"Open up, I’m coming in!” I squeeze under the rain fly of the portaledge next to Nik Berry and Mason Earle. The rain is turning to sleet and the thunder’s getting closer. The three of us are hunkered down, 800 feet up the north face of Mt. Hooker ...
“Right now your grief is this giant gaping hole with sharp edges, but as you move forward in life the edges soften and other beautiful things start to grow around it…flowers and trees of experiences. The hole never goes away, but it becomes gentle...
Ryan: “A Wild Ride to the Summit of Mount Johnson” reads the American Alpine Journal. Beneath the headline, a meaty account of Jack Tackle and Doug Chabot’s first ascent of the Elevator Shaft in 1995.I’m fresh off my first real alpine climb, Halle...
In May, Jonas Haag and I made the first ascent of Lurking Tower over 13 days by the route New Dog, Old Tricks (3,000’, VI 5.11 C3+). This was my sixth trip to Baffin Island and my partner’s first big wall—ever.I first went to Baffin 17 years ago....
Sens Unique (200m, 5.10+, Bérubé-Frick, 1974 ) is a particularly remote route that follows an imposing rock pillar up Acropole des Draveurs. The route is in the Charlevoix region and is well known as an ice-climbing destination because of the mega...
Over three days in August, Jon Simms and I established a new route on the northeast face of Mt. Stephen (10,495’) in Yoho National Park. Our goal was the massive, unclimbed, and eye-catching wall known locally as the “Great Wall of China” or “Apoc...
This past winter a few friends and I did something unusual. Rather than further support the petro-state of Alberta by driving the six-hour round-trip to the Ice Fields Parkway or four hours of off-roading into the Ghost, we approached the mountain...
In mid-November I had some great adventures completing a couple of big, new mixed routes with strong partners on the lower northeast face of Capricorn Peak. This mountain is just north of and behind Mt. Patterson along the Icefields Parkway. The r...
On November 8, Jon Walsh and Marc-André Leclerc (both Canada) completed the first ascent of a traditionally protected mixed route on the Storm Creek Headwall: the Plum (120m, WI6 M7). Storm Creek Headwall is similar to the Stanley Headwall, locate...
In August, Winter Ramos and I ventured into the Leaning Towers, a remote and rarely visited bleb of granite just south of the world-famous Bugaboos. After two friends, Ryan Leary and Evan Reimondo, put up a new route on the east face of Hall Peak ...
In summer 2014, Katie Bono, Hannah Preston, and I went to explore the Leaning Towers. Following logging roads outside of Kimberly, BC, we set off on our adventure. Burdened with 80lb packs, we traveled along a horse trail for 10km. This was the ea...
On August 6, Joanne Mauthner, Jeffrey Bury, and I climbed a new route on the east face of Sharkshead Tower in the Leaning Tower Group. We climbed glacial ice to gain the rock, and from there it was six 30m pitches to the north summit. The hardest ...
In August, Jon Walsh and Michelle Kadatz flew into East Creek Basin and climbed a new route on Wide Awake Tower. The tower is located in the seldom-visited Pigeon Feathers group, and the new, nine-pitch route Electric Funeral (300m, 5.11+) mostly ...
On July 28, Tony McLane and Nathan McDonald climbed a new route on North Howser Tower’s west face: Dodging Deanna (V 5.10). The pair started up the Shooting Gallery and then crossed Seventh Rifle (Jones-Rowell-Qamar, 1971) to gain new ground. The ...
Anyone who has driven the Coquihalla Highway (#5), which runs beneath the south face of Yak Peak, just north of Hope, British Columbia, may know of its literary flare. The engineer of the complex series of bridges and tunnels through Coquihalla Ca...
The leftmost end of the Chief’s north walls is braided with splitter cracks, coarse-grained corners, and ledge systems. Apart from a couple of seeps down low, the Parallels Wall dries out quickly after storms. In 2011, Eric Huges and I redpointe...
The El Niño weather pattern created very unusual conditions in western Canada during the 2014–15 winter season. Powder skiing did not happen and the lower-elevation waterfalls all fell down. Even the stalwart classics that usually remain climbable...
In late July, Brette Harrington, Hannah Preston, Andrew Rennie, and I spent two weeks base-camped out of Sunny Knob. On our first day, Harrington and I established a direct variation to the upper part of Serra 2’s approximately 1,500m south ridge....
The Russian team of Vladislav Dubrovin, Vadim Kalinkin, Konstantin Markevich, and Dmitry Skotnikov completed the first ascent of Svarog (4,960m), the central peak of the north-facing wall at the head of the Ashat Gorge. The team spent 10 days as...
Life is all about balance—at least that’s what you call it when you sacrifice work, relationships, and life maintenance to pursue a silly climbing goal. So when Scotty Nelson and I (two average climbers) eagerly agreed to a hefty training program ...