August 2022. An undercurrent nips at my heels and the smell of fresh rockfall fills my nostrils. I’m on the wall I’ve longed dreamt of. The silty limestone is more shattered than I thought it would be, the exposure far more surreal. Fourteen hundred feet in one clean shot. But I’m with good friends, as I always knew I’d be, and their laughs and shouts shake off the somber mood of a shaded northwall in the Canadian Rockies. Over the course of the day we’ve dodged death blocks and felt dizzy with exposure. We participated in the forty-year lore of this face. It was exhausting.

So the question is: how exactly is my experience of this wall so different from my dreams?

***

In 1988 Steve De Maio and Jeff Marshall clawed to the summit of the wildly overhanging Northwest Face of the Windtower (8,841ft) in Canmore, Alberta. Their 1,400-foot route on disintegrating rock, Iron Butterfly, received a heavy grade—A4 and 5.11—making it the only Grade VI in the valley. With each passing year the face’s reputation grew. Twenty-five-foot falls turned to 80. One pitch sprouted a life-saving hook. And the reputation only grew when, after 20 years of inaction, two professional climbers took to the face and bailed, calling the wobbly, poorly protected line a death route. Another 20 years passed. To this day, Iron Butterfly remains unrepeated. And, until last summer, that necky weekend in 1988 produced the only established route on the Windtower’s most imposing face.

Unlike its old-school neighbor Iron Butterfly, the route my friends and I were on—the newly developed The 36th Chamber—was created top down with a liberally wielded power drill, and the line wandered around roofs, up corners, blank faces … wherever the rock seemed best. The bolted line was fixed with over a thousand feet of burly cord, and it was only because of this umbilical that I accepted an invitation to document a first free ascent. The Windtower’s Northwest Face was one of the Rockies’ most storied, and as a climber who cut his teeth in the range I had a morbid curiosity to experience that wall for myself.

As a burgeoning Rockies climber, in my most deranged daydreams, I’d sometimes think of Iron Butterfly and the Windtower, and what it would be like to embark on that face. To dodge death blocks and car-sized cornices and hook loose edges and pray for a good pin. The heroic leads felt good in my head, but I knew better than to actually attempt a wall like that.

I certainly never dreamed I’d experience the face from the top down, comforted by a static line and a belay seat, taking photos of someone trying not to Z-clip on their fully bolted sport project. 

But that’s exactly what I did.

Why?

Because Mark Carlson had less reverence for the Windtower. Or, at least, he hadn’t built up the Windtower to the same biblical heights in his mind. Mark found climbing relatively late in life and was thus exempted from much of the hubris-induced trouble that young twenty-somethings in Western Alberta find themselves in while trying to emulate their climbing heroes on limestone walls. 

Mark is a software developer by trade, a self-described builder, and someone who was “never very good at alpinism.” He liked the idea of easing onto big alpine faces, ideally from above, and adding closely bolted multi-pitch sport climbs to their flanks. He’d done this before—ground up for logistical reasons, with Tyler Kirkland, in 2019—on Fluffy Goat Butt-Face (5.11b; 1,800ft), and following the Covid lockdown he wanted another project he could do mainly alone to physically distance himself from the coronavirus and to fit his work schedule. The Windtower matched Mark’s criteria. He wanted something tall and steep, easy to top-access, and with few existing routes so as to keep his new route from crossing over them. On the Windtower’s Northwest Face, the only route he’d need to avoid was Iron Butterfly.

Well, not quite. Raphael Slawinski, a prolific Canadian Rockies climber, had a multi-year project on the Northwest Face that he sporadically returned to, and there was also a partially finished line by Canmore local Nick Rochacewich. Back in 2019, on Fluffy Goat Butt-Face, Mark had mistakenly bolted over three pitches of an existing trad route, and while Gatzsch Your Goat’s first ascensionist was nice about the whole thing, Mark didn’t want to make a habit of such oversight. After figuring out which features to avoid, Mark also spoke to Iron Butterfly’s first ascensionists “just to be sure they were not offended by a sport route going up on the face.” Jeff Marshall was surprised Mark even asked; Steve De Maio called it the funeral of the mountain. 

But Mark wasn’t around during the heyday of the Iron Butterfly FA, wasn’t a peer of the era, and wasn’t particularly choked up from the conversation. While the Windtower’s Northwest Face, with its neat confluence of danger and difficulty, represented a psychological testing ground for Jeff and Steve, Mark believed that the face offered something very different for today’s local climbers: a venue for hard, gymnastic free climbing, as safe as can be reasonably expected given the exfoliating rock, up a proud alpine rock face. “Just because a mountain has a history doesn’t mean it has to stay that way,” Mark tells me.

Mark finished developing his route in August 2022, after 37 days of work, but felt far from nabbing a continuous free ascent. Two pitches had not even been redpointed. He urged other climbers to try it. It was during this period that I rappelled into Nat Bailey and Tyson Martino’s portaledge camp on the second day of their ground-up push. They had spent several days of the past week in Canmore, getting the lowdown from Mark. He had draws stashed that he encouraged the boys to use. He helped tick solid holds and speculated about crux-pitch sequences. The 36th Chamber was never just a personal project for Mark—he wanted others to experience the face for themselves.

***

I felt a gravelly crust in my eye and blinked hard to focus my gaze. The two-hour approach through bear country—singing hoarsely between yawns—clearly hadn’t been an appropriate substitute for coffee. I was on the summit of the Windtower, searching for the bolts that would lead me to the promised fixed lines and down onto the face. I stuck a dirty fingernail in my canthus and fished the sleep from my eye. Bolts! I ambled down the gentle scree slope, mindful that my day pack felt far too light for someone about to venture onto a face that demanded so much reverence from the local climbing community. I reached the first pair of chunky 3/8-inch bolts a few feet back from the void. “Here we go,” I muttered, clipping into my Grigri and checking its locked gate four times. “This is going to blow your mind.”

The Windtower’s unrelenting steepness, framed by exfoliating limestone and August’s smokey horizon, made it unlike any wall I’d experienced before. Unusual, too, was the net of safety I seemed to be coddled by: an uninterrupted cord linking me to my out-of-sight friends some hundreds of feet below. 

Two pitches above Nat and Tyson—but still out of sight due to the severe tilt of the face—I heard a shrill woop! and then the staccato burst of monkey calls. Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! I let the rope slide through my GriGri faster, eager to glimpse the action. Tyson had unlocked the second crux pitch at 5.13a, a sequence of brutally sharp crimps and flaky micro-feet. Nat, I soon learned, had failed to redpoint the first crux (5.12+) that morning but, not wanting to waste the day and slow down his partner, chose to skip redpointing the pitch. (Tyson followed cleanly.) Below the third (and toughest) crux, Tyson re-tightened his downturned slippers, pumped Nat’s fist, and unclipped from the hanging belay. He swung his hips from right to left across a rising traverse, toeing into slanting ripples and powering through deadpoint hucks. He gave a few small shouts and his chest rose and fell, faster and faster. One desperate bump, then another, and he straddled an obtuse perch: the end of the crux sequence.

“Just because a mountain has a history doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.”

***

Back in the early 2000s, when those professional locals bailed off Iron Butterfly, one of them went out of their way to call up Steve De Maio and tell him that he was either psychologically imbalanced or had a death wish. “We didn’t have a death wish,” Steve tells me. “We viewed [routes like that] as art. It’s a lost art, warrior art. It was a passion for mastery in those situations. The reverie came from mastering those pitches, having the skill and courage to stay relaxed.” 

On one such courageous pitch, 1,000 feet up Iron Butterfly, Jeff Marshall teetered on lead looking at a leg-breaking fall. The pitch had no gear and few solid holds. In Steve’s 2005 book “The Rage: Reflections on Risk,” he writes:

[Jeff] tapped the nubbin gently with his toe to feel and listen for the invisible fracture which would render the foothold off limits. Then he gingerly placed his foot on the rugosity. He laid back on his extended left hand then took his right foot from the rock. I cringed. His right arm began a gentle arc towards what seemed a blank section of rock. But as I watched I saw his fingers disappear into a hidden edge. Jeff’s feet pranced easily up to another set of slopers, his breathing suggesting that everything, at least for now, was cool. I sank back onto the slings when I heard the tap tap tap of a bolt being drilled.

It’s moments like these that Steve and Jeff and traditionally minded climbers around the world fear are becoming rare victories; that if climbers can rely on rap-bolted sport climbs to adorn the great faces of the Canadian Rockies and beyond, there should no longer be reason to stumble to the base of them with merely a rope and rack. Draws will be hung, holds will be ticked, and the day will start and finish without the character of one’s self tested. But those moments of grit and grace haven’t left the Canadian Rockies’ alpine faces: Raphael Slawinski’s project, tracing a natural line between Iron Butterfly and The 36th Chamber, was established in a more traditional style from the ground up. In fact, last summer the Windtower’s Northwest Face served as a small example of the coexistence of these ethics as Raphael and Mark simultaneously saw through their multi-year projects, sometimes just 160 feet from each other.

Raphael began equipping his route some 20 years ago with Steve De Maio and Eric Dumerac. Raphael would then stretch the term “occasional project” to its logical extreme, adding a pitch or two every few years, but he stayed true to his ground-up, no-fixed-ropes values (its predecessor, Iron Butterfly, was the scene of several abandoned fixed ropes during its three-year gestation)—and by September 2022 he and Danny Poceta had created Daddy Longlegs (5.12c; 1,500ft). “Growing up as a climber in the Bow Valley,” Raphael says, “the story of Iron Butterfly was iconic. I always wanted to give that face my best effort—without getting seriously injured or dying on it. We allowed ourselves the fairly liberal use of a power drill on our route, while trying to keep things as traditional as possible.” I asked Raphael if the presence of the rap-bolted route changed his experience. “If anything, it made me realize how contrived the games climbers play are. As you know, it is very easy to get to the top of the Windtower. Despite this, my partners and I never allowed ourselves to peek in over the top to see where the line could go, to pick out the best summit dihedral.” At one point during The 36th Chamber’s development, Mark tried to send him photos of the summit block to ask where Raphael thought his line would finish. Raphael declined to abandon his ground-up experience, but he also appreciates the converging styles now found on the Windtower. “If you get caught up in the self righteousness of ground-up, you can convince yourself that it’s the way to go. But from the perspective of Mark, what I do seems incredibly contrived.”

***

Back on the Northwest Face, the two crux pitches had been sent at low-end 5.13 but five steep and physical pitches remained. Nat and Tyson looked tired. They’d erected their portaledge camp on a slant and the wind-scoured night provided only a few hours of sleep. The two hard days of hauling and climbing also appeared to sap their energy: lively chatter at belay transitions had turned to yawns and groans. I didn’t expect to hear any more triumphant monkey calls. 

Tyson stayed on lead for the next pitch, a tough 5.12, and then Nat swung through, barely onsighting a 5.11+ traverse. Tyson queued up for the final 5.12: a leaning corner capped by a bald roof—and if he sent it would confidently seal his first free ascent. Tyson stemmed, stabbed, and smeared up the dihedral—taking care not to Z clip—and paused below the roof. The upcoming sequence demanded raw power and careful footwork; easy to summon at the crag, less so on pitch 12 after a bad night’s sleep and two days of climbing thin, friable limestone. Tyson committed to the crux as his elbows began to flare up. He clenched his jaw, hiked his feet high, and roared with effort. Then he fell.

The Windtower echoed, then fell silent. “Oh, man,” he sighed, looking down at Nat. “I think I’m good. I don’t have anything left.” 

Tyson pulled back onto the wall and climbed to the anchors, accepting that The 36th Chamber wouldn’t receive a redpoint that day. I asked him if he’d come back for the full free ascent. He said no: the face had already provided the adventure he was after. 

And isn’t that what any of us is truly looking for?

---

Anthony Walsh is a digital editor at Climbing.

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