstream is also normally “in” if you like high-hazard easy ice in a great position. Early winter can be a good time to go as the cornice at the top isn’t normally quite so massive as it is in the spring. But the glacier travel can be more involved due to less snow covering the gaping chasms…
The Ghost is often “in” a lot earlier than people think. Routes such as The Sliver, Burning/Drowning and anything between Hydro and Sorcerer often forms up in late October, these routes are surprisingly high and face north, it’s cold up there earlier than would seem logical while basking in the sun in Canmore.
The Stanley Headwall is likely forming up decently by mid-November. Nemesis is usually climbed for the first time around November 1st, sometimes earlier and sometimes later. The good thing about early season on the Stanley is that you can walk in. The bad thing is the same, skiing is a lot more fun. But little avi hazard.
Hafner, Cascade, anything “low” or “sunny” is NOT in.
The “Alpine” is coming on also. A lot of routes in the Canadian Rockies are best done when the rubble is frozen up, and there’s enough ice to get excellent gear. The avalanche hazard is generally low also, which means climbs can be attempted in gullies and across slopes. that would seem suicidal later in the year. Melt-freeze routes are at their fattest, normally they will start sublimating and getting thinner by about the middle of November.
Skis not normally needed anywhere.
Mid-November to Mid-December: Rock done, Ice getting GOOD, Alpine ice ON, shitty to poor skiing.
Now we’re starting to get lots of ice choices. Even the south-facing routes along the Icefields Parkway (Polar Circus, routes on Mt. Wilson) etc. are coming in. Normally Whiteman’s falls is in enough to climb, and is wildly popular until the road access closes December 1. The Stanley Headwall is in, and depending on the year the ski in is happening too. Avi hazard starts to become more of an issue, but temperatures aren’t normally brutal so we don’t have a horrendous facet layer (AKA “The shite ball-bearing crystal smack down by the dirt upon which everything slides and kills people). Daylight is an issue—bigger climbs are normally started or finished in the dark, and you’ll want good headlights.
For mixed/ice cragging, Haffner is in but the creek can be a pain in the ass, Bear Spirit is coming in, the Cineplex has a good-sized creek flowing down the front of it but is OK to climb at depending on where that creek is running. Don’t climb on the mixed routes unless the rock truly is frozen, you’ll just break lots of holds and annoy the locals.
Field is forming up nicely but is generally a bit “later” than equivalent routes on the east side of the Rockies, variable. Normally enough in Field by the second week of December to climb.
This is prime Ghost season; not too much snow, most routes formed, creek crossings can be a bit involved due to thin ice, it’s great!
New alpine big-rig and classic lines in K-Country are often done this time of year, the melt-freeze is as good as it’s going to get, approaches are still primarily dry or only a few inches of snow.
Skis needed for approaching bigger routes along the Parkway or the Stanley headwall, but not for anything else. The road to the Terminator/Golf course shuts, mountain bikes are the way to go. Walking up to the Terminator requires no skis anytime of year unless there’s just been a massive dump, in which ase you don’t want to be there!
Mid-December to early January : Great ice, Alpine done, skiing poor to OK.
Now the ice routes with lots of water coming down them are coming in or in. Cascade, Takkakaw, Weeping Wall, Louise Falls, GBU in the Ghost, etc, it’s cold enough that anything moving freezes up. This also means the days are short and can be brutally cold; the locals generally don’t go out climbing below about -15 Celsius, but guides and Americans will push it down to about -35–once. Probably two thirds of the days are good climbing days, but the cold comes in “sets” of three to seven brutal days followed by a week or so of decent weather. We don’t normally get huge storms in this period, but regular “dustings” that slowly add up to a significant snowpack. This means the avalanche forecast and being solid in your avi-hazard judgement is important.
Grotto is in too, as is everything in Hafner, good season for mixed cragging if it’s not too cold.
This time of year a headlamp isn’t just a “good idea,” it will get used, as will the mega belay parka and spare gloves.
Not much “alpine” climbing is getting done, but sometimes it all comes together, there have been some good alpine ascents done this time of year despite the short days.
There might be one or two days where it’s possible to rock climb at Bataan or White Buddha, but the only people trying to rock climb are serious chalk monkeys without the means to head to Mexico.
Mid-December offers one of the two “best” times to visit the Rockies for ice climbing.
Early January to early February: The Dark Season . Cold, dark, dry, cold.
Everything is in, but the days are short and often cold. People still go ice climbing lots. Nobody goes rock climbing unless there’s a rare chinook (foehn). The sun doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference in general, it’s so far away and at such a low angle that it’s almost irrelevant except from about 11-2, and even then you’re not getting sunburned. Still, there are lots of good days to climb, and everyone is motivated after the debauch of the holiday season.
The avi hazard can be severe, with a lot of growing/persistent problems and large surface hoar if it does snow. Historicaly, enough snow has fallen to be dangerous, but generally not enough to really sort the snow pack out or give a good base. Wind slab, a meter of facets as the “snowpack,” all the fun stuff the Rockies has to offer in the way of snow pack problems are fully on display and just waiting for a human, wind, or new snow. Then again, at -30 it’s bomber and sometimes it’s all bomber, but that’s rare. Oddly, we’ve been having warmer winters and more snow the last ten years or so. This sometimes results in a much better snowpack than I’d “expect” in the Rockies. Generally, the farther west you go in the Rockies the more snow there is and the better the skiing.
Skis normally needed for anything more than a 20-minute walk from the road that doesn’t get done a LOT. Polar Circus, Hafner, Cineplex, Whiteman’s, Louise, etc. don’t need skis as there are so many people going in. Skis are seldom used anytime of year in the “front” ranges, meaning the Ghost, eastern K-Country. But if you’re at all close to the BC border/continental divide and looking at a longer approach then skis are definitely needed. Snowshoes aren’t used much here, they are really slow and annoying ’cause they don’t slide downhill for shit. That said, they can be useful occasionally.
Mid-February to Mid-March. The sun is coming back slowly! More snow, ice great, not much alpine, odd day of rock.
The last week of February or the first two weeks or so of March is the other “best” time to visit the Rockies for ice climbing. The days are getting longer, the temps reasonable and everything is in about as good conditions as it’s likely to get (except the smear routes, they were gone in December). Often the avi hazard works in “cycles,” where it’s bad after a storm but then cleans up nicely. I really like early March in the Rockies, it’s still definitely winter but the sun is strong enough to be noticed, just feels great after a long winter.
The skiing is generally very good with an HS of 10cm on the dry eastern front ranges of the Ghost to about 150 along the Smith Dorien road in Kananaskis to 200+ in the areas on or west of the continental divide.
Some alpine climbing getting done, but the snow makes it a PITA unless you like skiing to peaks.
Mid-March to mid-April: Ice great to fading low, snowpack stabilizing, skiing great. Still “winter,” but the sun is strong.
The lower south-facing routes are melting or melted out, and everybody wants to go rock climbing already but the ice and snow are still really good. This is a very dynamic time of year in the Rockies, with warm days and wet avalanches in the afternoon but cold nights, and it can still go to -20 in mid-April. Starting and finishing early on south-facing larger routes is a very good idea, get ‘em done before the sun slams the ice and loosens the snowpack up in the bowls above the climbs. Be very aware of the sun in general, big releases in bowls high over the big routes are common as the day warms up, and even a small “sludge” slide can ruin your day. The first two weeks of April often produce some really good winter alpine routes on the bigger peaks, but take care as the snowpack up high will be “winter” on the ATNF terrain and spring on the south faces. We also get big Pacific storms that drop a lot of moisture and last for a few days, then it takes a couple more days for the snowpack to clean up. But lots of sunny, fantastic ice climbing days still, and rock never feels as good as it does after a season of swinging tools. Many Canmore locals bust down to Indian Creek about April 1.
The skiers are starting to burn out, but April in the Rockies is among the very best months to ski bigger lines and do the Wapta and other traverses. The glacial crevasses have their best coverage of the season, lots of light, often great snow on the north aspects, etc, game on if you can hold the stoke!
The rock climbers are pushing the season at Bataan, Grassi, Echo Canyon and on Yam while the mixed crew is trying to finish off their projects before they melt out. The lower mixed areas such as the Cineplex and Haffner are normally done by early April.
25 percent of days are rock climbable, 100 percent skiable and ice climable if you’re stoked.
Mid-April to early-May: Spring down low, still good ice climbing and great skiing up high, often decent weather, getting wetter by mid-May.
Ice season really ought to be over, but if you’re psyched it’s still game on up high. Slipstream and Riptide as well as other high ATNF rigs are still getting climbed, as are many winter alpine routes and some ice routes until the end of May. Rock climbers want warm stone in the worst way, but only about half the days are going to offer up the goods. But none of the “hard” cliffs are seeping as the ground up high is still frozen, good time of year for Acephale on warm days or other “seepy” cliffs such as the Coliseum. Yam season for rock. The skiing is great up high too, but can be isothermic slop in the valley bottoms.
Be extra aware of rockfall this time of year: The ground is starting to unfreeze or cycle, and whatever fell on the snow ledges is melting out. There have been a fair number of accidents on rock and ice routes from rockfall as that debris unfreezes and heads down onto rock and ice climbers.
Take care on ice or alpine routes with cornices at the top, or snow that can release with a little warmth. Routes such as Hydrophobia and on the Stanley are often still good, but the slopes above the routes start getting sun. Same with Field. Respect the sun and rising temps up high.
People are trying bigger alpine routes and getting some things done, but it’s still full-on winter on the north faces, yet even they are threatened with cornices in the sun and terrain that catches east or west sun. If you’re going after big game this time of year it will shoot back, but some good bigger alpine routes have been done.
Mid-May to July 10th: Shoulder “Mud” Season, spring “funk” weather.
Spring rock climbing season is in full effect, but it’s better to go out in the morning in general, afternoon rain is common. A lot more days are OK than people assume, you just have to get out and go climbing, the odd shower or something is no big deal. Down jackets are still getting used regularly.
The alpine climbing is frustrating–lots of squalls and general unsettled to shite weather make it hard to commit, but sometimes it’s great–the snowpack can be super stable up high, and is often hard enough to travel on top of in the morning. Just very hard to tell what the day has in store from the parking lot or the forecast (that’s always wrong by a fair margin). It can definitely still be “winter” up high until early July, which tends to surprise those from the south who come to visit.
There is still ice climbing on the true north facing high terrain, especially if it’s protected from the sun, but you’ll be working for it…
Sport climbers are cursing the seeping rock, but every day is better. The rock at Lake Louise is often warm enough to climb on, same with dryer routes in Echo etc. It can be too hot in the sun one minute and then freezing… Yam is good, but the weather is funky in general. Paddling season is ON.
July 1st to August 1 to maybe August 10th: Mountaineering season!
Don’t blink, but this is when you want to be out in the bigger mountains. Generally good weather with epic long days, rock is drying out, the peaks and glaciers still have enough snow covering the crevasses and talus for good travel, glacial travel is good, not too much rockfall, just a great time to be out in the high Rockies. Our climate is definitely changing here in the Rockies—this “summer” season used to reliably run much later into August, but we’ve had a lot of hot summers that are shutting down the classic routes in the Icefields and elsewhere earlier than they used to (no more snow, thin bridges on the glaciers, rockfall, etc). Although not geographically in the Rockies, the Bugaboos are also really good this time of year.
Yam and other south-facing rock can be too hot but often great with an early or late start to avoid the sun (for example, Yamnuska goes into the shade around 2:00, light to 10 so lots of climbing).
Lower-north facing crags in good shape, most time spent in the shade but still bring a big jacket most days.
August 1 to September 15: Forest Fire Season, North-facing alpine rock and crags.
This is when the atmosphere has finally warmed up so freezing levels are generally high to non-existent in early August, and the crevasse bridges are getting really weak so easy alpine travel is ending. Ice faces melting out more and more these days also. The first two weeks of August are still good mountaineering on the really high peaks (Robson, maybe the Icefields), but it’s really alpine rock and north-facing cragging season. This is when the bigger Alpine rock faces such as Howse, NorthTwin, etc. tend to get climbed. Thunderstorms can be an issue so go early and be done early, but this is about as stable as it gets in summer here in the Rockies. There are often big windows of good weather and minimal rain low or snow high. Late August is when the alpine rock routes are often in their best condition. Acephale and other north-facing sport crags are great, but too warm for Bataan or Yam or anything south-facing in general, although that’s when people tend to climb there. The Bugaboos tend to see most action during early August, then the BS col snow melts out, rockfall tries to kill a few people and it’s done there.
Forest fire smoke has been an increasing problem since about 2013. If the summer is really dry to the west then smoke from those fires can be a real problem. You can still crag, but it’s not so great to be up high unless you get above the smoke.
Paragliding excellent too
September to mid-October: Trees losing leaves by mid-September, surprisingly good alpine rock.
Hard rock projects are sent, the days are generally sunny, a great time in the Rockies. The atmosphere is generally at its most stable during September, and the high peaks won’t really freeze up hard until we get a solid cold front coming through. This is “Sendtober,” go rock climbing!
Repeat.
A few useful summer tricks: If it’s wet on the east side of the Rockies and blowing east in the valleys go to the west side, especially in May-August. You can often find much better weather over the divide when it’s “upsloping” on the eastern side. Upslope winds give orographic rain etc. If you’re based in the Canmore area also consider going north or south for better weather; it’s only 3 hours to Jasper, and that’s got a ton of good climbing, flying and paddling, and often has different weather. Same with Waterton and the souther Canadian Rockies, very different weather generally.
Useful Winter Tricks: If it’s really cold (-20 and below) then generally it’s sunny. Go climb on the Weeping Wall, Waterfowl Gullies, GBU, etc, from 11-3 in the sun, it can be pretty nice in the solar collectors. Also check the temps on both sides of the Rockies–in big cold snaps it’s usually ten degrees C on the western side of the Rockies. The difference between Lake Louise and Field, although only 30K apart, can easily be 15 degrees C. The upper Haffner zone also has a cave in it that is always above freezing. Smells like rat shit, but you can warm up :).
Posted in: Blog
Tags: alpine climbing, Climbing, Gadd, Ice Climbing, Rockies
Date: January 27th, 2021
What can I do about climate change?
Why do anything? For me, it’s personal. In the last five years I’ve worked on glacial/climate research projects in Greenland, Africa and Canada, and personally watched radical change in the Rockies, Alps and other mountain ranges for decades. Rather than just reading about climate change, I’ve been swinging ice tools into it, and working directly with some of the most cutting edge researchers in the world. Melt water in Greenland. Disappearing ice on top of Kilimanjaro, really massive change in less than 5 years. I almost died when some permafrost let go above me while I was guiding, and a local mountain hut that has stood there for more than 100 years is unstable now due to the permafrost melting. In short, climate change is very obvious and personal to me. It’s not a “theory,” the ice in my world is literally disappearing faster than natural processes account for, and this effects me personally and professionaly. But what to do about it?
For me the answer has three parts:
1. Vote. We need sane policies at a national and international level or change won’t be effective.
2. Use less carbon personally and professionally. See below.
3. Show the world what I see so they can too, and publicly advocate for change with acceptance and respect, not anger or shame.
As a guide and a professional athlete/poseur/speaker that flies a ridiculous amount I produce a huge amount of carbon. The first step for me was deciding that what I was doing was a problem, and that I would try to do something about it personally. It won’t be perfect, but if we use the IPCC targets as personal goals then change starts to look a lot more feasible:
“The world would have to curb its carbon emissions by at least 49% of 2017 levels by 2030 and then achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 to meet this target, according to a summary of the latest IPCC report, released on 8 October”
That’s the kind of bare minimum, but I think most of us can do that without too much drama. Personally, I’m shooting for getting to 50 percent or less of my 2019 carbon footprint by 2021 and neutral by 2025.
Here are some steps I’ve taken (with my family):
-Calculate our footprint: https://protectourwinters.org/cost-of-carbon/. This was an eye-opener for me about what activities used the most carbon. We have to know the problem areas before we can mitigate our overall footprint. I’m embarrassed by how much carbon my lifestyle produces, it really is insane.
-Drive a more fuel efficient vehicle. Our small station wagon gets over twice as good mileage as my truck. I don’t really need to drive that truck as often as I used to. Ultimately go electric, but just this saves us many thousands of pounds of carbon/year.
-Switch to renewable fuels as much as possible for our grid power. This is an option where I live, and seems to be decent. Solar better, but for now this seems better.
-Fly less, and don’t generally fly business. Hit multiple goals on one trip to Europe/Asia instead of flying long haul over a dozen times/year. My peak flying was over 150K/year, often in business. Even before Covid I’d reduced it to less than 75K, and would like to keep it under 50k/year. The last year has shown me that most meetings I’d previously fly to the east coast/Europe for a day can now be done over Zoom.
-Be like Greg Hill and be a “weekday” vegetarian, and mostly eat meat I hunted for the rest. The “weekday veg” is surprisingly easy to do. I’m not a natural vegetarian, if I can do this then anyone can. It doesn’t have to be “perfect,” just better. An occasional Tuesday hamburger is OK. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
-Buy local foods more. I will pay a little extra for high-quality local food.
-Canmore is not a great place to grow things, but we grew a garden this year for the first time here, and it produced a surprising amount of food. We weren’t buying California or BC lettuce for most of the summer, and the carrots were great. We’ll try again this year.
-Make my house more energy efficient. Work in progress.
-Heat with wood more. It’s at least renewable. Maybe, some of your comments have me rethinking this.
-Replace aging gear with lower carbon options. My chainsaw recently died, and I bought an electric one to replace it. It rips!
-Buy carbon offsets for projects that simply wouldn’t happen if I didn’t buy those offsets. Only do this as a last resort, but there are a few decent companies. Links below.
-I also rely on helicopters for the film work I do. Interestingly, they aren’t as heinous, relatively speaking, as I thought. Thirty hours of flight time/year in the machines I’m in is less than one round-trip to Europe, or driving to the desert and back in the fall… My international flights are way, way worse. It’s tricky to get rid of them, but again I can make my crews smaller, and cut the number of trips. If I can do that by even 20 percent it makes a difference, and the goal isn’t to totally remove it but just reduce it.
-Install solar. Working on this.
Even if I fall short at least I’m reducing my footprint below the IPCC for sure. I recognize that I’m a poster child for carbon output, but I can and have made real changes. Overall they’ve actually mostly been fun and positive! I’ll still be a criminal, but less of one.
Carbon Offset Links:
POW: https://protectourwinters.org/cost-of-carbon/
POW Challenge (fun): https://protectourwinters.ca/the-12-month-challenge/
Savick: https://www.savick.ca/offset-shop
Gold Standard: https://www.goldstandard.org
Films I’ve worked on involving climate change:
Greenland: Beneath the Ice
Kilimanjaro: The Last Ascent
Posted in: Blog
Date: December 9th, 2017
“Well, I didn’t hit him the picks so I wasn’t trying to kill him!” Twenty years ago two enraged Colorado ice climbers in Boulder Canyon went at each other with their ice tools. One of the defendants used the “hammers, not picks” argument, which I’m paraphrasing roughly. As insane as this sounds, people get territorial over ice and rock climbs. Fortunately the vast majority of ice climbers share the ice well, but ice climbing is really different than rock climbing, and what works on rock doesn’t work on ice. Recently here in the Canadian Rockies we had a dangerous and odd situation arise between some visitors and locals that, of course, turned into the internet equivalent of an ice tool war. Out of the messy dialogue came the realization that a lot of new ice – or foreign – climbers don’t understand some of the basic etiquette of sharing ice climbs safely. A group of active climbers and guides including some ice legends and stoked locals went to work on the idea, and came up with the following principles based on how we do things in the Rockies, subject to on-going editing:
The above are guidelines, and ideas to make everyone’s experience safe and fun. Really it boils down to people recognizing that falling ice is dangerous, and then working together to keep everyone safe. I see the biggest clusters occur with rock climbers getting into ice climbing; they tend to think falling ice is rare, like falling rock, and don’t give it the respect it deserves. We’ve had more than a few bad incidents here in the Rockies with falling ice hitting people, and all were really preventable. Note that communication needs to be respectful and with an assumption that everyone can work it out, but bottom line it’s also your responsibility on the ice to protect yourself. In the Visitors/Canadian incident the Visitors climbed up under the Canadians, then proceeded to climb UNDER their leader’s ropes and above the belayers. This is really dangerous not only for the falling ice, but because if the Visitor leader falls with his ropes running over the Canadian ropes he will “clothesline” the belayers, or possibly cut the Canadian leader’s ropes or the ropes holding the belayers to the anchors. Passing people on a rock climb is common and more expected, but you’ve got to manage the ropes and situation so that the passing team won’t clothesline the slower team. Again, communication and respect are critical. In this situation the Vistors endangered the Canadians, but the Canadians should have spoken up and stopped the visitors from passing. If you get hit with falling ice it’s your own fault ultimately, protect yourself.
Don’t do this, or let someone do it. The “Green Jacket” leader has climbed under the Red Jacket’s leader’s ropes; if Green Jacket falls before he gets a piece in his ropes will saw across Red’s ropes. A sliding rope on a piece of fixed nylon cuts it very quickly… Best case, if the Green guy falls off over the Red Ropes he will pull the Red leader off… Or Green falls to the looker’s left of Red he will “clothesline” Red, likely injuring him. In this case Green and his party continued above red, and pelted him with ice. In addition to the rope work being dangerous, the lack of communication between teams led to a really dangerous situation. Don’t do that.
Posted in: Blog
Date: September 13th, 2017
The Three Sisters define the southeast skyline of Canmore like a black etch-a-sketch line across a blue sky. If you’re a climber the logical thing to do is start on the looker’s left, or north end of the traverse and head up and over the Little, Middle and Big sisters via technical climbing routes before dropping down off the backside of the Big Sister to the Spray Lakes dam. This summer Sarah Hueniken and I finally did it, and I wrote the below to share some information with other people who might be interested.
Here’s the summary: The Little Sister is a still serious, but really under-rated and fun climb if you have the trad and choss skills. I like it, and would do it again. The Middle Sister took most of the skills I’ve amassed in 30 years of climbing in the Rockies to climb successfully, and I have no desire to do it again. The rock on the Middle Sister is hard to get gear in, very loose down low, and unless you’re psyched to climb 5.10+ on bad gear and worse rock (and who is honestly?) then you may not enjoy it. I would not tell anyone it’s a worthwhile outing. All of the successful (three to date?) ascents of the traverse and Middle Sister have been done by those with decades of experience climbing 5.11 trad or harder on Rockies choss. There are no fixed belays, and retreat/descent would be difficult without a solid rack of pins to leave. While I led it all free with no pins, I also felt it was generally a good place to get hurt without much real climbing joy. Several of the belays took a lot of creativity to build. Bring a pin rack if you decide to go. The Big Sister is more reasonable, but if you take the direct line you’ll be climbing a lot harder than 5.3. The “5.10 A1” grade does not do the Middle Sister or the traverse justice—you’ll want to be climbing a lot harder than that, and solid on old-school Rockies trad climbing (pins, runout choss, etc).
So, looks great, but until someone does a more modern line up the Middle Sister it’s just not something I’d recommend. Unfortunately, Richard Boruta, a well-liked local biathlon coach, husband and dad to two younger kids, recently died when his rap anchor reportedly failed while rappelling off the Middle Sister. He, his wife and two friends were attempting to do the traverse starting from the Big Sister side, and rappelling down the technical rock climbs. About halfway down Richard’s natural anchor failed, leaving the rest of his team without ropes but alive. Kananaskis Country Public Safety were able to long-line in and then climb two pitches to reach the three people before night, and left a few bolts in the process. I’ve marked these on the topo below. Please take the topo with the realization that it was drawn two months after we climbed the route, and it’s a big chunk of stone.
I wish I’d written this route report before his team went up there—they reportedly expected more fixed anchors and better rock. When we climbed it we found zero fixed anchors and a lot of very bad rock. I am writing this now to shed some light on the Middle Sister and Traverse, there’s not much info out there and what there kinda misses the point of the experience to me.
The long version:
In July of 2016 the extremely motivated Sarah Hueniken and I tried the traverse for the first time, but retreated in a storm after climbing the Little Sister and rappelling down to the Little/Middle Col. From the col you can walk down to the east and out Stewart Creek easily enough. It is also possible to go down to Three Sisters creek. Note: Many of the directions in David P Jones’ “Central Rockies Guide” are switched not only for the Three Sisters climbs but also other climbs. Don’t rely on the directions.
Little sister: A worthwhile climb!
5 hours to summit from the car if you’re quick, another 2-3 down if you’re fast. Probably ten+ hours for most parties.
The Littler Sister offers generally good climbing on decent rock, especially if you stay on route. It’s runout in places and requires some careful climbing, but I like it and would even guide it, so it’s safe enough if you’re good with trad gear and competent at chossing.
The best approach is up Three Sisters Creek (Park as you would for the Highline Bike trail at the end of the Three Sisters Boulevard and follow that until you join the creek after ten minutes or so, cross the creek and follow an old road up on the west/river left side) until the old dam, at which point you break left or east. Head up and east on a reasonable (and possibly now improved for mountain biking trail?) for a few hundred meters, then bushwhack right/south/up for a few hundred meters to gain the rounded crest of the spur/ridge closest to the valley that leads to the upper shoulder of the Little Sister. There is a well-flagged trail for almost all of this ascent, it’s pleasant going for a relatively obscure Rockies outing. Follow this trail until you break out above treeline, then go around a rock tower on scree on the right (west) side until you’re at the base of the shoulder on the Little Sister.
Walk around to the east (looker’s left) onto the north/highway face and start either up the crack/chimeny rig, or up the face to the left of it. One pitch with a bit of a slab move gets you to a creative belay to the left of the crack on top of a small buttress, one or two shorter pitches gets you to a six-foot ledge. Traverse left or east here a ways then back up where it looks easy. There are some old pins etc. here, including a station on the left just before the final corner. There are a few old pins and various rap stations along the way too. Beware the pins, I pulled one out by hand. Pins are not to be trusted unless you have a pin hammer. When you pull onto the big wide shoulder shoulder there will be some tempting corners and cracks up and left on a direct line, but this is not the line. On our first attempt at the traverse we climbed the direct line, roughly 5.10 locker fingers up a nice corner, bit of runout slabbing, a couple of pitches onto the ridge and then scrambling or short pitching to the summit. While fun and exciting, this is not the correct line, and wildly out of character with the 5.5ish standard. For the correct route, walk across (south) the shoulder and down into the main gully to the south for a couple of hundred meters. There’s some really nice water-washed rock and a few pins on the LEFT side of this gully that take you around a steep step and on up. Good fun climbing. Then beat up the rubble and join the ridge, few gaps and steps solved either with soloing or short pitches (we short-pitched), summit.
Descent from the Little Sister: You can downclimb and rap the steep bits the way you came up, which conveniently puts you back at the car. You’ll need to replace tat and possibly beef up the existing anchors if you go down the climbing route. But most people rappel down into the col between and Little and Middle, then go out Stewart Creek. The rap anchors down the south side to the col have reportedly recently been replaced with good bolts. The old raps were OK with a single 80M rope, but not so great with a single 60 (contrary to the books, a 50M rope will not be much fun). With anything less than an single 80M rope you’ll end up down-climbing and messing about on chossy slabs, which might be fun if you were into that sort of thing. After a few (three I think?) rappels break skier’s left (east) up through a small notch. Don’t go straight down into the steep terrain below you at this point, it likely will become involved and there aren’t rap anchors. Overall I’d say the descent back down the climbing route is faster as it puts you back at your car instead of wandering around through the Stewart Creek Golf course, but the descent down to the col is better organized at this point and simpler, as well as safer to do overall.
From the end of the rappels climb straight across the “dragon’s back” to the base of the Middle Sister. I say, “Climb,” as there is no non-technical way to connect the two features. If you’re not comfortable soloing this then it’s probably an excellent time to call it a day and head down, it only gets harder higher.
Middle Sister: Looks good from afar, but far from good up close.
Note—we took a significantly different line than is show in Bow Valley Rock PDF.
P1. 5.9 From the base of the Middle right on the ridge climb up about 30M with minimal gear to a nice belay ledge (not 10a, maybe easy 5.9). If this seems fun to you then you’re in the right place for more of the same but lots harder.
P2. 5.10 R With small wire nuts you can free climb pretty much straight up, pulling a break and using a think crack and working generally up and left. If someone were to sort this pitch out with a direct line on bolts it would be a lot more fun.
P3 or 3-4 give or take. The next long (or two shorter) pitch start on the east or looker’s right side of the ridge before re-joining it, fun climbing. You may see some of the rescue bolts from the 2017 rescue here, they are placed for rescue purposes and not climbing, but are reportedly useful.
P5 5.10 was not fun. I went up with decent gear at first, tried to go right, didn’t seem likely, went left. Shit rock, bad gear, big fall potential. Building a belay took two nuts, a flake, and a small cam tied together. Compact rock. Enjoy.
P6 takes you take to the ridge via more loose rock and run-out 5.9 or 5.10. If you could stay right or get on The Ecstasy and the Agony that would probably be better? Belay at a partially sheltered alcove on the left for the corner pitch. Work for shelter from rockfall here, you may need it…
P7, 5.9 There’s an ancient POS bolt in the corner. At the top of the corner on the left side there’s a Jenga pile of blocks that will kill your belayer if you pull on them. Take care.
P8-summit Up. Scramble and maybe a short pitch in here.
This could be a pretty cool route if someone went up there and really built it. Cleaned the loose blocks, put stations in where they were protected from rockfall, it would be neat to have a cool traverse close to town. That’ll probably wind the, “Every rock is sacred” team up, but I think it would be cool.
Bring a pin rack if you plan to retreat, want to aid either of the roofs, or generally want to make life easier for yourself. There aren’t any fixed belay anchors nor many pins, and most of the in-situ gear is is ancient and not to be trusted. NEVER TRUST EXISTING PINS IN LIMESTONE, THEY ARE NOT RELIABLE. Even with a pin hammer old pins are suspect at best–you may end loosening them by whacking them.
There’s an initially good hiking trail from the top of the Middle Sister that breaks back down left (east) into Stewart Creek, but the trail down Stewart Creek is pretty much destroyed from the flooding. It’s OK boulder-hopping now. Getting back across the Golf Course is annoying.
From the col to the top of the middle sister was about 6 hours for us. Easy walking from the top of the Middle.
Big Sister
Start left and you can keep it to low 5th class for most of the climb. Where it steepens you can reportedly bust out left on the big ledge and then back right, but this seemed weak and weird looking so we went right onto the northwest face in a super-cool zig-zag pitch at 5.10 with good rock and decent gear. A neat little overhang protects the exit, but is simpler than it looks. Again, a little prep and time and this would be a really fun route, the rock is better than the Middle and the positioning is really cool.
From the top of the Middle Sister across the Big Sister and down to the car was about 5 hours for us
Descent:
It’s a long way back to the Spray Lakes road. Arrange a pickup at the old quarry directly across from the Spray Lakes West dam/campground turnoff.. Make sure NOT to descend into the gully to the left of the ridge; it tends to suck you in, and the bottom of it is a PITA. Stay skier’s right, and if you end up with a small cliff band on skier’s right just below treeline stop descending and climb up through it (there are a few easy breaks), or retrace yours steps a bit and get back on top of the ridge. I went down this gully on a recon mission of the descent, and it’s annoying if you’re good on your feet and at downclimbing, or will require a rap or two if you’re not. The trail sucks too. Go down the ridge…
Good luck. I think we got a little off-route on the Middle Sister and wasted time by not brining pins. The whole traverse took us 16 hours car to car. Bring lots of water if you do go for this, it’s dry and hot up there. Nobody calls the peaks by their so-called “Faith, Hope, Charity” names, it’s Little, Middle and Big.
Posted in: Blog
Date: June 26th, 2017
Alpine climbing is awesome. Being up high, the sun rising, moving over vast amounts of terrain while feeling comfortable, deep experiences with friends, it’s just a great form of climbing. I’ve been alpine climbing for more than 30 years, and I learn something new every time I go out whether I’m guiding, filming or personal climbing. I can be a dense learner, but I think the complex and surprising nature of alpine climbing is what attracts me to it–just when I think I’ve got it figured out I’m wrong in a new way, and have to revise my model of how the alpine environment works. Here are a few “ideas” I find useful.
1. Understand how the alpine environment changes dramatically every day. The mountains are sun dials, with predictable positive (cold hard snow in the morning for walking easily on) and negative (rockfall, avalanches) actions as the sun swings around the dial. Same with wind and snow. This knowledge is essential. It’s generally safe to be on still-frozen but southwest-facing snow, ice and rubble slope (or a slope threatened with the same) at 6:00 a.m. But put some sun on that slope and you’re in the rockfall mixer by 13:00. You have to understand how cold it was the night before to predict how frozen things are going to be, or not. Where the sun will be when, so you’re not exposed. In rock climbing it may get uncomfortably hot if you’re on a south-facing climb, but in alpine climbing there may be avalanches, rockfall, water, impossible wallowing where it was easy to walk earlier, etc. etc. You have to have a model of how the sun, weather, and mountains interact, and be in the right place at the right time to have good conditions. This is critical. Observe, ask questions, learn, learn, learn… Watch the mountains and see when snow slopes cut loose with the sun or wind. Refine your model endlessly.
2. Systems need to be appropriate. If you’re climbing difficult rock then it’s rock climbing, even if you’re over a glacier. Three-piece anchors, solid gear, etc. On the flip side, a t-slot (don’t know what that it is? Good time to learn…) may be all that’s needed to protect an awkward crevasse crossing with lots of snow to get the rope stuck in. Don’t use the rope unless it’s protecting you from something. So rope up on a glacier where the rope will help prevent a death crevasse fall, but don’t rope up marching up a steep snow slope unless you have gear in to stop a fall. Falling off roped together just kills more people, provides a false sense of security resulting in less solid movement, and the actual rope may hinder a self-arrest or proper step building. These are just examples I see in the mountains a lot–someone belaying a 5.9 crack off one cam with the comment of, “I’m alpine climbing bro.” Or three people tied to a rope at 15M intervals on hard 60 degree snow without gear. Don’t do that.
3. Solid feet are everything. It all comes down to solid feet. It takes a long time to learn how to really get solid feet in snow, bad rock, iced up rocks, thin ridges, etc. Moving fast and confidently is good, but only if you can really predict the next step and have competence in moving onto the next foot, over and over. I spend a lot of time coaching movement in the mountains; not falling off all begins with solid feet. A lot of alpine terrain involves soloing or runout where a fall would result in terrible injury. Your best gear is solid feet.
4. Know what you don’t know. It doesn’t matter if you can climb 5.12 and run six minute miles if you don’t know how to read a glacier to get to your climb. Get out lots so you know what you don’t know… Alpine climbing is often far more about all the “not climbing” parts than the climbing. Knowing how good you aren’t on a sketchy lead is often more important than knowing how good you are…
5. Leave early, fail early. It is way, way better to be back at the hut watching the lightning storm than it is to be on the summit experiencing that lightweight storm. Same with being caught out on a cold night, or in a snowstorm, or… Follow your time plan for the day, and if the plan is falling apart or the the day is changing go down. You can always go bouldering or something.
6.If any of your partners are prone to unplanned bivouacs or near-accidents or near-death experiences due to “unexpected” epics get a new partner. Seriously. People like this are wilful idiots, and will kill you both. Incompetency in the mountains is not a virtue, it’s lethal. Strive for competency, fun and success, not suffering. If you’re suffering or bleeding you’re doing it wrong.
7. Get the craft, find solid training, read. Know how to climb a rope to get out of a crevasse. Know what isothermal snow or a windslab is, and why that may be an issue. Learn, learn, learn… “Mentorship” in alpine climbing is often mis-used to mean some sort of bizarre near-death apprenticeship period. I don’t believe in alpine mentoring as it is commonly used, I believe in hard skills taught completely and well, preferably to industry and professional standards. Too many aspiring alpine climbers have shit alpine craft. I include myself in that category for much of my career.
8. Expand your mountain model continuously. I run a cross-sport “software model” for all my mountain sports. In paragliding my mental model identifies hazards, predicts thermal location based on the sun’s position and slope aspect, and keeps me clued in to the day’s evolving winds and weather. That model overlaps dramatically with alpine climbing, and vice versa. Every day you spend out in the mountains will teach you as much as you can learn if you listen, watch, feel, experience and make an effort to understand what is happening. This is the same as #1 really, just a more self-aware version of it.
9. Go until something stops you. I see too many people who are stopped by their imaginations before even leaving camp. If it’s an alpine climbing day get up and go until it doesn’t make sense to anymore. Even if you only get out of the car in the dark and listen to the mountains you’ll still learn something. At the bare minimum you’ll be better at getting up and leaving faster in the mountains, which is an easy way to get 30 minutes more sleep instead of futzing with your gear… Do the approach hike, and if you hear rock fall and it’s raining then go home, but at least you will have learned something. A lot of days are better than they seem, or worse, or just what they are. But you don’t know unless you go.
10. Fitness is number ten on this list, but most people would put it first. Fitness is good, but the above points are all way more important to competent alpine climbing. What’s more important than fitness is skill. Be a better climber. Build better belays faster. Kick your feet more effectively in soft snow. Plan better. Get out actually CLIMBING more and training in non-mountain environments less. The moderately fit but skilled alpine climber will succeed far, far more often than the hyper-fit climber with a lower skill level. Someone who knows how to feed their body well over a day will destroy the fittest person who doesn’t eat… Fitness good. Skills first.
11. Do a post-mortem on the day, week, year. What did you get right? Wrong? Adapt to successfully? Really screw up? Learn from all of this. Repeat consciously, with humility.
12. Get good partners who really like to climb. A surprising number of alpine climbers would rather talk about alpine climbing than do it. Avoid these people, they will suck your energy like vampires. No partner is perfect. Some are great once they get going but show up late, some show up on time and then try to kill you and them unless you manage that, it’s a relationship where the sum of the team is more important than the components. Some of my best partners have been lazy, old and prone to sleeping in like me, but we got up some good climbs because they liked to climb, and our risk tolerances fit together well. Thanks to my many partners for the days, and their knowledge is all over these ideas too.
13. Every day is a good day to come home. If you have that goal in your mind then good decisions tend to happen. But if you’re taking risks to get to the top, well… Over time life itself is lethal, but it’s always a good day to live.
14. Your ideas here. Because in the end it’s all your experience, ideas, and outcomes, not anyone else’s. That is alpine climbing–you write the exam and answers based on your experiences…
Posted in: Blog
Date: June 15th, 2017
Many years ago I was interviewing for a job I really, really needed, and the interviewer asked me, “So, you’ve got some strengths here, but what’s your greatest weakness?” I said something about being overly concerned with detail (surely that was the right answer for a job involving tremendous amounts of painstaking detail?) because that’s what I thought the answer was: A strength camouflaged as a so-called weakness. I was fully bullshitting the interviewer to get the job of course, and we both knew it based on my inability to sit still for more than six seconds, but I got the job because I really wanted it, and because I knew something about the subject matter. If I’d been honest I would have said something like, “I basically don’t work until there’s a deadline breathing down my neck, the building is on fire, and financial ruin is looming.” And I’d have thought, “But in that situation I’m your guy for sure!” And I’d have believed that was a strength, because not many people can work well under those conditions, right? The trouble is that most of the time my work environment isn’t on fire…
As I get older I see that some of the things I’ve always viewed as my strengths aren’t. I do work well under pressure that would kill many people, and that is great for high-stress environments. It’s less useful for doing many of the things like long-term (anything past tomorrow being long term) planning that may add substantially to your enjoyment of day-to-day life. And if something doesn’t need to get done right away it was usually pretty much irrelevant to me. This focus works well until I’m buried under ten critical things and my kids need dinner and I’m leaving for a two-week trip and don’t even know where my clothes or gear are. Working well under pressure isn’t a strength when you only get work done under pressure… I had to learn different patterns.
Another “strength” I’ve relied on a lot in my life is what’s called “onsight ability” in climbing. “Onsighting” a route means a climber walks up to a very difficult technical rock climb, and with no pre-knowledge of the holds (but with a rope for safety) climbs to the top without falling off. It’s an exercise in on-the-fly thinking, athletic problem solving done while hanging on holds smaller than a deck of cards stuck to the wall. The “pump clock” is on from the moment you step off the ground until you either reach the top or fall off with your arms too pumped to hang on. One of the reasons I’ve competed relatively well in climbing (and other sports) is that I onsighted/figured things out well on the fly, at least compared to the many athletic head implosions I’d see around me. I do the same thing with a lot of stuff in my life, from presentations to writing–I sit down and figure it out, onsight. The trouble is that a lot of things in life get better results with pre-planning and well thought out attack plans. My ” strength” is only a strength in the right environment. “Onsighting” something like the traffic rules in France is exciting, and I pulled it off with accident-free style, but it was not the best way to deal with that roundabout for me, my passengers, and I wish to extend a sincere apology to France for my behaviour until I understood the priorete a droit that is clearly outlined in the driving regulations I never read. The reason I was good at onsight climbing is that I only knew how to climb onsight.
With work I’ve learned to overcome or at least manage my “abilities” to work under pressure and problem solve on the fly.
So what I’ve always viewed as two of my best “strengths often weren’t. How about my weaknesses?
One of my weaknesses is literally that I’m relatively physically weak. I never won much growing up because I had arms like twigs, didn’t put on muscle mass even after puberty, and couldn’t bench my own weight until well into college despite significant time in the weight room. To combat this I trained harder than anyone I knew, not to look a musclehead because, well, that wasn’t going to happen for sure, but to get stronger at DOING. While a lot of my friends wanted to look more muscular or “built,”, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t really have that option. So I focused on doing more, and doing better functionally. Kayaking cleaner lines. Climbing more. Running harder. I still went to the gym and got stronger, but without the motivation of looking like Charles Atlas my motivation was pure performance. Eventually I did get strong compared to the general population and most recreational climbers, but honestly I’ve never once been in top half of the field in in terms of pure strength at a competition, even at those comps I’ve won. But I can move, and never wasted an hour doing bicep curls. I got strong at useful things. And, because my strength gains are hard-earned, I’m damn motivated not to lose what little I do have, and have kept it. This morning I hit the gym and benched close to my body weight for ten times. Boring to some, but that’s 30 years of time in the gym. The “weakness” drove me to perform. I have also been injured a lot less than some other athletes my age, and I think that’s also due to my body composition. I’m not a stick today, but I could still blend into a group of them.
Another “weakness” I live with is have high anxiety levels. I stress out, ruminate, and generally worry about life way too much. When I’m paddling or flying or climbing I’m often stoked, but I’m also generally worried. I worry about what’s going to happen next when I glide into a big mountain, I worry about what my guest is going to do if his crampons catch while I’m guiding, I worry about what would happen if I got swept left when I should have gone right in a big kayaking drop. I have dry-heaved in eddies worrying about all the things that could go wrong. I have been so envious of some of my friends who just roll along in dangerous places, comfortable and serene. I’m like that when operating in an area of high competency (walking with my kids, on a long glide between mountains) but when the stakes are high I get worried, and stay worried. Attentive, switched on, but driven by anxiety and fear. Over the years I’ve had dozens of friends die and more live, and one thing I notice over and over is that those who are worried or at least paying attention in the mountains end up making good decisions more often. Someone who runs around near a big drop rather than walks clearly doesn’t fear the drop, but should. Being concerned and aware of the bad outcomes is the key to avoiding those outcomes. One of the best guides I know is my partner, Sarah Hueniken, and she can hold her high levels of concern and worry for hours and days at a time. I recommend her a lot as a guide because of her worry. Likewise, my anxiety is, oddly, a strength.
Again, as I get older and examine the arc of the awesome ride I’ve been privileged to experience I realize that what we see as strengths often aren’t, and what we see as weaknesses may actually be legitimate strengths if we understand how our minds work, and where we are going to perform well. I have spent years training my brain to do better at “boring” tasks and made real progress, but the reality is that I will do better in high-stimulus environments with deadlines and high stakes–filming, presentations, sports, guiding, high-consequences environments where my anxiety and ADD combine in useful ways. My weaknesses help keep me, my guests, and partners safe.
As I think back to that early job interview I remember that the magazine I was interviewing for had lost previous editors because they couldn’t deal with the mayhem of high-stress deadlines. I’m good with the craziness of managerial deadlines under pressure. I wasn’t going to be a great copy editor, ever, but we had good people for that. I wasn’t afraid to call writers, or rather I was, but I feared failure more… But that’s another post.
Posted in: Blog
Date: May 1st, 2017
Aw shit Ueli. I’m really sorry you didn’t make it. The last time I saw you we walked and climbed here in Canmore, and then you raced up the mountains I’m looking out at now with the demons of your last trip to Everest screaming at your heels. I could see the strain in your eyes and the sharpness of your movement, and it was clear you felt a terrible load. It was a measure of your character that you cared so deeply, always… With time you moved forward, but when I heard the news from Everest today I knew the demons had caught you. They will catch all of us in the end, but damn, I wish you had stayed ahead for longer. In an age where athletes define their own “accomplishments” on Instagram and spray endlessly about their self-imposed “hardship and suffering” you didn’t. You climbed, and loved it, and thought long and deeply about the mountain game. The suffering wasn’t because it was smaller than the goal. To realize great dreams you need great goals. You lived your dreams better than anyone I’ve ever known.
I keep crying as I write this. I cry for the psyched but kinda pudgy kid driving us all in a piece of shit beater car to the cliff with a trunk that didn’t work. For the guy who would get up before us and run over to the local bakery to get two fresh pastries for everyone but himself. Who would mimic me when we looked at a ridiculous route and say, “Easy, easy, Red Bull, easy easy, hee hee!” Who drove hours out of his way to get me some Snus from some Norweigan snowboarders when I ran out and was threatening to hurl myself off the balcony of his house unless I could find some. Who shared his house and home and love when I lived there for months and we battled with the first ice world cup. Who climbed two of the routes that I had failed on after I showed him the pictures, winning a Piolet D’Or for one of them. And then had the balls to write me an email starting with, “ Greetings from Nepal” How is the Family man doing? Simon and I are just back in Kathmadu. we were on Tengkampoch to get aclimatized for Annapurna Southface. We Climbed the your line on Northface of Tengkampoche, was a f…. great climb.” Steck’s warm-up climb won him a Piolet D’or.
Ueli was a good man before and after he was the Swiss Machine. Back when he was 19 I could see his ambition and drive, but he wasn’t that fast on the approaches, and there were a lot of climbers who were better technically than him. That is the truth. His athletic performances today puts him in the, “He’s a machine, therefore I can never be like him” category to most. Actually, the truth is bigger and far more important in its lesson to our own lives: He made himself into the machine. He busted his ass harder than anyone I know. Yes, genetics played a part for altitude, but his genetics were to be a cherub or perhaps hockey player like his brothers, not a ripped machine screaming into the ozone. None of us have any fucking excuse for being lazy or selling ourselves short based on what we think we can’t be. You taught me that Ueli, and a lot more. Ueli’s climbing was great, but I remember these little fleshes of pure Steck where he would take a mischievous lateral, laugh at himself or dig deeply into an intellectual idea just to understand it. He taught me how a bomb shelter worked, and how to find the hardware store in Switzerland when we built proto ice gear together. That was pure fun. So was drytooling in the pissing rain at an obscure Swiss crag. I didn’t want to train in the rain, he didn’t see a problem. It wasn’t suffering, it was a step toward a goal, no problem.
At the end of your last trip and visit here in Canada you left us a cheap spatula and some other bits to cut weight for flying home. I kept it, and kept using the spatula because I liked the way it reminded me of you. A cheap, transient plastic thing from a mentally rich, self-forged human is somehow fitting, and always made me smile when I flipped an egg for my kids or friends. We joked about it, The Official Steck Spatula and Frying Pan. You wanted to camp with your wife and enjoy the feel of the mountains even though you could afford any hotel you wanted to, and also made my small basement room with the terrible bed your home. I think that said a lot about you—that you choose mountains and people always over everything else.
I liked our climbs and mountain time together (I remember how you simply vibrated with stoke before starting up a big tall ice route a few years back, it was great!), but I really wish we had shared a few more dinners where you started off eating only vegetables then broke and went for the greasy meat platter with savage abandon. Had a few more glasses of wine, diet be damned. In the end your English was excellent, but I’ll always remember that wonderful Swissglish voice trying to keep up with the ideas and sparks flowing out of your eyes 20 years ago. That was magic, and you sure had a lot of it.
Aw shit, I wish it was all different amigo, that we were farmers in the Bernese Oberland 100 years ago, and that we and all of our friends died of old age, and we could toothlessly chew grass stalks together in the evening sun and smile at fat cows. But it isn’t, and I’m sorry for your family and network of well-earned friends around the globe. We chose a different path, and today your death makes me question my own path through tears. I’ll be thinking of you as I walk in the woods or flip an egg, and I’ll slap my feet down a touch more solidly in the mountains.
Goodbye and Merci Ueli.
PS–There are many thorough obits out there for those who want to know more. I like this one from Ed Douglas.
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