Romancing the Ghost
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,” ...