Raphael Slawinski

Last month, if you happened to glance at the southeastern horizon at dawn, before the sky was bleached by daylight, you'd have seen a bright star rising. In Greek mythology, Sirius, the brightest star in the northern night sky, was the Dog Star, the canine companion of Orion the trophy hunter (he once bragged he'd kill every animal on Earth). The fact that the star rose together with the sun at the hottest time of the year led ancient Greeks to suppose that Sirius was responsible for that heat. Hence, the dog days of summer - a classic instance of confusing correlation with causation. Reality is, as always, stranger and more interesting than superstition. In the nineteenth century, Sirius was found to be in fact a double star. The previously unseen companion is a white dwarf , a fantastically dense object held up against the crush of gravity by an exotic quantum mechanical effect. Thoughts of ancient superstitions and modern physics flitted through my head as I sweated up ...

As soon as I got back from Alaska I headed out on the rocks. Three weeks on a glacier does not do much for finger strength, and I wanted to be ready when summer hit. I need not have hurried. July was cold and wet, with a deep snowpack lingering up high. I suppose walking around in the rain and trying to keep my digits warm, be it in Echo Canyon or in the Bugaboos, made me appreciate real summer when it did finally arrive. I was not always big on the Bugs. In the four or five hours it takes to drive from Calgary to the trailhead one passes so many fine objectives it is easy to get sidetracked. But as years passed and I ticked off routes on Yam, Windtower and Temple, I found myself increasingly looking for adventure among those granite spires. This summer alone I have already made the short but steep approach four times, and I might not be done yet. Two very different routes have been the highlights of my Bugs season thus far: one shorter but more technical, the other longer but, w...

The alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m. I do not hear it, as I have my earplugs in against Jon's snoring, but he does. I stick my head out of the tent and look at the sky. Not a single cloud obscures the thousands of stars; there is no excuse to go back to sleep. Unfortunately by the time we choke down our instant oatmeal the stars have disappeared behind dark clouds. But with a full French press' worth of coffee in our veins there is no turning back, and we set off boulder hopping by headlamp across the moraines. The early morning light is just enough to see by when we crest the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col. What we see is not very inspiring: thick, low clouds are streaming from the north across the Howsers. The thought of rappelling into the west face in marginal weather does not appeal. We run back down to Applebee, where we crawl into our sleeping backs and do not reemerge until almost noon. Wake up and smell the coffee! The stormy Howsers from the Bugaboo-Sno...

Last month "Polish Bob" Rogoz and I spent some time in the Bugaboos . We enjoyed good granite, sunshine and storm; in other words, the classic Bugs experience. Are there really porcupines up Bugaboo Creek, or is it all a myth? The west face of Snowpatch Spire. Yoga on the (south) summit of Snowpatch. Photo: Robert Rogoz. Life and death on the glacier. Sunrise on the Howser Towers. A piece of gear should ideally serve more than one function. For instance, a sharpened stick works as an ice axe but also comes in handy for staking vampires. The sun's first rays warming the top of the Beckey-Choiunard route on South Howser Tower. The Great White Headwall on the Beckey-Choiunard. Photo: Robert Rogoz. A disturbing scene on the summit of South Howser Tower. A Rockies' rat does not like to venture out of sight of his favourite mountains: Bugaboo Spire with the Goodsir Towers in the background. In the clouds on the summit ridge of Bugaboo Spire. Bugaboo moonrise.