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Canmore

Although the weather could not be better for ice climbing in Austria at the end of February, our flight was confirmed and we (Hari Berger and me) left to climb one of the best ice and mixed multipitch-routes arround Canmore in Canada.

Ice climbing in Canada - a dream

Suffering from our jetlag we took part at the awesome drytooling indoor boulder comp in Wang´s Gym. Not having made a figure four in the last 4 weeks, I was happy to reach the finals. Still totally sour, we started the next day early in the morning to do our first link-up, nothing less than “T2” M7/WI 6+ and “Haunted by Waters” M9/WI 5, both located at the legendary Trophy wall high above Banff. Being up there you know why Guy Lacelle called this route the best out of his 100 favourite ice climbs. The birthday party of Will Gadd and a very nice techno party turned out as a very good reason to prevent more exploits and to first get over the jetlag during the next two days. Full of new energy we started Monday at 6 a.m. to link up “Call of the Curtain” WI6/M7+, maybe one of the best views of Canada and “Polar Circus” 500m WI5. Big surprice, when we read in the guide book of Polar Circus that it´s usually be done in 8-10 hours (we started 2.30 p.m. and finished at 6 p.m.).

Stanley headwall - the wall

Next day even earlier than on Monday, we started to Stanley Headwall to climb “Nightmare on Wolfsstreet” M7+ (hard!) and WI6+, which is an outstanding and demanding line. After the great “Nightmare”, we had a hard work to walk through the worst depth hoar ever back to “Suffer Machine” M7+/WI5, to have a big surprize. The first pitch without any protection (unfortunately we forgot to bring some nuts) was scary, but doable. The second pitch promised many bolts in the guidebook, but didn´t mention that most of the bolt-plates were missing… finally we decided to die another day and went back home.

Ghost adventure

With the link-up of “Hydrophobia” WI5 and “The Sorcerer” WI 5 in the ghost area, probably one of the best wild-west places, we were happy to get some easy waterfall climbing up to grade WI5.  Although we were already pretty sour from some hours hike in the days before, nobody told us that it´s 5 hours walk to get to both of them. “Better train calfs instead of bizeps”, was one of my thoughts during this hike. However, this day will also stay in my mind as one of the nicest. Finally I want to say thanks to the nice climbing community in Canmore, who supported us with some very important tools, like bikes, accomodation, nice hospitality, best route-beta. Special thanx to Kim, Will, Scott, Mike, Roger!

 

 

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