Inside Balin Miller’s One-Week Soloing Spree in Patagonia and the Canadian Rockies
With silver glitter painted across his high cheekbones, Balin Miller stood calmly beneath the seracs of Reality Bath, a Grade VII ice climb in the Canadian Rockies that had, up until that morning, been unrepeated for 37 years. January 10 marked the end of an incredible week for the 22-year-old. In just seven days, he soloed both Reality Bath and Virtual Reality (WI 6), as well as the Californiana (5.10c; 700m) on Cerro Chaltén/Fitz Roy, in Patagonia.
Reality Bath is perhaps Canada’s most infamous ice climb. It was first climbed in 1988 by Mark Twight and Randy Rackliff and given the ominous grade of “VII”—a nod to both its technical difficulty (WI 5/6) and the unbelievable amount of objective hazard (active, overhanging seracs). “We were willing to play for more than we could lose,” Twight wrote in a recently republished essay about the climb. “I was willing to die for it.”
Miller, who works seasonally in Alaska and Montana as a crab fisher and snow shoveler, wasn’t willing to die for Reality Bath, but he had spent several years thinking about it while climbing various ice flows throughout the Canadian Rockies. “The thing that gets me most psyched is the lore of a route,” he tells Climbing. Reality Bath is featured prominently in Twight’s seminal book Kiss or Kill and Miller occasionally toyed with the idea of experiencing that thunderous zone himself.
“I was also interested in climbing Reality Bath because I knew that other serac-threatened routes like Gimme Shelter (WI 6) and Slipstream (WI 4+) had experienced some glacial recession since their first ascents and the seracs had visibly shrunk,” Miller says. While all of these routes remain extremely dangerous—and regularly calve off debris—they do get climbed on occasion. Miller didn’t think Reality Bath was any more dangerous than the rest. (He simul-soloed Slipstream in November 2023 with Ethan Berkeland.)
Thankfully, Miller experienced no serac activity during the few hours he spent on route, including during his descent via six 50-meter rappels. “[Reality Bath] was pretty much as I’d expected it to be,” he says, “but it was a little shorter, and less sustained.” Miller thought the “600 meters” of technical climbing was more like 400, plus some snow walking. “It was also described as 11 pitches, but I don’t know how you would climb it in any more than eight.”
Reality Bath may have been the most newsworthy moment of Miller’s winter so far, but the real news, to our mind, is the mental and physical fortitude required to link together a solo ascent of Cerro Chaltén, a multi-day travel sequence, a WI 6 free solo, and the second ascent of Reality Bath, all within a week. (That’s exactly one day of non-airport rest, for those keeping track.)
At the end of an incredible month in Patagonia, Miller felt worked. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to go into the mountains for one last weather window, which had appeared a few days before his departing flight to Calgary, Alberta. He’d already opened the famed rime-ice tunnels on Cerro Torre’s Ragni (AI 5+ M4; 600m) with Berkeland and Chris Labosky, and climbed Exocet (WI 5+ M5; 500m) on Aguja Stanhardt. “[Those routes] honestly took a lot of my steam,” Miller says. “Everything I’d heard about Patagonia was that the weather sucks, so if you get to climb something like the Ragni, it’s an amazing trip. I felt like I couldn’t expect to climb anything else.”
Miller says he tried to climb a few more times after Exocet, but wasn’t particularly motivated. “With about one week left in my trip, I walked [15 miles] into the Torre Valley to try Badlands [5.10d A3 WI 4+; 850m] on Torre Egger, but we never even got on it. When I got back to town I threw out my approach shoes. I was over all the walking.” But, sure enough, one final weather window appeared before Miller had to leave, and he began entertaining the idea of soloing a route. “After chatting with Rolo [Garibotti] about beta and conditions, I got really excited to go into the mountains again.”
Climbing the Californiana on Cerro Chaltén made the most sense to Miller. Garibotti told him the crux rock pitches were straightforward to rope-solo, and that the route is regularly climbed in big boots and crampons if the rock is snow covered. “Although I didn’t [have to climb in crampons], it was nice to know, since I feel more comfortable in crampons than rock shoes,” he explains. “I climbed using a mix of free soloing and rope soloing and it all went smoothly. Then there was the [5.10] offwidth, which also went smoothly, despite being glazed in ice, thanks to all my laps on Generator Crack in Yosemite this past autumn.”
On the summit, Miller ran into Fabian Buhl and Felix Sattelberger, who, noting Miller’s one 60-meter rope, asked if he wanted to join them on the complicated descent. Miller agreed, and acknowledged that even with two ropes and two partners, rappelling the Franco-Argentina “was a pretty shitty descent.” On the way down, they experienced stuck ropes and ample loose blocks. “It took me nearly the same amount of time to climb the route as it was to descend it,” Miller says.
Miller climbed the Californiana with a stripe of glitter on his cheeks, too. When asked about his inspiration, he cited a summer not too long ago that involved a lot of alternative rock, a girl, and a lot of partying. After that summer, Miller says wearing glitters “just sort of stuck.” Though what he wears or puts on his cheek depends on the route at hand. “If I was just going cragging, I probably wouldn’t wear glitter,” Miller explains. “But it’s like a warrior putting makeup on before going into battle—or when you put on your tight, thin ice climbing gloves right before you set off on a hard lead. You don’t wear those gloves too often, but when you do, you know you’re about to do something hard.”
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