My longtime climbing partner, Conrad Yager and I just returned from the Canadian Rockies.  We struck out to climb the Bugaboo Spires, but alas the park was closed due to forest fires.  So we sought out Athabasca 2 on the border of Jasper Park.  An alpine start, two glaciers and 1000 vert of scree later, we bailed 300 feet below the summit due to unstable rock conditions. We relented to Mount Niblock, but again after four pitches of clambering over loose rock, sometime the size of modern appliances, we again made the hard decision to turn back.

There’s an adage in mountain climbing.  “There are old climbers, and there are bold climbers.  But there are no old, bold climbers