Raphael Slawinski

Dave Cheesmond was the driving force behind most of the hard new alpine routes done in the Rockies in the 80's. He was fond of saying that if you could climb here, you could climb anywhere. You can quibble about the details ("What about high altitude?"), but not the gist of his pithy phrase. Compared to Alaska or the Himalaya, the Rockies, with their crumbling rock and modest height, are not the sexiest mountain range around. But it's likely easier to get up a big peak in Alaska, with its perfect snowpack and granite, or in the Himalaya, with porters carrying your stuff to basecamp (and sometimes higher), than to fight your way up a remote north face in the Rockies. This coming Wednesday, at the Mappy Hour YYC , I'll tell some stories from our own mountain backyard, and try to convince you that if you want adventure, there's really no need to go anywhere else. I hope to see you there. Eamonn Walsh gains the summit ridge of Mt. Alberta on his way to makin...

August Kolin was up in the Rockies for the August long weekend, escaping a sweltering Salt Lake City. He spent one day multipitching in Echo Canyon, the next on the Icefields Parkway... It made me tired just thinking about it, but it was standard fare for Kolin. After all, a weekend jaunt to the Rockies is nothing for the man who's attempted Mt. Huntington round-trip in an extended weekend. On his last day in the Crumblies, an outing with yours truly was on the agenda, but there was a catch. Kolin's a huge Tragically Hip fan, and he had tickets to the farewell show at the Saddledome. This posed a bit of a conundrum, as he was also keen to do something with an alpine flavour. I hardly need mention that unless you're in Chamonix, alpine climbing and being home early generally don't go together. I racked my brain for something close to the city, close to the road, yet a bit out there. Then I remembered The Wedge. This small peak has long been one of my favourite...

Earlier this month I spent a week in Squamish, taking in and taking part in the Arc’teryx Academy . The event kicked off with a slide show by Peter Croft. The adjective “legendary” is overused but it applies to Croft. I’d never seen the man in person before, and while cragging in the Bulletheads that afternoon we kept an eye on the time so as not to miss his show. As it was, he was already being introduced when we squelched our way through wet grass and tried to squeeze in under the crowded awning to escape the rain. Mixing humour with wisdom, Croft told stories of his early days in Squamish, from false starts on Sentry Box, his first 12a, to multi-hour soloing circuits. The soaked Chief rising above the town provided a fitting backdrop. My own contribution to the festival was much more prosaic, consisting of teaching a clinic on alpine systems with Tim McAllister and a seminar on expedition planning with Steve Swenson . What are alpine systems, you ask? Before the clinic I asked...

Three years ago, in 2013, Ian Welsted and I enjoyed a successful trip to Pakistan. We did a bunch of good climbing and even managed to summit what was, by Karakoram standards, a moderately big peak. Two years ago I went north to Denali with Alpine Mentors, presumably to impart some alpine experience to four talented climbers half my age. But all that June the weather in the Alaska Range was atrocious, and during the entire four-week trip we didn't swing a tool once. Then last year I got ambitious. Daniel Bartsch, David Gottler and I figured that if we were going to climb Everest, we might as well do it in alpine style by a new route. When the earthquake struck we hadn't even put our crampons on. Ian Welsted curses the hot afternoon sun as he swings and kicks his way up a moderate ice pitch on the northwest face of K6 West. Steven Van Sickle hikes up to the north summit of Denali. No swinging required. Yours truly on a nameless bump in Tibet, with Everest in the d...

Tiles of black and yellow limestone shimmered in the late-afternoon sun as we pounded down the faint trail below the Athabasca-Andromeda glacier. A dashed line on the dirty surface of a snow patch showed where our boots had barely dented its frozen surface less than twelve hours earlier. Now we waded through isothermal slush, plunging down to scree with every step. It was only the first day of May, but the warm air had the soft, wistful touch of summer. I felt both old and young. How many times have I walked down these moraines since an August day a quarter of a century ago, after my father had led my brother and me to the top of Athabasca? There've been so many afternoons like the one today, running down the trail worn into limestone rubble, feeling a familiar mixture of fatigue and happiness. I tried to see Andromeda, Snow Dome, Kitchener, all the big peaks clustered around the grey tongue of the Columbia Icefield below, as a wide-eyed twenty-something might've seen them...

When I returned from Scotland at the beginning of February, I hadn’t swung my tools in a while. The climbing in Scotland was all about rimed up rock (and atrocious weather, but that’s another story). And even before I left Canada, in order to prepare myself for the fabled Scottish mixed climbing I’d eschewed fat ice in favour of rock, the more snowed up and traditional in flavour the better. By the time I got back from the land of tenuous hooking and three-hour leads, I craved fast, smooth movement. With iffy avalanche conditions deeper in the mountains, Juan and I headed into the Ghost. His expert driving and a newly bulldozed track got us to within a half-hour walk of the blue pillars of Fang and Fist. We squeezed every bit of ice out of the climb, even the rolling steps higher up. After rappelling off, we backtracked to the main drainage and boulder hopped up it for another half hour, hoping to spot some ice on the impressive rock walls looming on all sides. “A waste of rock,” ...