Legendary Canadian Free Climber Reflects

Peter Croft is a legendary Canadian climber who has set international standards over the past 40 years. His climbing career spans decades and continues to be prolific, involving different pursuits from visionary new routes and hard solo ascents to big walls and long alpine traverses. Since he first moved to Squamish in the 1970s, Croft led a generation of strong climbers to push themselves and continues to motivate. Lately, he has been working as a guide in the Sierra Nevada and establishing new big wall routes in remote locations.

“After that point where I discovered climbing and learned some of the basics, it’s just kind of stayed for me,” said Croft. “I’m still fired up to get up super early and climb all day long. It’s my thing. As soon as I started climbing, it was like, this is it and this is who I am. It was the first time in my life where I realized something for sure.”

Croft was born i n Ottawa, but his f amily moved him to Vancouver Island when he was a child. Though he was introduced to hiking at a young age, he didn’t find rock climbing until a friend gave him by Chris Bonnington, a story of true adventure that opened Croft’s perception to the idea of vertical adventures. He would go out in running shoes and climb around on some of the rocks near his home in Departure Bay. He found his way to Squamish as a teenager in the mid 1970s. “What I’ve focused on more than anything else in climbing is big climbs where you go all-day long. The getting-up-early thing has been easy for me since my early days when my sleeping gear was stolen.”

Many of Croft’s climbs have garnered media attention and praise of the broader climbing community, particularly the first link-up of The Nose and Half Dome’s regular route in a day with John Bachar in 1986 and the first free-solo link-up of Astroman 5.11 and the Rostrum 5.11 the following year. Things started for Croft long before he migrated to Yosmite. In the early 1980s, he would begin to leave his mark on Canadian rock. On the steep granite walls in Squamish, he made the first free ascent of the University Wall 5.12 in 1982. Six years later, he would make an onsight first free ascent of The Shadow 5.13, a variation to University Wall. It would go