Ice Climber Takes Big Fall and More Chaos
Ice climbing is more popular than ever, be careful out there this winter
It’s been a chaotic start to the winter in the Canadian Rockies, as ice climbing areas are busier than normal, more tourists seem to walking around frozen falls, ice climbers are falling and more.
At Lake Louise, an ice climber fell from near the top of Louise Falls, but continued climbing to the top, according to witnesses. The ice climber looks to have fallen between 10 and 20 metres. Watch the clip in the Instagram reel below – the first clip is from a fall on Louise Falls last winter. Ice climbing areas in the Rockies are getting much busier. Visit The Bow Valley Mountain Club here to see just how busy the Junkyards in Canmore was this week.
Ice climbing pro Will Gadd said this on social media this week, “Yesterday at the Physio Therapy wall there was a near-miss with falling ice. A flock of ice tourists wandered into the impact zone as a climber topped out 35M above. It took some forceful encouragement to get them to clear the area despite chunks raining down. At Grotto, Bear Spirit, Haffner, Maligne, and other places this is an increasing issue. There are a lot more tourists now, and they just don’t know or understand the hazards of falling ice. And for many of us it kinda goes against our nature to tell people what to do, but if we don’t engage with the unaware then accidents will result. A friendly, ‘Hey, there are big pieces of ice that come down here, hold on a minute while I get the climber to stop for a second and you can move through with less hazard’ is a good thing. And it doesn’t matter who is in the ‘right’ here to me, if someone gets hurt it’s a bad day, especially if we can prevent that accident relatively easily. If we all do a little respectful and positive base area management I think it would be a good thing.”
Before heading out always check the avalanche conditions here, if you’re new to the Rockies then check the ice climbing atlas (information about specific routes) here, and if you’re really new to ice climbing then take a course to learn more before heading out. Check conditions in the Rockies here.
