86 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 09/10.19
east face, where they saw a large swath of
avalanche debris at the base of the wall. A
few pieces of climbing gear were visible in
the runout. Most troubling was the sight of a
leg protruding from the snow. There were no
other signs of the climbers or further indica-
tion of what had gone wrong. The weather
was deteriorating quickly, so the team took
photos from the air, then swung around and
returned to Lake Louise, where they called
John and Alli.I arrived in Canmore on Friday after-
noon, flying to Calgary from my home in
New Mexico. I had lived in Spokane for a
number of years in the nineties, learned to
climb there, and visited regularly, since my
dad still lived in the area. I’d joined the Spo-
kane Mountaineers, a local outdoors club, of
which John Roskelley was arguably the most
esteemed member. In the seventies, he was
on the first American team
to summit K2 and made
daring ascents on other
major peaks. In 2014, he
received the Lifetime
Achievement Piolet d’Or,
the sport’s highest honor.
He wasn’t climbing much
while I was around, having
pivoted to public service
as a county commissioner.
We interacted a few times,
because I worked for a
weekly newspaper, and
I always appreciated his
common sense and straight talk in the blus-
tery world of city politics.
The Roskelleys are close. They all live in
Spokane and get together often for meals,
vacations, and holidays. For several years
after college, Jess and Jordan, who had been
a pole vaulter at the University of Oregon,
were roommates and confidants.
I found the family at the condo that Auer,
Lama, and Roskelley had rented. A duffel of
the climbers’ gear sat on the kitchen floor,
and there was some tense discussion about
what to do with it. Jordan stood in front of the
refrigerator, holding the door open, reveal-
ing little more than beer and cookie dough.
“What were these guys eating?” she sighed.
The unsettled weather stuck around until
Sunday, which was Easter, dropping a foot
of snow in the high country and keeping the
search and rescue operation on hold. Media
attention was in full fervor; Parks Canada
had received more than 800 inquires about
the incident. Others had arrived in Canmore,
including Scott Coldiron, one of Jess’s climb-
ing partners, and Lama’s girlfriend, Hadley
Hammer, who skis for the North Face.
There were murmurs of an Easter miracle. PREVIOUSPAGES:^ CLAYTONBOYDTHERE WERE MURMURINGS OF
AN EASTER MIRACLE. IT WAS NOT
IMPOSSIBLE THAT A SURVIVOR,
MAYBE TWO, WAS STRANDED
ON HOWSE WITH NO WAY TO
COMMUNICATE.Howse Peak is a 10,800-foot twin-tipped
spire rising from the Continental Divide
between British Columbia and Alberta’s
Banff National Park. The area is remote, no
cell service or snack bars, although Howse is
plainly visible from lonely Icefields Parkway,
which bisects Banff just a few miles from the
mountain. Only the most serious climbers
would consider ascending its east face, a
sheer 3,000-foot wall of sedimentary rock
marbled with an intricate network of snow
and ice. Its most fearsome route, M-16—
echoing the name of the machine gun,
because of the frozen detritus that routinely
showers down it—has only been completed
once, 20 years ago, by a three-man team
during a perilous five-day effort. One of
the men, Steve House, later wrote that the
climb entailed “one of the hardest pitches of
my life.”
On Monday, April 15, 2019, three of the best
alpinists in the world—David Lama, 28, from
Innsbruck, Austria; Hansjörg Auer, 35, from
Umhausen, Austria; and Jess Roskelley, 36,
from Spokane, Washington—skied to Howse
and set up a tent in a snow-filled basin, with
plans to attempt M-16, or a variation of it,
early the next morning. The trio had been in
the area for almost a month, staging out of a
condo in Canmore. All three were members
of the North Face climbing team, a storied
group of mountain athletes created in 1992
that includes luminaries like Conrad Anker,
Peter Athans, Emily Harrington, Alex Hon-
nold, and Jimmy Chin, among others.
Alpinism is climbing’s most demanding
discipline, involving the most objective haz-
ards on the most challenging routes of steep,
often fragile snow, ice, and rock. It hardly
resembles what most people recognize as
mountaineering these days, which is to say
the sad circus on Mount Everest or the trade
routes on Mount Rainier and Mount Hood. To
alpinists, style is everything. Proper progres-
sion involves climbing light and fast, with
minimal gear and maximum self- sufficiency.
First ascents are cherished, though repeating
lines of significant difficulty also earns re-
spect. The margin of error is alarmingly thin,
and the sport has a long roster of casualties.
Roskelley had recently told his younger sis-
ter, Jordan, a yoga instructor who works with
the Gonzaga men’s basketball team: “If those
guys make a mistake, they lose a game. If I
make a mistake, I die.”
This trip was the first time that Lama,
Auer, and Roskelley had all climbed to-
gether. They became friends through the
North Face, hanging out at trade shows and
company gatherings, chatting enthusiasti-
cally about potential trips. The men were set
up for a month in Canada—a comfortable
base from which they could launch alpine
sorties, shake down new gear, and dream up
big projects. The three had been discuss-
ing an attempt on the southeast ridge of
Annapurna III, one of the great unclaimed
prizes left in the Himalayas. Lama and Auer
had already attempted it twice, in 2016 and
2017, with another Austrian, Alex Blümel.
On their first trip, they were stormed off a
few thousand feet from the summit. On the
second, the project disintegrated before they
reached base camp, when they got the news
of a friend’s death and lost the desire to con-
tinue. For a third attempt, Auer and Lama
thought that their new teammate Roskelley
might be a better fit. The Canada trip was a
chance to sort out any problems.
By mid-April, the trio had completed some
solid climbs around Canmore, including a
dramatic frozen waterfall called Nemesis
and the Canadian Rockies classic Androm-
eda Strain. M-16 was bigger and bolder thanthose two routes but well within the climb-
ers’ proven ability. They had all completed
longer, more difficult, and objectively more
dangerous climbs. On Monday evening,
Parks Canada indicated spring conditions
for Howse, a typical if somewhat vague rat-
ing for that time of year: “The avalanche
danger is variable and can range from Low
to High. Traveling early in the day is recom-
mended, as conditions can change rapidly.”
Around 2 A.M. on Wednesday, April 17,
Roskelley’s wife, Allison, texted his mother,
Joyce. Jess had not yet checked in by InReach
messenger, as he usually did. Joyce tried to
reassure her, but Alli spent a sleepless night
waiting for news. The next morning, when
Jess still hadn’t checked in, Joyce spoke with
Jess’s dad, John, a renowned climber him-
self. John thought there were a number of
possible explanations, not all of them dire.
He contacted Parks Canada, which promptly
dispatched a search and rescue team from
Lake Louise, about 30 miles away.
A team member drove to Banff National
Park, where he found Jess’s truck at the trail-
head to Howse. Then search and rescue dis-
patched a helicopter to circle past Howse’s