Broken Arm

About five weeks ago, I got into a fight... with a T-bar cable. It won. Here's the before-and-after x-rays. A big thanks to the amazing orthopedics that we are so fortunate to have in Banff. Dr Hiemstra did a mighty fine job of putting my arm back together, As you can see, the radius is plated but there was also a small fracture in the wrist that needed casting. I got the cast off today revealing a very puny forearm. I have always had skinny arms but it is really skinny now. It will be awhile before I am squeezing stone again.

Canadian Alpine Climbing

I get lots of e-mails requesting beta on areas I've been alpine climbing in Canada. The following was my reply to a recent inquiry. Here's my completely biased take on the areas I've been.

Cirque of Unclimbables: expensive, remote, beautiful, very dirty cracks, bad weather and mosquitos as big as grizzlies, and grizzlies as big as... well, you get the idea.

Baffin: expensive, remote, beautiful, long walks, lots of blank rock, polar bears are bigger than grizzlies

Waddington: real mountains, big mountains, big glaciers, splitter granite, questionable weather, lots of potential for new routes of all styles.

Bugaboos: excellent granite, average mountain weather, way more accessible than the above areas, thus fairly picked through, but still gems to be grabbed for the sly.

Rockies: perfect stone, no grizzlies, never rains, more "alpine-ish" than above areas (with the exclusion of Waddington), but still lots of alpine rock if you like big limestone.

Squamish: inexpensive, very accessible, the best granite, rainforest bouldering, can be wet, slugs almost as big as polar bears.

Skaha: inexpensive, very accessible, closely spaced bolts, hot in summer, nice lakes, lots of Lulu Lemon...