Rockies Ice Conditions 05/06

Nov 24 - French Reality, 5.8, WI6 - Louis Julien Roy and I climbed FR on Thursday. Wow what a great climb. The first pitch didn't look that hard, but it was harder than it looked. I should have known something was up when I volunteered to do it, and Louis said yes right way. Anyhow, not much for gear, so falling was not allowed. Funny how easy moves suddenly get really hard when your looking at decking. I slung a pillar right at the start, moved up and stepped on it, and it just fell off. I was not a happy camper. Louis did the second pitch, I thought it was pretty hard. Right off the belay there was a hard pillar with some pretty marginal gear and hard climbing He did a really good job of keeping it together. Also, the last 10 meter's were kind of weird climbing with no gear, I was glad Louis did this pitch! I did the last two ice pitches as one long one. The ice was good, probably around grade 6.

Nov 19 - Haffner - Shelley and I went there, things are getting good. Climbed Californication, Swank and a few others.

Nov 17 - Bourgeau Right Hand - Sean Isaac and I went to Bourgeau to climb it. At the top of the 4th pitch, an avalanche went off on the left hand side so we bailed. The ice was good and if the avi hazzard is okay (it was rated moderate) it would be in great shape. This is the second time I've bailed off of this climb because of avalanches, so if you see me up there, bail cause I'm just plain bad luck on this thing.

Early November - Sean and I worked on what is now known as Balzout Direct.(the two dots in the middle is Sean & I) We climbed 5 pitches of good mixed climbing to get to the base of the big hanging dagger. We bolted a line off to the left, it's about eight or nine bolts. We bailed cause that dagger seemed pretty dangerous in our minds. Later, Eamon Walsh and Dana Ruddy climbed it and got the first accent, nice work guys. The climbing up to the dagger is really good, kind of traditional mixed climbing on natural gear with the occasional bolt. The belays up to the dagger are now fixed with two bolts at each, I would highly recommend climbing just to the dagger if you felt like it. Oh yeah, it's still waiting a free accent too.

March 27 - Wow, it's been way too long since I posted anything about ice climbing on these pages. Sorry. It's not that we haven't been getting out, but just not posting about it I guess. Early in the New Year, Sean and I spent some time on Cryophobia working on a film with Chris Alstan, here is a little hint of what the film will look like. Balzout Direct got a free accent by Rapheal Slawinski and Eamon, nice work guys. Raph actually onsited the bolted pitch, it has some nasty dry tooling on little down slopping edges, and in my mind that is one fantastic onsight. What else, spent the last few weeks working on a route up on the Stanley Headwall with Sean, should be complete pretty soon if the weather cooperates with us. We did a day of shooting with Kennan Harvey on the route and also redpointed the first two pitches. Some really good climbing up there. Shelley and I went to Field the other day and climbed Carlsburg and Kronenburg. Both are in really good shape, Kronenburg has some really fun climbing on it this year. Big mushrooms and roof's to climb around, it was a blast. There was a bit of slide activity on the approach, but it was solid the day we were there. Here is a picture of Shelley coming accross where the slide was, this one started pretty high and went all the way into the tree's. It would not have been a fun ride. Be careful out there.