Climbing in the South Ghost River Valley

The Ghost River Valley is about 90 minutes from Calgary, accessed via a gravel road and then a section of road that requires a 4 x 4. Despite being close to Calgary and Cochrane, it's a remote place to climb and help is a long way away if you get in trouble. There are many kilometres of cliff here, and probably untold unclimbed lines - but the rock is steep and often loose, so the sitaution is unlikely to change.



Here are some pictures from a rock climbing trip into the Ghost that I made with Grant, local access worker and Ghost afficionado. I found the climbing tough - I'm still not used to the YDS grading, but it seems to me that if the rock is loose and the protection dubious, then the tech grade within the overall grade calculation should slide....this doesn't happen here though. Until I get my head around this one, I'm not leading much trad rock here!

Ucluelet, Vancouver Island

Our summer holiday in 2008 was a trip to Vancouver Island, staying in Victoria and Ucluelet. It was a fantastic place to visit, marred only by the people on the campsite and poor management of the site itself. Why fly and drive all the way to Ucluelet to sit outside your tent, making a racket, never leaving the site except to shop, and strewing your food and rubbish around, attracting bears? I really can't get to grips with this concept; even from the tent we watched otters, eagles and bears foraging the far shore, yet the people camped around us never even turned their heads towards the sea. We left the site early as we got fed up with the situation - two young, hungry bears had come into the area, attracted by food that people were leaving out overnight. Eventually, when it was looking inevitable that the bears would be shot, we headed south a day early. I wouldn't recommend the Ucluelet campsite to anybody until they sort out their wildlife management policy and start cracking down on some of the idiots that stay there. Unfortunately it's not in a national park, so the only recourse for complaint was the RCMP.