More acclimation.

Today was a rest day. I don't really feel like I needed it, but I've been behind on sleep so it was probably good for me.

Sunday was another easy acclimation day. Grant had already made plans to take some friends out  so I tagged along. As it turned out they were also from St.Catharines and I had met Mary a few years back. After bushwhacking to the cliff it wasn't nearly as big as it looked from the road and the two mixed routes listed in the book didn't have any ice. Thankfully I learned long ago that its not what you have, its making the most of what you were given. After leading the first routes we just set up topropes and I was able to climb the rock and hanging ice to the sides of the main flows while everyone else got to get back into the groove of climbing on ice.

On Monday Grant, Brenden, and I headed to the Ghost Valley looking for multi-pitch ice routes.

We were hoping to climb Wicked Wanda and from the valley floor it looked thin but climbable. After a nice 45 min. hike through the woods we were at the base.

The view of the mountain from the parking lot.

Wicked Wanda is visible just above the trees.

What we couldn't tell from the road was how wet the ice was. Brenden started out leading the 1st pitch. After climbing around 25 feet of vertical slush he tried putting in a screw but there was no solid ice. Another 10 feet higher the ice looked a bit better, but the water pouring down the ice flow made it difficult to look up. After some debate we decided getting soaked might not be worth it so we headed back down to the valley floor to look for something else.

After a bunch more driving around on 4WD trails we stopped to take a look at another cliff. Brenden noticed that one of the tires was leaking air. Fortunately he is pretty handy and came prepared after an hour or so the tire was fixed and re-inflated.

We had just enough time to go check out a couple of short mixed routes at the Bird Cage before driving back out. We started on Free Bird M7 which started on ice climbing up a small roof with a few rock moves before the curtain of ice above. Dodo Bird M8 was similar, but with a deeper roof and a few more rock moves. After finding the hold at lip of the roof, a series of figure-4's and figure-9's lead to the ice above.

The fun part of my WC training.

Here goes mobile posting.

Training in my back yard and around St.Catharines is all well and good, but it leaves out two very important elements, elevation and actually cimbing inthe cold. Not to mention the lack of access to many difficult drytooling routes.

So here I am in Calgary at a friend's place waiting for himto wake up for day two. Yesterday started in St.Cath. but I was still able to get a little iceclimbing in. The cliff we went to was alittle more casual than I would normally pick, but we found enough stuff to make an interesting first day back on ice.

Route one I just meant to climb part way and down climb, but it felt good and was very easy so it wasn't long before I was at the top waiting on Grant who was coming up withe the ropeto rappel on.

Route two I actually brought some gear with. The ice was thin and had been further thinnedby the over exuberant hacking by the party before us. A lot of dripping water had my gloves soaked in no time while trying to get in the first ice screw.  A bit of sketchy climbing with frozen hands and I was at the top in a hurry to get down before my hands actually started to warm up and the barfies set in. Back on the ground I had one of the worst cases of screaming barfies I can recall. No barfing, but much screaming and cursing followed as my fingers felt like they were being smashed with a hammer.

I've been busy training. I'm hoping to be better with the posts here. Hopefully I can figure out posting from my phone.

I'm super psyched to be part of Canada's team for the Ice Climbing World Cup this winter!

The cooler weather we have been having lately is finally getting me really psyched for winter. I have been doing some light drytool training all summer in an attempt to avoid overuse injuries once I kick my training into full speed.

I'm still not quite sure what this winter will hold for me. I'd like to try a couple Ice Climbing World Cup events and I'm definitely planning to get out of S.Ontario and see what the rest of the world has been doing. At least as far as mixed climbing goes.

The 2012 Canadian Alpine Journal has been out for a while now, but I'm still pretty excited about it. I wrote my usual Southern Ontario new mixed routes story but also wrote one about Metamorphosis, or maybe more correctly reworked my post I put on here.  I was just expecting it to go in the back of the CAJ with the other stuff from the East, but being an important route for Ontario I thought I should write a story for the route itself rather than give it quick mention in the area overview.

After submitting the Metamorphosis story they wanted to use it as a feature article if I elaborated a bit more on Ouray and wrote an opening for the first page of the story. It also hinged on if there were enough high quality pictures to go along with it. Fortunately Martin Suchma had a few good shots of me on the route and we were able to get great sequence of shots from William Snyder of me at Ouray as well. After the pics were in they decided to put One of Martin's photo's of Metamorphosis on the cover.