“It can’t be a route if there aren’t any holds, Sonnie,” Alex called from the ground. I could see him down there, sitting back in his harness comfortably, looking up at me, grinning. I was roughly 60 feet in the air, on the opposite end of the 9mm rope he was holding, and searching for some sort of passage through the steep, blue, barely featured limestone. Behind me was nearly a thousand feet of downhill treetops, a forest that extends all the way to the bottom of the valley and pushes right up against the green and blue colors of the winding Bow River. This glacier-fed water cuts right through the middle of downtown Banff, which is right in the middle of Banff National Park, which is bang smack in the middle of the great Canadian Rockies. The surrounding mountains are truly breathtaking, but my focus was on the next 5-foot shield of rock above my head.

“Don’t worry, Alex,” I yelled, “It’s hard—but it will definitely go!” Then I mumbled under my breath, “But not by me.”

With another grunt, I continued upward with the drill. The tops of my shoulders were burning from the effort, and my hips were red and chafed from falling and hanging in my harness. Still, I was like a kid in a candy store, my fingertips ran over the wall, feeling for every single bump, crack or pocket, something for his fingers to dig into or give him purchase, something to get him to the top.