Canada’s newest National Ice Climbing Team member Nathan Kutcher seems to be having a good start to the winter season. Having just flown out to Alberta in hopes of spending some more time training for the upcoming IFSC Ice Climbing World Cup season, Kutcher decided to check out The Girl Without Tits M9+ (TGWT) at Lower Haffner Creek. After warming up, Kutcher jumped on TGWT and was surprised at the difficult-to-read nature of the route.

“Starting out the climbing was straight forward enough. But soon the holds became very difficult to find which meant hanging out while scanning the rock for anywhere that looked like it might have a hold and then reaching up and finding it was no good,” says Kutcher.

After 45 minutes of climbing, Kutcher finally unlocked the sequences and topped out.

“So many times I wanted to quit and hang on the rope. Not finding the holds and getting so pumped was very discouraging as the moves weren’t very hard once I figured out where to go.  45min+ and I was finally digging through the snow at the top and clipping into the anchor, so tired I could barely hang on,” says Kutcher.

At the beginning of 2012, the Ontario based Kutcher came out of nowhere and won the prestigious Ouray Ice Fest and then returned home to establish the very serious ground-up first ascent of Metamorphosis M10 R.

You can read more about Kutcher in the December issue of Gripped and well as on his blog Mixed Momentum.