Pitch one
Elaine and I are at the peak of our Canadian ice-climbing season. We’ve been regular climbing partners for the past three years and have done countless pitches together on gneiss, conglomerate, quartz, desert mudrock and sandstone.
Recently we’ve been dialling in on ice all over the Canadian Rockies. Every weekend, it’s up the icefields parkway and onto a new multipitch, the next challenge in our progression on ice. We swing leads and know each other’s food patterns, risk preferences, knowledge and ability inside out. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to be sharing a rope on the mega Weeping Wall.
Ice climbing started for me at a small, very melty crag of ice called Blue Lake. In
