Canada Ice - A Winter in the Rockies

It was 1998, I was stranded in Los Angeles airport, on a long haul flight back to New Zealand. Killing time, I stared at a world map. I still remember thinking, "I want to live in Canada in the winter."



Pilsner Pillar. One of the classic ice climbs in the Canadian Rockies

Almost twenty years later, that strange wish came true. Previously, I have always dreamt up my own trips and adventures in the homeland. Since becoming part of the New Zealand Alpine Team, the team commitment has included several overseas trips to world meccas of ice, rock and altitude to boost our mountain skills. Pencilled in over three years, these trips have made life planning easy.

Ben Dare on Louise Falls

Beginning with three weeks of ice climbing in the Canadian Rockies, I awoke my dormant dream of a Canadian winter and decided to stay on for four months after our compatriots had returned to NZ. Though risky, with no secure income guaranteed, the gamble would prove to pay off...

Myself on Bourgeau Left

Over three intense weeks, our group of ten climbers indulged in more frozen waterfalls than the average kiwi enjoys in a decade. While NZ has prolific mountaineering terrain, and we become skilled on rough approaches, exposed snow slopes and loose rock bands, we are rarely treated to columns of pure vertical water-ice.

Gemma Wilson on Weeping Wall

Adding to the challenge in Canada are debilitating temperatures, especially in the coldest month of January, with temperatures as low as -30 celcius. The screaming pain of thawing frozen hands was our inevitable companion on our first brutally cold climb of Louise Falls, and almost every other outing. Double boots designed for Himalayan altitudes were necessary to prevent frostnip on the coldest days of the season.

As the flick of our ice axe improved, our tick lists of the classic ice climbs grew, increasing in length and difficulty. A few weeks after the Alpine Team returned to New Zealand, I joined two new friends for a trip back up to the Icefields Parkway in the northern Rockies. Artem, from Russia, and Alexis, a Canmore local.

We started our ice fiesta with Murchison Falls, the perfect warm-up with four pitches of soft plastic ice up to WI4+. Conditions on this huge ice fall can vary wildly between the start and end of the 5-month Canadian ice season but we quickly realised how easy the climbing was in the relative warmth of late February compared to the cold, brittle ice in January. Alexis led her first pitch of WI4 from a cave belay at half height, having mentally recovered from the guilt of forgetting half of the quickdraws an hour earlier.

Myself, Artem and Alexis on Murchison Falls

All the hostels were fully booked that night so were forced to bivouac in the snow on the side of the road below our next objective: Curtain Call.

The majestic Curtain Call

Despite camping at the gate, we were still beaten to the base by a three man Spanish team. Improvising, I stretched a 70m pitch up the left-hand side of the massive pillar into a cave behind the central pillar. Instead of curving around onto the outside face, I climbed up to the curtain, towards the mystical blue light, and smashed my way through the shield and peered through to the outside world.

Breaking through the backside of the curtain halfway up Curtain Call

Just then, an ice axe appeared: the Spanish team was climbing up from the other side. I laughed and waited for them to pass before breaking out onto the steep chandeliers, stemming up a gulley to the top.

Myself on the right side of Curtain Call

In January we had made several trips to the famous Weeping Wall, an impressive sheet of ice a football field wide and 200 metres tall, only five minutes from the road. We had climbed it left, right and central, but due to conditions and weather, we never managed to venture onto the upper tier, to climb the notorious Weeping Pillar. A further 180 metres of "the most difficult plastic ice you'll ever climb". The biggest challenge is hitting it before the sun turns it into rotten slush, as many climbers had warned.

We fired up Weeping Wall left-side topping out on sunrise, now treating it as "approach ice", continuing up tracks to the Weeping Pillar, an intimidating jumble of chandeliers, snow mushrooms and hanging ice daggers. The three pitches were long, requiring crafty excavation for still dubious ice screw placements. We topped out just as conditions were deteriorating in the heat, and we V-threaded the melting waterfall as quickly as possible.

Artem, Alexis and I after the descent of the monstrosity that is the Weeping Pillar

If there was one climb we had our eyes set on more than any other, it was Polar Circus. One of the longest ice routes, although it starts off rambling, the top five pitches are a masterpiece of the Rockies, set deep in a powerful cleft. The avalanche hazard on this climb is notable, and we weighed up the risk carefully before committing to it.

Setting off excitedly at 3:30AM, we simul-climbed the first four easy pitches in darkness, and linked rope-stretchers up the first half of the upper tier at dawn, switching off headlamps in time for the business end finale- incredible, steep, featured ice. We wasted no time on the descent, literally running between abseil anchors, pulling the ropes as we galloped. The adrenaline was still pumping when we arrived back at the cars a fraction less than 7 hours after starting.

3AM, Artem and I ready for Polar Circus

Artem firing an ice axe salute to the upper tiers of Polar Circus on descent

After that success, the momentum was hot. Artem and I opened our eyes and started to dream, buoyed by the giddyness of tasting those mythical ice formations. Our next move followed quickly. A return to the windswept Ghost Valley, home to the Real Big Drip. We both knew this 200m monster of hard mixed and ice climbing was beyond us, with an opening pitch of friable M8 going on M9 rock into bullet hard ice blobs, steepening into outrageous WI7 overhangs.

Artem sights the Real Big Drip from a lookout on the approach

Artme climbing the bullet hard ice of the Real Big Drip first pitch

Even the approach was a challenge, and the icy wind had no mercy as we neared the intimidating formation. It was like nothing I had seen before, drip ice adhered to the rock in wild shapes and structures, disappearing out of sight above. The first pitch alone took two hours to lead, and two hours to second. Huge chunks of limestone peeled off as we climbed, I feared the whipper as I negotiated cryptic moves on small edges between spaced bolts.

Peaking

Flash pump throbbed beneath my many layers of clothing. Shoelace thin ropes made seconding harder than leading, as every popped tool resulted in negative progress for Artem. We had tasted the next level, and decided to retreat. Humbled by the experience, and full of respect for the Real Big Drip, we vowed to return one day.

Retreat from Real Big Drip. The wildest & most inspiring ice formation I have ever seen

          

Soon after, the winter chill was replaced with unwelcome spring-time heat. Melting ice and ubiquitous avalanches drove us south to the Utah desert, in search of sun, splitter sandstone, and desert towers.

Fine Jade, The Rectory, Utah

On my return several weeks later, I was pleasantly surprised to find the icicles still hanging on. A sleep deprived welcome-back climb of Twisted in Field had me realise the spring conditions made for much easier climbing. The stage was set to take on some of the harder classics.

Twisted with Noburu Kiruchi. He later helped me land a job as a salad chef at the Grizzly Paw Brewery

Exploring new styles of dry tooling in a hidden cave above Canmore

Climbing a slender ice pillar accessed by bolted M7 choss-tooling, all while being pounded by spindrift

I soon found that the Stanley Headwall was in, and seeing action. Gemma Wilson and I attempted French Reality, but a snow storm blew in early and we made a hasty retreat.

Gemma skiing away from French Reality (right hand upper ice streak) as a storm rolls in

I returned a few days later with Michelle Kadatz, a super-keen ice & mixed aficionado from Calgary. We scratched back up to Gemma's highpoint, and proceeded to climb a hundred metres of the steepest, most sustained ice we had touched of the season. We couldn't feel too proud though, pushing into the mildness of April, it was practically a summer ascent. The same climb would be an order of magnitude more difficult in true winter conditions, a true WI6+.

Michelle Kadatz topping out French Reality

The season was closing, but Jason Dayman and I were frothing for a fierce finale. Michelle Kadatz had mentioned the mixed climb Man Yoga, put up a few years earlier by Jon Walsh & Jonny Simms on the Stanley Headwall. Something of a test piece it seemed. Steep M7 on trad, into a tenuous, thin M7 slab (not quite as heady with the retro-bolting), into a long pitch that culminates in an M8 roof pull. I made it through the roof on the onsight attempt, battling horrendous rope drag having run-out of long quick draws...

Jason Dayman approaches Man Yoga

Jason on the first pitch of M7 trad

Jason seconding the tenuous M7 dry tooling slab

Pumped out of mind, my picks wrenching rock loose from the wall, I felt I could peel off with the choss at any minute, but somehow hung on. "SLACK!!!" I yelled, tugging desperately at the tight ropes to clip the final quickdraw of the crux... I pulled so hard on those ropes, that I managed to pull myself off the wall, my grip finally failing, and I flew off into space. "Snap!" That was the sound of my umbilical leashes snapping. As I hung in mid air, dangling five metres below the roof, I looked up to see my ice axe wedged in a crack, the leash flapping around in the gentle breeze. I pulled back up and finished the pitch.

Jason coming through the M8 roof

Jason, a strong rock climber, followed up in bare hands. We bailed on the final ice pitch, which looked rotten. We needed the extra daylight to excavate Jason's skis, which had been buried by an enormous avalanche that had ripped overhead earlier in the day. Jason found his skis. We decided that was enough adventure for one winter in the Canadian Rockies.

Excavating our skis the day after the avalanche buried them

A week later I drove west to Vancouver Island, for six weeks of commercial prawn fishing around the beautiful inlets of west coast British Columbia. I was content to leave behind the winter of the Canadian Rockies, ready to start a new adventure...