Raphael Slawinski

A few stars have to line up to get up (or down) something cool in the mountains. And the bigger the something, the more stars it takes. Thus, as long as you're fit and coordinated enough to ride a bike, you'll do fine on Professor Falls. You need somewhat bigger quads and a slightly better swing, all on top of a decent weather forecast, to climb Nemesis. However, to make Slipstream a reasonable proposition, you'd better have put in enough miles earlier in the season that you can run up the route - and have waited for bomber snow conditions. But I might be overcomplicating matters. In the end, success in the mountains comes down to "timing and hormones," to borrow Choc Quinn's memorable phrase. The sky might be blue, the ice plastic (or the snow fluffy, if down and not up is the goal), but if your body - or mind - are not up to the task, you're going nowhere. Conversely, you might be champing at the bit, but if the ice you dreamed about turns out to be slu...

“On the street where I live Every day is garbage day,” sang Montreal sludgeabilly rockers Deja Voodoo back in the eighties. Luckily on my street only every Tuesday is garbage day. Still, the seasons might come and go, but every Monday night without fail I roll out the black and blue bins into the alley behind my house: swatting at mosquitoes one month, pushing the bins through deep snow another. On a Monday evening in early April a light snowfall had blanketed the city. The previous week’s unseasonal heat had melted much of the winter’s snowpack, and bare ground and yellow grass showed through the thin white caul. As I was rolling out the bins, I bumped into my next-door neighbor. “This is terrible,” he blurted out, meaning the snow, not the garbage. I’m afraid I found it hard to be sympathetic. Sure, winter’s return meant going back to the gym after a couple of days of climbing in a t-shirt at the Lookout, but it also meant good skiing in the hills. And so there was more than a l...

Spring is here. In the Rockies this means snow still lies deep over the high peaks, ice in the shade is still blue, but down in the valleys rock is baking in the sun. This is the time of choice: skiing, ice climbing, rock climbing - choose your aspect and elevation, and go for it! A few years ago Will Gadd and I chose to celebrate spring by cramming as many different kinds of climbing into a day as we could manage. This past Easter long weekend I experienced something similar, though in a more leisurely manner. Four days, four different kinds of fun, with lots of time to sleep in and linger over the morning cafe lattes. I guess I am getting older, wiser - and lazier. Friday: Plastic I took a break from making East European Easter pastries and headed for a couple of hours to the gym. I find plastic to be the hardest form of climbing: no end runs around the hard stuff, no intermediates to bump off of, no prickly limestone to work your feet up on, just a smattering of taped...

Spring in the Rockies is an interesting time. It can suck, as the monsoon descends and turns rock into a seeping mess and snow into desperate mush. But it can also be brilliant, with dry rock in the front ranges and crisp conditions in the alpine. Right now we seem to be entering the monsoon phase (though the Lookout was pretty good this weekend), but last week was a different matter. *** Yamnuska Going up on Yam for the first time in the season feels like coming home: the sorting of gear in the parking lot, the hike up the switchbacks below the face, the hours spent navigating the maze of grey and yellow rock, the quick run down the backside, and then one more route because it is spring and there is still lots of daylight left. There is a reassuring familiarity about the whole affair but also some anxiety, as befits a big limestone cliff. Last weekend Gery Unterasinger and I inaugurated the Yam season with two of my favourites: Yellow Edge, and Jimmy and the Cruisers. Some might d...