New Hard Big Alpine Rockies Climb by Marc-Andre Leclerc and Luka Lindic

Canadian Marc-Andre Leclerc and Slovenian Luka Lindic climbed made the first ascent of Mount Tuzo’s northeast face. The big new route goes at M7+ WI6+R and climbs 1,110 metres of terrain. The big wall had previously been attempted by climbers such as Brian Greenwood and Jim Elzinga.

Ian Welsted and Jay Mills came close to climbing a new route on the face in the fall of 2015, but bailed after encountering bad ice with little time left in the day. A photo from Welsted and Mill’s attempt:

Endless fun in the Canadian Rockies. But even with Jay Mills on the team, sometimes you have to leave almost every nut and every pin in order to bail around midnight when the climbing gets just too sketchy.

A photo posted by Ian Welsted (@ianwelsted) on Oct 22, 2015 at 5:43pm PDT

It was Leclerc and Lindic’s second climb together, the first being The Greenwood/Locke on Mount Temple the week before, read about that ascent here. Tuzo is next to Mount Deltaform in the Valley of the Ten Peaks near Lake Louise. Leclerc and Lindic skied over 15 kilometres to the base of Mount Fay to attempt the unrepeated Cheesmond/Blanchard/Tobin route established in 1984. They had intended to straighten out the upper headwall.

They opted for Tuzo after the avalanche conditions forced them to change their minds about Fay. After returning to a food cache near Moraine Lake, they found it had been invaded by a fox. They climbed a difficult lower section and bivied at the base of a couloir. The next day Leclerc led what he said was his hardest-ever ice pitch that was slightly overhung. After their big climb, they descended the gully between Tuzo and Deltaform. Read more about their send here.

A photo posted by Arc’teryx (@arcteryx) on Apr 4, 2016 at 5:25pm PDT