Raphael Slawinski Visits Trophy Wall for 30th Time

Raphael Slawinski has been one of Canada’s leading winter climbers for nearly 30 years and he recently visited the famous Trophy Wall above Banff for his 30th time. He is based in Calgary and works as a professor at SAIT and has repeated and established some of the most serious alpine and ice routes in the Canadian Rockies.

On Feb. 12, he climbed a variation to The Replicant with Niall Hamill and Ethan Bermann. Hamill reported about their ascent on Instagram. In addition to climbing all of the established routes on the Trophy Wall, such as Terminator WI6, Sea of Vapours WI6 and their mixed variations, he’s added his own lines.

In 2012, he established The Exterminator, four-pitch M7+ WI5+, which starts to the left of Terminator and climbs into the upper pitches, with Eric Dumerac, Juan Henriquez and Simon Parsons. Slawinski is one of the few climbers who keeps a relatively up-to-date blog, which you can read here.

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Replicant with Ethan and Raph today. It was Ethan and I’s first time climbing the trophy wall; and raph’s 30th time up there, the first time he did was in the mid 90’s. It certainly lived up to expectation. We each led a pitch. Can you guess who led the hardest one?

A post shared by Niall Hamill (@niallhamill) on Feb 12, 2020 at 7:47pm PST

The Professor