The Tom Egan Wall was a beautiful diamond-shaped panel adhered to the East Face of Snowpatch Spire in the Bugaboos of British Columbia. Bordered by Sweet Sylvia on the left and Power Of Lard on the right—both King Lines themselves—the Tom Egan Memorial Route took center stage. They were like laser cut splitters etched into white, grey, and yellow granite above the Crescent Glacier. 

The Tom Egan Memorial Route was first climbed by Daryl Hatten and John Simpson in 1978, named after a friend of theirs that had passed away in a plane crash. A few pitches off the deck the climb started in earnest with some very thin knife blading—a skill Hatten was particularly deft at, being the preeminent Squamish aid climber of that era. Then the seam got bigger, barely finger jams at its widest, for three pitches before the wall’s steepness eased off. A perfect, singular splitter. 

I saw in 2008 what John and Daryl saw. Doesn’t matter if it’s ’78 or ’08. Timeless beauty is timeless beauty. Chris Brazeau, understated Golden local, Rockies alpine heavyweight, and Bugaboos workhorse and I had just marched in there and wiped the sweat from our brows. Me for the first time, him for the umpteenth. That trip would begin for me a long term love affair with the place and that face in particular.

In 2010 Hazel Findlay and I climbed Power of Lard. On the way down I was intent on seeing the Egan in person. I traversed left from the Lard armed with a hand drill to beef up what was sure to be ancient hardware. I brought Hazel across and we let our ropes drop with a gun-shot crack. On rappel I occasionally poked at a barbed finger jam. “Jesus… this thing is even more impeccable than I thought I would be,” I muttered to myself.

In 2012 Matt Segal and I made a pact to try the thing in earnest. It would all go, no doubt, except for the first 50 feet that Hatten had boldly knife-bladed his way through. There was even a little bit of faded red sling hanging off his first pin: a testament to his faith in some seriously dubious placements with a gnarly ledge fall if he bargained wrong. A master no doubt.

We spent days penduluming across the wall, from Sylvia and from the Lard, looking for a line of crimps that would allow us to skip the unfreeable lower crack. Eventually Matt found it. A beautiful crescent of edges, slopers, and micro crimps that wafted left from Sweet Sylvia. One less hold, impossible for us. One more hold, no big deal. It’s pitches like this that make me wonder if there’s some free-climbing higher power that pushes us to be better.

Finally in August 2015 I managed to climb the route free with Matt coming achingly close. Along the way we battled countless slashed cuticles, lightning storms, and endless rainy downtime in Applebee Dome Campground. It was a war of attrition. I’ve never pushed so hard on a climb and I doubt I ever will again. On the descent down Sunshine Crack we were nailed by a savage storm. Rain soon soaked through our layers, then giant chunks of hail pelted us by headlamp. We missed a rappel station, improvised, then had to cut our rope. We staggered back to camp near dawn, to a couple lonely tents swaying in the night rain. I saw that storm as penance for sneaking in and stealing the dragon’s gold.

Then, in December of last year, after a very cold snap, the entire Tom Egan Wall peeled off the side of Snowpatch Spire. Some 30-50,000 cubic meters of pristine alpine granite are now strewn across the glacier.

It’s hard to grasp and heartbreaking. Some have made reference to the Tibetan Sand Mandalas: the construction of beautifully constructed artwork that is ritualistically destroyed, in a bid to symbolize Buddhist belief in the transitory nature of material life. I don’t know. Matt has a degree in Tibetan Buddhism. I don’t. I’d need to read a lot more before making that comparison.

I was just hoping others would get to enjoy the experience that Matt and I had. Damn, it was a perfect line.

Also read:

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• Matteo Della Bordella on His Aguja Mermoz FA and Finding New Challenges in Patagonia
• Ordeal By Alps With Allen Steck