Raphael Slawinski

It was arguably Kurt Albert who first introduced the redpoint concept: the notion of continuously climbing a route from bottom to top without grabbing or hanging on protection points (yes, it's still aid even if you just rest on a piece of gear). The story goes that he would paint a red X on a fixed piton he was able to eliminate as a point of aid. Once he had eliminated all aid from a route, he would paint a red dot at its base. For a while more colours entered the picture, but these days only people with old lycra tights in their closet know the difference between a redpoint and a pinkpoint (at least where sport climbing is concerned - trad is a different matter). Kurt Albert's 'rotpunkt' idea makes it pretty clear what it means to free a single-pitch route. But what about multi-pitch climbs? Alex Huber was influential in clarifying just what it meant to free a long route when he applied the ethics evolved on the limestone of the eastern Alps to the Salathe Wall ...

A few people have asked me recently about some rather obscure routes I did over the years. Rather than just emailing out topos and letting the climbs languish in the obscurity they perhaps deserve, I thought I would post the information here in case others might be interested. Note that the routes in question are somewhat more adventurous than most, lacking such user-friendly amenities as bolted belays. For all that they do offer some excellent climbing, the Windtower and Rimwall routes in particular being - in my opinion, anyway - among the best long climbs in the Bow Valley. Marcus Norman high on the Stanley Headwall. Le Jour Le Plus Long, Northeast Face of the Windtower, ~550 m, 5.11 or 5.10d This outstanding route was established on summer solstice in 2000 by two Quebecois climbers, Remy Bernier and Francois Roy, in just about the best style possible: on-sight and hammerless. Rolando Garibotti and I made the second ascent in 2003 and added a two-pitch va...

"I noticed a long time ago that with the arrival of the spring rock climbing season the soul of a climber migrated from the left side of the body into the fingertips..." - Voytek Kurtyka, Lamaniec . It's been a while since I spent an entire summer in the Rockies. For the past three years the pull of exotic places like Alaska and the Karakoram had prevented me from experiencing the whole of the season in my favourite mountain range. And so I was understandably excited at the prospect - at least until the June monsoon arrived. As day after day dawned grey and sodden, I remembered why I often arranged to be somewhere else during this, the wettest month of the year. Even overhanging cliffs became unclimbable, as rainwater percolated from above and turned crimpers, slopers and sidepulls into a seeping mess. Then I remembered one cliff that (almost never) seeps: Yamnuska. In particular, I remembered a route that I had played on some years ago: Yamabushi . It was around the ...

Sometimes all the stars line up, we walk up to our chosen line and send. But as often as not, this doesn’t happen: for one reason or another, the objective of our desire turns out to be out of reach. Now what? Suppose you came up to the Columbia Icefields from Calgary. Not exactly an expedition but still, you drove out the night before, slept somewhere in the bushes, got up before dawn and stumbled up the moraines before you realized it was either snowing or too warm or whatever. Now what? The obvious answer is to hike down to the car, drive back to Lake Louise, load up on coffee and pastries, and continue home. But while coffee, pastries and eventually the couch hold a definite appeal, it seems a shame to waste all that effort. So what to do? The answer is to come up with a Plan B. I consider myself a bit of a Plan B master. I suspect it comes from being a wanker as well as a weekend warrior. Being a wanker, I turn around when others might have gone on. And being a weekend warrior, ...

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...