Beware expectations
I’ve been bashing ice in the Rockies for longer than I care to admit (but coming up on a quarter of a century). When you’ve slogged up a particular valley or bowl more than once (or twice or thrice), it’s hard to keep your mind free of preconceptions. The resulting experience ends up being as much about the baggage of expectations you carry up as it is about the snow, ice and rock beneath your crampons and tools. The beginner’s mind proves as elusive as it is clichéd. *** N’Ice Baby, WI5 “… an excellent route offering a good compromise of excellent ice with difficult, but not unrelenting steepness.” – Joe Josephson, Waterfall Ice Climbs in the Canadian Rockies Rather than type yet another text, I decided to shortcut the exchange. I dialled Jon’s number just as he was about to dial mine. “The forecast is for high winds, not ideal for that smear on S.” “I was thinking the same thing. I guess we could just go ice climbing. The bowl abo...