A backcountry skier and snowboarder were caught in an avalanche near Etna Summit, about 40 miles west of Mt. Shasta, at approximately 2 p.m. on February 3, 2021. Both individuals had many years of backcountry experience, carried avalanche rescue g...
In the afternoon of Saturday, April 10, 2021, a group of three skiers loaded Chair 2 at Alpental ski area to access terrain beyond the area boundary. They had been skiing inbounds in the Alpental back bowls for a large part of the day. Upon reachi...
On March 6, my best friend Nolan Smythe, 26, and I were on the second day of a free ascent of Logical Progression, a 28-pitch 5.13 big-wall sport climb on El Gigante. Nolan was leading pitch 14. The sun had just gone down, and we had two moderate ...
A party of three was climbing Grillmair Chimneys, an eight-pitch 5.6 route on Yamnuska, on May 24. When the leader fell on pitch three, the rope dragged over a rock rib separating two gullies and the sheath was cut, exposing the core. The leader b...
Jughaul Wall is a three-pitch Bow Valley trad classic. I’d climbed it without incident three times over the past 18 years. This time, as I neared the top of the first pitch (5.5), I saw two shiny new bolts above a small ledge. I assumed this was w...
On August 26, an experienced, 38-year-old, male climber was leading an unknown sport route on Gardener’s Wall at Grassi Lakes. The climber fell about 40 feet to the ground after the belayer lost control of the rope. During the fall, the climber hi...
On July 20, a party of three made their second attempt to traverse Mt. Rundle from Canmore to Banff. They had attempted the traverse earlier in the summer and made it to a bivy site just beneath Peak 7. They aborted the attempt at that time becaus...
On August 28, an experienced party set out to climb Homage to the Spider (5.10a) on Mt. Louis, near Banff. The route is an alpine rock climb with a three-hour approach. It starts with a few hundred meters of third-and fourth-class scrambling to re...
A party of two climbers spent August 13 on Super Brewer, a long alpine rock climb that links the Ultra Brewer and Brewer Buttress routes on Castle Mountain. Ultra Brewer (330m, III 5.9) climbs to the Goat Plateau, a large ledge system at mid-heigh...
On July 28, two climbers were attempting a new route on the quartzite cliff known as the Saddleback Wall, near Lake Louise. They were one or two pitches up the four-pitch wall when the leader pulled off a loose block and took a fall. The gear held...
On July 22, three climbers were on The Search, a 5.10 sport route at the Back of the Lake crag. This pitch starts off a large ledge about 20 meters above the ground. At around 3 p.m., the leader fell while climbing above the fourth bolt and impact...
Our party of three arrived at the Moraine Lake parking lot around 7:30 a.m. on Decem- ber 28. The focus of the day was to ski the Pinnacle-Eiffel Couloir in Paradise Valley. We expected to cover the roughly 12-kilometer approach in three to four h...
On August 1, a party of two was ascending the east ridge of Mt. Temple and navigating a section of the route that involved traversing steep ice and snow for several hundred meters before the final vertical step through a rock band called the Black...
September 12 started out on the wrong foot for a pair of experienced climbers and outdoor recreationalists. They had not climbed on this part of Mt. Temple and were “off route” nearly as soon as they shut the car door at 3 a.m. Unfamiliar with th...
A 32-year-old male and a 25-year-old female attempted Mt. Edith Cavell via the third-class west ridge during the weekend of September 19 and 20. It is not known if they reached the summit, but there is evidence they got high on the ridge. During t...
On August 16, an experienced climber fell 250 meters to his death while moving unroped on the northwest ridge of Mt. Sir Donald. Reports suggested the 25-year-old man fell after pulling off a large block or boulder. Parks Canada was notified about...
Seven mountaineering club members had planned a climb of Chimai Mountain (2,306 meters), northwest of Squamish, in July. Although the mountain is glaciated, online research had suggested there was a route to the top that did not involve glacier tr...
On February 8, I took a long leader fall on the third pitch of Broken Hearts, a long ice route in the South Fork Valley. I was climbing in a group of three ahead of five friends doing the same route in two rope teams. At around 11 a.m., I was near...
On August 2, Junghyun “Jiji” Nam fell at the base of the Feather Buttress route (5.10+) on the north side of War Bonnet Peak, above the Cirque of the Towers. Nam and her climbing partner were gearing up to start the climb when she slipped and tumb...