Toronto Star Story, Bolting Rock Climbing Routes in Lanaudière, QC, and How to Spend a Pandemic

My story about opening rock climbing routes came out in the Toronto Star travel section last Saturday with a photo of me holding a giant drill and hanging from two ropes on a cliff face in the Lanaudière, an hour-and-a-half northeast of Montreal. It was taken where I’ve been opening rock climbing routes for the past year with a dedicated group of climbers. It’s a ton of manual labour with no payoff except the pride of establishing new routes. And the first-person sport-based article was a bit different from the food writing, profiles, recipes and interviews I often do. It’s the other side of my passion, what I do when I’m not cooking/gardening/eating/writing.

Here’s the story, which covers everything you didn’t know about creating climbing routes outside, from the 50-pound harness to the days of brushing the rock with metal scrapers.