An arctic outflow in February 2021 saw the Squamish River valley, northwest of town, icing up to produce some wonderful, if fleeting, ice conditions. Sam Eastman, Tim Emmett, and I headed up to kilometer 15 on the Squamish River Forest Service Road to follow up on a tip that there might be good ice there.

The Shooting Gallery (a popular hang for gun enthu- siasts) is a roadside wall that had seen previous attempts from Andrew Boyd, Guy Edwards, Damien Kelly, and Don Serl over the years. The route we found, Wild West (200m, WI6 R/X), takes the leftmost corner system and was barely in climbable condition, due to the wetness and fragility of the ice. Sporting three long pitches, this wicked line was often difficult to protect and gymnastic to climb.

A couple of weeks later, the melt-freeze cycle allowed Jia Condon, Tony Richardson, and me to complete a new winter line on the Fluffy Kitten Wall, a backcountry cliff under the north side of Mt. Habrich. Jia, Antony Wood, and I had climbed Blue Gold (400m, WI5) on the northeast face of Habrich in February 2020. Frothing Feline (270m, WI5+) on Fluffy Kitten is well to the left (northeast) of the Blue Gold area. It takes on some of the best névé any of us had ever enjoyed and is capped by chimney ice and a devious, traversing finish.

In December 2021, Tim and Sam returned to the Shooting Gallery and established the Medusa (120m, WI6+), with two long pitches of thin columns and many mushrooms, cementing this crag’s status as the best hard ice wall in the Squamish area.

— Paul McSorley, Canada