by Habeeb Salloum

Nervously I drove my gleaming sharp axe into the ice, thinking, "What am I doing, climbing up a frozen waterfall? At my age! (I had just turned 70). Was I out of my mind?"

I looked up to see before me a sheer wall of ice. I trembled, feeling sweat building under my layers of clothing. My pulse raced and, for a moment, fear gripped me as I looked at the walls of ice, seemingly stretching on forever.

Seeing my look of fear as I climbed, Shaun Parent, my instructor, who had talked me into making the ascent, tried to put me at ease. "Watch! Do as I do!" Climbing beside me with no harness or safety rope, only crampons fastened to his boots and two ice-axes, he moved effortlessly up the slope.

I calmed down somewhat as I aped Parent's every move. Striking my two axes, one after the other into the ice and, at the same time, stamping my cramponed boots, now left, now right into the ice, I pulled myself upwards.

"Have no fear! Carol, your belayer - the person who saves the climber from tumbling down should there be an accident - will not let you fall. Can you not feel how she takes in the slack and keeps the rope taut?" Parent smiled as he snapped a photo of his amateur pupil painfully making it up the face of the frozen Cascade Waterfall.

Located at Orient Bay, the top ice-climbing site in Canada - 140 km (86 mi) east of Thunder Bay - the Cascade Falls are, during the summer months, the most visited, photographed and seen waterfalls in the area and, in wintertime, the most often climbed.

Parent saw the potential of Orient Bay's 110 frozen waterfalls, ranging from 5 to 100 m (16.5 to 328 ft) high, when he climbed up most of them for the first time. The majority are located only a few meters from the highway and are conveniently grouped so that ice-climbers can scale a good number in one day.

In 1989, he established in Thunder Bay an ice-climbing school called North of Superior Climbing Company. The school has become world renowned and students are now coming in ever-increasing numbers to learn the art of rock and ice-climbing from one of the top experts in this sport. He has written eight books dealing with ice-climbing and his writings and school are rapidly making Thunder Bay North America's ice-climbing capital. His latest publication, which came out in 1999, is the Agawa Canyon Ice Climbing Map — the Canyon where Parent holds an 'Ice Fest', an ice-climbing festival, every February.

He also founded the original 'Ice Fest' which is held annually for four days near the middle of March, near Orient Bay. It attracts dozens of climbers from all parts of North America and beyond. Some drive all the way from Toronto; others fly in from Chicago and as far away as Seattle and Japan.

Parent's confidence that I could make it up to where he had placed the ice screws for anchoring my safety line - less than half way up the 40 m (131 ft) frozen face of the 10 m (33 ft) thick waterfall - was well-placed. In the 1998-1999 season alone he had over 350 students. In fact, since the early 1980s, when he began to take his pupils up icy cliffs, not one ever had even a minor injury.

He gives his pupils a sound grounding in the art of ice-climbing before they set eyes on the icy slopes. Parent usually takes from three to ten students at one time, and for a day, usually from 11 A.M. to 6 p.m., of ice- climbing with instruction.

He had prepared me well for the climb. Like he is to all his pupils, he was meticulous about my gear, checking my harness, carabineers and safety line more than once. Parent made sure that should anything happen, I would be safe. His quiet personality, the knowledgeable way he went about his work and the confidence he exhaled made me venture into what was, at that time, to me, an unheard of activity.

Now as we moved further upward, everything fled from my mind except concentrating on my axes and crampons, and holding firmly on the ice. I felt confidence building up within me. Even though I felt my strength somewhat ebbing, I knew that I was going to make it to the ledge where the ice screws held my safety line.

Totally exhausted, I laid down on the ledge. Towering above me, Parent was smiling, "See! It was not that hard! Now rest awhile."

I looked downward, beyond the icy falls, the highways with trucks lumbering in the distance, ran in a straight line, dividing the tree-filled landscape in the valley below. Further on, the sunshine sparkled on Lake Nipigon's Orient Bay, creating an enticing winter scene.

Parent seeing me gaze in the distance, pointed northward," Beyond that highway down there, there is only wilderness. The next man-made road is half way around the other side of the world — the Trans-Siberian Railway." I barely heard him. Highways and wilderness were far from my mind. I was thinking of the descent.

I stood up and Carol, far below, immediately took up the slack of my safety line. Parent checked my carabineers, then told me to retrace my steps backwards. I stepped back and drove my crampons into the ice as Carol began to lower me. In a minute I knew that my fear of the downward descent was only a fantasy. Compared to the climb, going down felt simple.

I relaxed, feeling a sense of accomplishment. Nearing the starting point, a sensation of elation seemed to sweep over me. The fear and anxiety of the climb were forgotten as Shaun Parent shook my hand, "what do you think of ice-climbing now? Is it not an extraordinary sport? I tell you! When you have tried every other sport in the world, you will find that ice-climbing beats them all."

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