Avenue

Expose Yourself

The Bow Valley is home to countless great climbing routes, so step out of your comfort zone and discover why so many people are hung up on climbing

By Geoff Powter
Photography By Andrew Querner

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For the third time in 15 minutes, I find myself at the foot of the Wall of Shadows, the name I’ve given to the last stretch of hard climbing that guards the top of a cliff high above Canmore.

The “shadows” are cast by little, perfectly circular dents in the rock that seem to have been tapped in by a ball-peen hammer, and if I’m going to finish this damn climb, I’m going to have to cipher how to balance on nothing but those shadows.

I start the little dance over again. Left foot here, a finger in that dent there, then pull up ever so lightly and scan for the next toe edge. 

Breathe, but not too hard; it feels like too deep a breath, or even the slightest taste of fear or doubt, will be enough weight to send me crashing back to the last safety bolt. Sure enough, as soon as I shift my good foot, I’m flying again.

I’m incredibly frustrated — after all, I’ve done this thing several times before; hell, I was the first person to ever climb up this last bit to the rim — but really, there’s no place on Earth I’d rather be. It’s a glorious, sunny Rockies day. The 500-foot climb up to this point has been a perfect blend of flow and gymnastic challenge and I’ve shared it with a great old friend.

And I’m surrounded by hundreds of other equally fantastic climbs. Left and right of me on Mount Rundle there are several long routes on great rock; some easier than the one I’m puzzling my way up, some far out of my league. Throughout the day, I’ve watched scores of climbers head down into the gulch above Grassi Lakes, home to dozens of short and technically demanding — but safe — “sport” climbs.

Behind me, the shaded north face of Ha Ling Peak is a glowering home to several more sober and dangerous “traditional” climbs — perfect ambitions for later in the season when my head gets screwed on better. Across the valley behind Canmore, I can see canyon after canyon, wall after wall, filled with every range and style of climb, and I know that around the corner to the west, to Banff and beyond, there are just as many great routes waiting.

In the 30-plus years I’ve been rock climbing in the Bow Valley, I’ve watched climbing explode in popularity, growing from a pretty dangerous, and consequently pretty eccentric, pursuit into a mainstream, hugely common outdoor game.

You can thank gear for most of the growth. Better equipment — especially expansion bolts permanently drilled into the rock on sport climbs — has improved safety immensely, and that has meant more and more people are willing to enter the sport.

A game that was once a mostly macho domain is now practised in almost equal numbers by women, and families can take up sport climbing within sensible bounds of risk. Those changes have encouraged thousands of people who never would have considered tying into a rope in the rougher past to try climbing.

And there are few places in Canada that are better — as a beginner or an expert — to play the rock game than the Bow Valley. Beginning east of Canmore at Mount Yamnuska (home to many of the best boltless traditional climbs) and running all the way to the sport climbing paradise at Lake Louise, there are well over 1,500 climbs at all levels of difficulty and safety, most of them easily accessible. 

Though the Rockies certainly have some poor-quality rock — exploring is not a great idea for a novice — most of the areas that have been extensively developed by route-setters are on good-enough deep grey limestone (like Ha Ling Peak) or fluorescent orange quartzite (like Back of the Lake at Lake Louise) that they’ve seduced climbers from across the country to move to the valley to climb.

Sonnie Trotter, a transplant Easterner who’s one of the very best rock climbers in the world, raved about the potential when he moved to Canmore last year.

“There’s just so much to do here,” he bubbled one afternoon at Grassi Lakes. “There are great climbs all over the place, and so much that hasn’t been explored at all. I could climb here every day for the next five years and hardly begin to touch the potential.”

There are only a couple of areas in Canada — Squamish, B.C., and the Skaha Bluffs near Penticton, B.C., — that approach the breadth and quality of climbing available in the Bow Valley.

Back up on my own wall, the fact of that quality couldn’t be more evident. With birds chattering and whooshing all around me, the temperature a perfect cool, Gap Lake sparkling turquoise far below and the late-afternoon sun just starting to christen the top of Ha Ling, everything starts to come together. The last steep section below the rim moves into shade, and I can suddenly see dime-thick edges and little finger cups that were invisible in the glare of the sun — more than enough to encourage me back into the dance.

In a way that it often does when the mood on a wall changes even a little bit, the path suddenly seems self-evident: a toe here, a finger there, and things start to flow again.

In only a few minutes I’ve pulled through the last of the perfect ripples of flawless  limestone, hop onto the sandy beach of the top, and see the whole valley, and the one behind it, and well into the next. It all unfolds before me and there’s not a place in the world I’d rather be.