I was going through some old negatives the other day, and found what are truly amongst my greatest treasures. I'd recalled some of these images - hazy as the negatives themselves, damaged and dirty - from time to time over years. But to see them again now was both incredibly joyful, and at the same time bittersweet and sad. I realized at that moment, in one fell swoop, that the true power of the photographs lay not only in what light I was capturing on the emulsion, but more importantly now looking back, they capture everything I wanted to be, and everything I didn't yet know would happen in the moments, the days, the years...the decades to follow.
The photos were taken in later February, 1981, during my very first climb at Yamnuska. Michael and I, and our friend Terry whom we'd met a half year before at a climbing school, went ice climbing on Saturday at Louise Falls - or attempted it/were overwhelmed by it. Our primitive tools and inexperience at waterfall ice (Louise was rated WI5 at that point) meant that plan went nowhere as soon as we reached the base. But the next day...Yamnuska....I was 15 years old.
The view from the parking lot through the trees; the old parking lot. The place we used to camp. Dream. Right now I feel the February winter air of the Front Ranges, hear the rustle of wind upon dead leaves. Smell the thawing of limestone in the brief sunshine.
Michael on the approach. By the end of the day I knew this was a scene I would come to replay again and again; he and I walking close together, looking back at each other, full of anticipation for the wall, our fears ahead.
Terry on the approach. Notice how much shorter the trees are. It's something I've realized in the last few years. I thought it was perhaps just one of those things, like imagining deeper snow when you were a child. But this photo, and other pictures of Yam from the 60s and 70s show it quite clearly. The forest, like us in our lives, our age, ascends from the parking lot, growing deeper now.
Probably the picture that was burned in my brain forever. I still remember this moment - the moment that always happens at Yam, when you're working up the trail, head down...the wall never seems to get closer and you get lost in thought. Suddenly, the next time you look up, the wall thunders above you. High and towering. Gothic and spectacular against the prairie blue sky. Even in all of the noise of my life, this moment is one of the most cherished. Even now that I'm familiar with this place, know many of the stones on the trail by their shape, their name.
Grillmair Chimneys. Route of the first ascent of the face by Leo Grillmair and Hans Gmoser, changing the history and landscape of Canadian mountaineering forever. Circling that legend like a bird who can't find a place to land, I spoke with Hans Gmoser on the telephone once for about an hour, and after he died I stood alone at a party in his honour and saw Leo Grillmair talking to someone. The photo above - with all of the route's chimneys and corners - was in my mind at the moment I saw him, connecting me in an instant to the power of that story, their ascent, and the power and limits of my own life's narrative. I talked to many others at that party, even bought beers for some of my heroes, but I couldn't talk to Grillmair. Glad in the end to keep it, myself, and this picture, anonymous and private. When I looked up at the route that February Sunday in 1981, Grillmair Chimneys seemed to tower up into infinity. It was the type of climb I felt, along with Red Shirt, Direttissima, and Balrog, that traced a path beyond the rock - they were myths, lines that left the rock and entered one's life. Forever after this picture was taken, Yamnuska and those memories sketch and draw themselves on me.
Michael at the base of Grillmair Chimneys. We were headed to the west end, to try King's Chimney, but I know now from looking at this photo that he was anxious to give this a shot. I even remember it now; Terry was trying to make him feel as though he was reckless for suggesting it. We may have even scrambled up a ways in our stiff boots, I can't fully recall if it was this time. In those days, Michael was quite ambitious, seeking these places of power, trying to lead me into a confidence as I struggled with my own uncertainties. Neither of us knew at this moment that it would be only a little over a year later when he and I, on truly one of the most wonderful days I'll ever have in my life, came back here and seized the decisive moment. We were still intimidated by the idea of Grillmair Chimneys, and were going to go to Calgary Route as a proxy, but as we walked past this place the draw was too great. We simply looked at each other, and went for it, Michael even soloing the greater part of the first pitch to make time.
Looking up at the start of King's Chimney. And below, Michael belaying on the first pitch. Dreaming; I know the look. All of this seemed so steep. I struggled monumentally in my full shank leather mountaineering boots. We got several pitches further, but as we climbed higher, the snow and ice of February that coated the rock in the corners and chimneys, combined with our slow pace and the short days, got the better of us. But I didn't care. I knew I'd be back; only two months later, over Easter weekend in April, we came back and climbed Unnamed - my first route at Yam. How could I have known that I would come to this exact place over and over again? That before doing Grillmair Chimneys, Mike and I would come back in April of 1982 and find our way up King's Chimney ourselves, the entire mountain covered in spring snow, the whole mountain to ourselves. The traverse at the end in the evening light one of my fondest memories. I didn't know yet, couldn't imagine that I would come to solo here on several occasions, as a private and special gift to myself when the moments were right. One such moment was shortly after the death of my friend Toben; though she was gone, I talked to her throughout that climb, holding to the rock gently and gracefully with all of the tenderness she showed me. Or the time I soloed all the way to the traverse at the end, but the strong winds made me pause as I nearly saw everyone I've ever loved on the big ledge at the end, looking back at me. So I sought new joy in downclimbing and rapping down.
Although I'd already been climbing for about a year, in some ways, this was the first weekend of the rest of my life. I look at the pictures now, see the urgency in them, and the future unknown. See the things that led me there, who I was in these moments, and in the years that followed. It's a dream, like a compass needle, that I've tried to ride or guide me as best I can since then. Sometimes I've done climbs that are linked in pure line of sight to that first good dream - they are the true evolutions of a soul that sits suspended in wait for forward movement. Other parts of life have intervened, interfered. Choices good and bad have come and gone; I live in the vapour trail of their consequences. Age, Love and Hurt and Longing and Loss have layered clay over top of that purest first spark, that core. Clay brings weight, inertia, something I lacked when I was 15 and took these precious photographs. In the years to come, I broke hearts, including my own, in these very places. Or lived out my life here in retreat, to a stormy castle of limestone. And I miss many of the people who were in my life as these stories unfolded; some - one or two in particular - I'll never get over. They know who they are. Like Charles Lamb said in his letters, "...I am like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself..." The rock in this place has become a mirror of sorts; it's why I was saddened, yet saw parallels I can't describe, when a few years ago a significant rockfall changed some of the landscape around King's Chimney and Unnamed. It's all still there, but scarred from the years. When I took these photos, the place was still younger, like us; our dreams and the paths we tried to follow.
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