The Backcountry Big Wall That’s Infamously Loose—Thankfully A Teenage Will Stanhope Was on the Rack

The Steinbok Arête is one of British Columbia’s most impressive mountains—and it’s getting harder and harder to climb. Every year, the old logging roads to get in keep deteriorating—or rehabilitating, depending on how you view it. With landslides, fallen trees, and thick brush closing in from every angle, nature is reclaiming the land, and cars and trucks are getting stopped farther and farther from the mountain.

I’m not afraid to hike or hack through a forest, but I’m glad my friends and I had a chance to climb there when we did, in September of 2006. I had yet to climb such an imposing route, and I felt small in such big terrain. As far as we know, the peak hasn’t been climbed since.

If you flip through Kevin McLane’s guidebook Alpine Select, you’ll find toward the back a place called the Anderson River Valley. I don’t know who Anderson was, and it doesn’t matter much to me, but what does matter is there are some incredible granite formations back there—a mini-Yosemite, if you will, minus the impeccably hard rock, gift shops, or crowds.

Alpine Select details Steinbok Peak, a massive spire whose prominent northeast arête strongly resembles the famous Nose on El Capitan, only smaller, about two-thirds the size. Up to this point, this Northeast Buttress route had only been climbed twice, first by John Howe and Scott Flavelle in 1979—the year I was born—using some aid, and again by Guy Edwards and Mike Spagnut in 1994, on their all-free variation. Here’s part of the guidebook description:

One of the most impressive sights of all the peaks in this guide. The great east and north faces of the Steinbok meet in a mighty prow of rock, sweeping up in an ever-steepening arc to the summit.

The upper half is characterized by sustained climbing, thin cracks, loose rock, long runouts, and some poor belays. In all, over half of the 20 pitches are 5.10–5.10+. Alpine Grade ED2.

But here’s the catch, or better yet, here is our story.…

*

 

In mid-September 2006, I gathered two wild-mannered men to join me on this monster of a climb. First was Will “Big William” Stanhope—a lighthearted nickname for a tall young lad with a scrawny build—who was just 19 and fresh off a grueling summer of tree planting up north. I’d met Will when I was 21 and he was still on the junior team at the Edge Climbing Centre in North Vancouver. I was living in my van in the parking lot and was delighted to chat with him on that rainy winter night about real granite rock climbs, hard trad, and other things that most 14 year olds had no idea about. Bright kid, I remember thinking.

Meanwhile, Jonny “The Simulator” Simms was 26, a funny and complex character the same age as me. The first time I’d met him, at the base of the Petrifying Wall in Squamish, he’d said, “Nice to meet you, they call me ‘Short Dick,’ but my real name’s Jonny.” (The nickname, I’d later learn, referred to him short-roping his partners as a newer climber.) Our first climb together was the five-pitch Squamish slab route Genius Loci, a pretty heady and stiff 5.12b, in the blazing-hot summer sun. In retrospect, it was a dumb thing to do, but we shared a high level of stoke for exposure and were keen to rope up. We came down overheating and dehydrated—but hungry for more.

Both guys had a wide range of experience on difficult multi-pitch climbs in and around British Columbia (much more than I), but neither had been in the Anderson River Valley before. Even after 10 years of climbing, I still felt like the beginner in the group.

I had barely finished my invitation when Will nearly jumped through the phone: “Fuck yeah, I’ve always wanted to go in there—sign me up.” Jonny, too, was keen; he sounded so sick of his summer guiding gig that, to him, this adventure into the unknown would be more like a relaxing vacation than a perilous quest.

It took nearly a week to get our act together and find a time and place to meet. I rolled my GMC Safari into Will’s parents’ driveway in North Vancouver around six in the evening, just in time for an icy-cold wobbly pop (beer, to you Americans), the first of many that weekend. Will’s parents invited us to stay for dinner; the smell of salmon steaks and roasted potatoes wafted from the kitchen. It was all very civilized. “Why don’t you stay tonight, eat some food, and leave early in the morning?” his mother suggested.

Why? Well, because we needed an escape. The heat, the people, the tourists, the grimy exhaust smell of traffic, and the incessant highway noise had pecked at us all summer in the Sea to Sky corridor. We needed to get away, up high into the alpine, above everyone and everything.

Gear? Check. Ropes? Check. Beer? Check.

We hit the tiny town of Hope around dusk, famous for being where they filmed the 1982 cult classic Rambo. We rolled north up the Trans-Canada Highway and searched for a marked turnoff on the right, heading east toward the trailhead.

Our first setback was a firmly locked logger’s gate. This left us dossing on the side of a steep and narrow dirt road. As we settled into sleep, Will’s family home suddenly seemed like a pretty good option.

Waking us from our slumber around five the next morning was a wild-eyed logger holding a large and apparently strong cup of coffee. “You’re gonna get killed by these trucks rolling through here if you don’t get your shit together, pronto!” he barked out of the window of his Chevy 4×4.

We packed up in seconds and followed him through the gate. Despite his aggression, it seemed like this man really loved his job, getting to the site long before his coworkers, perhaps to enjoy his coffee in solitude, before their rigorous day began. It was time to draft off that hard, intense blue-collar energy and put it into our own mission.

Our second setback was another locked gate farther up the mountain, and this one, on the less frequented side of the valley, was not about to be opened for us. So, by early morning and after a few wrong turns and dodging trucks and heli-loggers, we fled back down into Hope and then drove hours to get a key for ourselves from the governmental office in Chilliwack.

This was not an auspicious start to the trip. We ate away our dismay at a greasy-spoon diner, pounding down toast, local eggs, and a pot of mediocre coffee. Then we were back on our way into “the ’pine,” as Jonny liked to call it. Setback number three: a flat tire. Thank God we had beer. On the side of a dusty dirt road, I cracked three cold bottles of Genuine Draft and cranked some Jimi Hendrix, while Jonny worked on the lug nuts and Willy searched for the spare.

Finally, after that first locked gate, driving back to town to get keys for the second locked gate, a flat tire, and another beer, we rolled into base camp after only five hours of sleep and stared up at the small but extraordinary range in the soft evening light.

We built ourselves a warm little fire and played guitar. The next day’s start time? I can’t recall, but it was early, maybe 4 a.m. In hindsight, it should have been earlier.

Eventually, after hours of dark, dense, and relentless bushwhacking, we racked up below the Steinbok’s great Northeast Buttress, guzzled some water, and set off on the first rope-length of the twenty-one-pitch climb.

I’m not going to lie: I was not entirely prepared for the patches of rotten rock, horrible gear placements, and terrifying runouts—some as long as thirty feet. Of course, we’d read the guidebook description, but I reckoned we all climbed 5.13 and regularly free soloed 5.10. So how hard could it possibly be?

The day carried on, with each of us pulling off half-a-dozen leads that had us nearly soiling our pants. My feet got progressively more swollen and painful because I’d accidentally brought the wrong shoes—my ultra-tight, downward-curving sport-climbing shoes, instead of my larger, looser, flatter all-day trad shoes. It was poor timing for such a rookie mistake, but we live and learn.

On one pitch, I saw Will stretch out his rope, nerves, and gear so far it shook him up a fair bit. He paused with skepticism to check his rack dozens of times, calculating the gear he might need (or didn’t have!) to keep himself safe, relatively speaking. No doubt battling the inner dialogue on a dangerous climb, Will shimmied through a crumbling flare and emerged victorious. Wide-eyed and smiling from the epinephrine, he seemed to be enjoying himself in some twisted way. I think we all were. It’s the most interesting paradox: The closer to the edge we get, the more exhilarating and fulfilling climbing can become, even as you push through greater and greater discomfort. Will’s tenacity also inspired me to push through my own fear and unease when it came time for me to lead again.

We stopped for a snack halfway. Will opened his pack a little too quickly, and we watched as half our lunch—a large, tasty, unopened roll of salami—slipped out and tumbled down the giant face. As it bounced and flipped and gathered speed, our laughter rang through the valley. Will felt pretty bad, but we were fine without it … for the time being.

*

The Steinbok Arête gets steeper the higher it goes. Each time Jonny took the lead, he had months of pent-up boredom and work angst to release, not to mention the emotional fallout from a recent breakup. In front of him was pure ecstasy, and his eyes revealed traces of happy madness. He was by far the most experienced alpine climber I knew. He climbed the way many of us want to—quickly, unbridled, fast and loose, and with total commitment.

We didn’t know exactly where either of the previous routes went—the guidebook topo was vague at best, and all it could really tell us was that they veered off each other and ran parallel up the mountain. The terrain is huge, and I suppose the two climbs could also have easily crisscrossed over the blunt arête at many different points. The line we were following—at least, the one that looked most logical—zigzagged back and forth across the prow. But there was little to no sign of the previous climbs, and plenty of cracks and different features leading off in many directions, none of which looked easy. So, without overthinking it, we just kept moving, seeking the path of least resistance.

By late afternoon, we had slowly climbed our way to the far right, and Jonny was now leading on the colder north side of the arête, invisible from our belay. We were about two-thirds of the way up the wall, and Will and I huddled nervously at the worst anchor yet, where, with the gear getting sparse, we’d had to jury-rig some semblance of two equalized pieces. We were waiting for Jonny to finish the lead and shout down, “Off belay!” But what we heard instead was startling: “Rock!!!”

For the record, this was not just a rock that fell but a medium-sized boulder—about the size of the three of us all taped together—and even though Will and I were safely out of its way, it sent shivers up and down my spine. The stone whistled over 1,200 feet and crashed violently into the talus below, its impact muffled from our aerie as it broke through the trees.

“Guys, be careful—there’s some loose rock up here,” Jonny advised, stating the painfully obvious.

The light was fading, lighting up the tips of surrounding peaks like the last embers of a cigarette. Night was falling, and fast.

Will and I threw on our shoes and packs and started climbing, one behind the other. Up higher, where Jonny had dislodged the boulder, we shuddered with horror at the gear placements he’d found. It wasn’t that the protection itself was placed poorly; it was that the rocks forming the cracks were simply a teetering pile of loose Jenga blocks.

I still believe that navigating such loose sections of alpine rock is part luck and part art. But still, in a very strange way, it was admittedly fun and engaging terrain. As we climbed, Will followed a body-length below me, and any slip or hard pulling on my part would have undoubtedly dislodged a block that could have either hit him directly or potentially cut our 7.5 mm rope—either way, the result would have been similar. We joked and laughed to keep the mood light; we had little choice in the matter.

We had no idea how far the summit actually was. All we knew for sure was that we had to go up, and fast. The next pitch was a crack jammed tightly with mud and vegetation. Taking the lead, I chopped my way through tough grass on a small bulge. Resting on aid, I used my nut tool to dig out little hand and footholds, as well as areas to place protection in case I slipped. This was by far the most frustrating section of the climb for me.

I prepped this crux for my teammates below, brushing and chalking the key holds so they’d see them more easily. The pain in my feet was nearly blinding by now, and loud cursing was my only release. I reached a small ledge and built the best belay anchor I could, desperately yanking off my shoes as soon as I’d clipped in. The boys followed clean over the steep, grassy protrusion onto the lower-angled face above. The summit looked to be a few hundred feet away, but it’s always hard to tell.

Now, we were all grouped together on a narrow, sloping ramp, with a mere two pieces of gear for an anchor, versus the three or four that a climber might usually want in place. One piece was a yellow Alien cam, in a flaring crack about the width of a pointer finger; the other was a thin, rusty pin left over from an earlier ascent, indicating that we were somehow at least back on route.

Stay relaxed and don’t lean out on the gear, I thought to myself. The situation felt very real. It’s startling how quickly it all happens up there, and how quickly you can oscillate between animal fear and unfettered joy. With night closing in, Jonny went on a rampage and carried us through another rope-length of brittle terrain to gain a slightly better belay stance, though the gear was even worse at this next anchor.

“Onnnn belaayyyyyy! Don’t faaaaaallll!” Jonny yelled down some 180 feet to our belay, having stretched the rope to its max.

Those are words you never want to hear, especially when you’re 1,500 feet off the deck. “Don’t fall!” he yelled again, driving the point home. When Will and I reached Jonny at his belay, we saw that he had only a one-piece anchor and was prepared to use his own body weight to stop us had we fallen, which, fortunately, we had not. With some extra rope now, we climbed a little higher to another stance with better protection and more room for the three of us.

It was Will’s lead now. He stepped up, but soon got denied by very tricky roof encounter, with sketchy moves to the left and no idea of what lay beyond. He slumped onto the rope, mystified. There are a handful of things that can stop a climber dead in their tracks, with “too dark,” “too hard,” and “too dangerous” all near the top of the list; this section combined chunks of all three. We decided to wait until morning.

*

Only two or three short pitches from the top, with rainfall in the forecast, we now had to open-bivy. For almost 10 hours we waited and shivered, crouching on a ledge the size of a truck bumper. Dreaming was a joke, laughing into our sleepless faces. That night was a fucker.

Frozen stiff, hungry, and dehydrated, we sat wide-open to the elements as temperatures plummeted to thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Will pulled out one of those emergency space blankets, but in keeping with the expedition so far, the brittle material got snagged on a sharp edge and ripped in half. Laughing hysterically, we draped the slightly bigger piece of noisy foil over our legs and watched as the other, smaller piece flapped away in the night breeze. It was cold and lonely in the Anderson Valley. After running out of jokes, we sat quietly and uncomfortably, our minds drifting with the stars.

It may have been the freezing temps or the glow of the waning moon, but an hour or two before sunrise, Will’s lips began turning blue. Were mine? I wondered. How cold was it, really? The dawn came slowly, and sunlight had never felt so good. It sparkled far and wide as it rose to greet us on that horrendously small ledge, on the side of that isolated mountain. The sun smiled at us, and we smiled back.

Will grabbed the lead and took us to another level. He climbed back up to the little roof, and again, showed guts by sticking move after move on razor-sharp crimps, all while facing the most menacing pendulum should he fall. Jonny and I followed cautiously, but our consequences were trivial in comparison.

Jonny had the next lead, a face pitch with decent edges. Jonny had his hands crossed up and his feet edging—but barely. Midway through the pitch, he was running out of options and desperately stuck, his eyes bulging with horror as both of his hands began to slip from the wall. Then, in a blur, he brought them back to the rock again, landing them in perfect sequence and body position, ready to keep climbing. I’m still not nearly sure how Jonny managed not to fall.

With my toes still aching, and my feet even more swollen than the day before, I switched to my approach shoes for the final pitch, a crumbly 5.10 offwidth: a crack too wide for traditional jams but too tight to squeeze fully inside. Will led it by relying on experience and determination—and not much else. We were totally spent. Jonny and I followed to the summit, running on fumes.

*

We stood in awe on the top of this titan around nine in the morning under a bluebird sky. The sun was bright, and for the first time in 24 hours we could be shirtless, in sunglasses. From our vantage, we could see nearly every major climbable feature in the Coast Range. We savored the delightful view—we’d earned it.

Running down the backside of the Steinbok Arête was simple enough; we dropped into a lush green gully and drank from the brook. We took off our shoes and washed our dirty faces and black hands. We found our stashed backpacks and made tea and ate cheese and crackers.

All of a sudden, living was far too easy again. It took days, maybe weeks, to come down off that climbing high, a feeling we all remained lured by, even years after. Steinbok was like a stepping stone for the bigger objectives we’ve all pursued since. Jonny and Will traveled to the storm-lashed granite spires of Patagonia together soon afterward, and Will and I roped up for my first El Cap free-climbing excursion some years later as well.

The murky weather did roll in, not long after we arrived back at camp. Had it come any sooner, and rained on us throughout the night, this story might have ended very differently. Despite the little mishaps, we’d gotten very lucky.

A friend once told me that 40 is the age at which we begin touching base with our mortality. I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but he has a point. There’s only a certain block of time in our lives during which doing wild and dangerous things makes much sense. As we age and slowly deteriorate, much like those old logging roads leading into the Anderson Valley, it gets harder to convince ourselves that it’s a good idea to go. By midlife, we have less time left on the planet, but ironically, often more to lose. As we build our lives away from the rock—with attachments, jobs, homes, kids, and so on—we also have more to live for.

Maybe it’s the way we develop, the way we slowly take on responsibilities, or the way our brains analyze risk and reward as we mature. Or maybe it’s the way our bodies sometimes ache in the morning. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d sign up for a mission like that today, but I’m certainly glad I did back then.

Excerpted from Uplifted: The Evolution of a Climbing Life ©2025 by Sonnie Trotter. Reprinted with permission by Patagonia.

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