A Fine Canadian Alpine Line Named for Fred Beckey

It’s becoming less common to find high-quality pure trad mixed lines in the Canadian Rockies. The Rockies are far from being climbed out, but one has to look beyond what you can scope out from any highway. Early fall is the best time to scout potential new routes before the snow gets too deep and the increase of avalanches makes ice and mixed climbing a higher-risk endeavor, or a major exercise in trail breaking patience.

I recently took to trail and mountain running. The freedom of moving over sub-alpine and alpine terrain with little on your back is incredible. With a light pack, a pair of runners, and a few provisions, it’s amazing how much terrain you can cover in a casual afternoon run. It’s also a great opportunity to see new terrain in a fraction of the time it would take to hike it. Early in October while on one of these mountain runs with Sherri Castiglione, I spotted a wet line in a break on a cliff above Lake O’Brien near Mount Bell, just north of Castle Junction. There was no visible snow or ice, just a wet streak, but I made a mental note to return in the fall to explore.

Busy work schedules prevented my good buddy John Price and I from sharing a rope this past summer. On Oct. 23, with some downtime in our schedules, we decided to check out that wet streak with low expectations. “We might be taking the gear for a long walk John Price, but hey it’s only October,” I said while running the plan by him. As we approached Lake O’Brien only 2.5 hours of easy walking from the car we spotted a wild-looking slender pillar where that wet streak was three weeks earlier. It looked hard, but our plan was simple – go have a closer look.

That closer look turned into three pitches of high quality mixed climbing on quartzite rock. The pillar went down easier than expected but a light touch was needed on the early season ice