New Winter Route on Big Rockies Rock Wall

Above Canmore stands a 400-metre face of limestone with varying degrees of solidness.

Ian Welsted made a point of exploring the big wall this winter. Surprisingly, many of the most obvious lines were unclimbed as of 2015.

Approach as for Kurihara

On Welsted’s and Alik Berg’s second attempt, Welsted invited Raphael Slawinski to try a 350-metre route on the north face of Canmore Wall, which is less than a few hours hike from the closest coffee shop. In the end, they climbed Perpetual Spring, a no-bolt M7 on Feb. 18.

The 10-pitch mostly drytooling route is the first winter ascent of the often-looked-at wall above town.[shareprints gallery_id=”11390″ gallery_type=”thumb_slider” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”large” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” titles=”true” captions=”true” descriptions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]Photos by Ian Welsted