Québec is a wild place—it’s always the first thing I tell my friends who visit from abroad. The province has countless lakes and streams, and all that water freezes during our long winters and creates a paradise for ice climbers.

In 2018, Jean-Philippe Bélanger, Charles Roberge, and I learned about a potential new climbing area above the Moisie River, 120km north of the town of Sept-Îles. (The Moisie flows south from western Labrador for 410km, entering the St. Lawrence River near Sept-Îles.) It was a pinpoint on a map in the middle of nowhere, without any road or snowmobile option for access. The only way to get there was by helicopter.

Luckily for us, one of our local friends, Michel Séguin, works for Heli-Boreal, based in Sept-Îles, and knows just enough about ice climbing to know what we look for. In February 2019, Charles and Jean-Philippe received pictures from Michel, who was flying close to the Moisie River and made a small detour to check it out. The pictures showed potential beyond our expectations. We wanted to get there as soon as possible, but the pandemic had other plans for us. We had to wait three years to see the place by ourselves.

In February 2022, Charles, Jean-Philippe, and I landed in the upper Moisie River valley after a 45-minute helicopter ride. We set up our camp at 51°19’21.2”N, 66°17’36.6”W. That far north, the temperature can be brutal, and a prospector tent with a woodstove is the best option for camping. Ice lines ran down the big cliffs along the river in all directions. One line caught our attention right away: a maze of vertical and overhanging formations. However, we decided to start by climbing some other routes to get accustomed to the area.

First up was an east-facing flow we called Patte Blanche (180m, WI5), climbed in -20°F temperatures. During the middle of the climb, we saw a pack of wolves walking on the frozen river not far below us. It got me thinking about the bacon grease I had poured on the snow next to our food stash in the morning. Later, in the dead of that night, the wolf pack came back to give us a proper welcome by howling next to our tent.

As the temperature got more tolerable, we climbed our second major ice flow on a south-facing cliff on the north side of the river that we called La Tanière (170m, WI5). Totally psyched by those two new routes, we turned our attention to the main prize, located on a northeast-facing cliff on the west side of the Moisie River.

We spent the following day resting and studying our objective. This wait paid off, because the temperature was around 20°F as we were getting ready to climb the next morning, meaning we’d find softer and more forgiving ice. The climb was a complex structure of untamed ice: sustained and three-dimensional pretty much all the way. We climbed through three different ice tunnels—one of them went straight through a massive ice roof. Maïkan (150m, WI6+) was like nothing we’d seen before. It felt appropriate to name the line in honor of our new friend, Maïkan, which means “wolf” to the Innu, the native community that hunts in the area.

When I think about that day, it was like our friendship and all the years honing our skills had led up to our being able to climb this line safely. With the deepest humility and respect, I felt like we became masters of our own craft that very day.

— Yan Mongrain, Canada