My own infatuation with the valley began in 2000, on a trip from Colorado with Marco Cornacchione. Our original plan was to look for glory in the alpine arena, but the big Canadian Rockies routes reminded us repeatedly that we were no longer twenty years old and crazy. We still imagined ourselves pretty legit climbers, hardmen, but the enormity of the faces and their absurd looseness simply scared the crap out of us. We started casting around for a more reasonable adventure, something befitting two schoolteachers whose former rock-warrior days were beginning to acquire that warm glow of nostalgia.
Not long after Marco made his fifth call in two days to his new girlfriend (who would eventually become his wife), we found ourselves motoring down into the Ghost River valley, craning our necks to take in miles of austere gray walls. A familiar energy coursed through my veins. Nothing beats the rush of approaching a new climbing area. I imagined the feeling must be kin to the pre-battle euphoria those ancient warriors felt.
Not long after arriving, our own battles began. After sampling several short routes, we set off up Dreams of Verdon, a six-pitch 5.12a on the expansive, black-and-orange-streaked Wild West Wall. A cold Canadian wind threatened to blow us off the delicate first-pitch arête. Just thirty feet up and pumped silly from indecision over which side of the arête to tackle, I was already finding the line something more than the “sport climb” promised in the guidebook.
Soon my tips burned from bearing down on prickly crimps, but as we fought our way up the first couple pitches, we slowly got used to the precision climbing. We carefully tested the tiny, sharp holds — breaking none. The views of glacier-blue lakes and proud peaks seemed to mute our conversation. While belaying, I scanned what I could see of the quarter-mile-wide wall for other signs of routes, but saw nothing but untouched stone. Later, back on the ground, nursing raw fingertips, I couldn’t stop spraying about both the route and the wall’s untouched potential.
Dreams had been put up by the Ghost area’s guidebook author and most prolific developer, Andy Genereux. A week earlier we had run into him, racing up the trail on Yamnuska while we were wandering down. In our short conversation, he had raved about the Ghost and recommended several routes, including Dreams. It wasn’t until after he bounded up the hill with his load of bolts that we connected his name to our recently purchased Ghost guidebook.

Genereux, I later learned, is a legend in the Alberta climbing community. Drop his name among local climbers and they first mention his unbelievable appetite for first ascents. He has climbed in the Ghost since 1980, and put up over half the area’s routes. He’ll clean it, bolt it, climb it, and build the trail to get to it, locals said. Some wondered openly if there was more than one Andy Genereux running around. He has also dominated climbing on Yamnuska and numerous other Rockies crags. Beyond his climbing, Genereux is a bit of a renaissance man, an entrepreneur, art photographer, and winemaker. But to me, on that first trip, he was still just a name and a reputation. I didn’t know it then, but my interest in the Ghost River Valley would become an obsession, and I would cross paths with Genereux again.
After our day on the Wild West Wall I was feeling grateful for the work Genereux had obviously put into the area. But as Marco and I took turns paging through his guide, we noticed a common guidebook-author syndrome: a large proportion of the three-star routes were Genereux’s. Lacking any other way to choose objectives, we decided to test the author’s bias by sampling his more fervently self-promoted routes.
We next tried Genereux’s Dirty Dancing, a five-pitch, 5.12a, mixed gear and bolt route — with three stars. The book speculated that the climb had not likely been on-sighted or even repeated cleanly since its first ascent in 1991, which added to our attraction.
We started early and in the shade. Cold fingers and a few warrior whoops barely pulled me up the first face-climbing pitch, and I happily karate-chopped into the start of the crack the guidebook had promised. Unfortunately, despite the features above, the crack climbing didn’t last long. Four dihedral pitches found us forcing fingers into thin pods, crimping like mad, and desperately stemming — sometimes all three techniques at once. Dirty Dancing delivered on its name, with some admittedly filthy sections, but even so, the three-star rating held.
Our last Genereux route was Windmills of the Mind, a seven-pitch 5.11b put up on lead with a power drill, sans hooks, a method Andy pioneered and refined throughout the 1990s. A small rack and the occasional bolt carried us up the awesome Grey Ghost Wall over a variety of features: slabs, steep faces, and the occasional crack. Again, the route measured up to its rave review, and imagining Genereux crimping in the middle of the 5.11 crux and firing in a bolt had me shaking my head.
By the trip’s end I was drunk on the views of miles of unexplored rock. I had spent a rest day inspecting line after line until my head hurt from squinting through binoculars. When Marco and I hit the road for home, I declared out loud that I would return to tackle the unclimbed faces. I couldn’t wait to throw myself at the walls next year.