I agree.

This is the worst year on record.

God bless

Peace

Ya, bad year– Bachar, Humar, Lacelle, Luebben.

The year before I started climbing I was in a bar in Prince George, talking to a middle-aged but obviously massively fit Quebecker who was working for I believe Celtic.  He was a nice guy.  We shared a pitcher and when talk turned to the inevitable “what are you doing when you go back to the world?”, he mentioned winter plans filled with ice climbing. 

I was instantly intrigued.  I had tried climbing years before, and loved it, but had been distracted by school, travel, etc and had not done any climbing for some years, but it had lurked in the back of my mind.  And Iw as curious– you could climb ICE?  The conversation with the Quebecker reawakened me and later that planting season I got to talking climbing to my friend Rob, who casually said “if’ I’m around, I’ll give you a call and we’ll get out.” That winter I got a call from Rob, who like a madman said “hey let’s go climbing!” 

It must have been thirty below, but we shivered on Athabasca and then I scared myself silly following a line on Weeping Wall.  On the way home, a sh*t-eating grin in my mirror, barfies screaming in my tips, with that warm buzz that comes along once or twice in your life, in moments when your path in perfect clairty opens ahead of you, Rob mentioned Guy, and it turns out that this was the guy who’d I’d been chatting with in the P.G. Ho. 

I never saw Guy again except in videos and magazine articles, but without him knowing it he got me into the mountains.

chris