Legendary Canadian ice climber Guy Lacelle died on Thursday from traumatic injuries suffered in an avalanche in Hyalite Canyon in southern Montana. The 54-year-old Lacelle, paired with local guide Adam Knoff, was climbing as many ice and snow pitches as possible during an ice-climbing competition for the Bozeman Ice Festival when the accident occurred. Knoff was uninjured.
Details are still sketchy but it appears that Guy Lacelle had just climbed a route and was resting below a steep snow gully. A party above accidently started a small avalanche of wind-blown snow. The avalanche swept Lacelle, who was unroped and resting in a non-technical area, off the ice climb he had just finished. It carried him down about 300 feet.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, said, "He was climbing up a small gully and a team above him triggered a small avalanche. He wasn't swinging the tools when it happened, it was just an avalanche. A small pocket of snow pulled out and caught him. It hit him and took him off the cliff, down the ice." Chabot also said that Thursday's avalanche conditions were caused by strong winds that loaded some of those deep gullies with wind slabs."
Guy Lacelle, living in Prince George, British Columbia, was one of the more experienced extreme ice climbers in the world today. What made him unique, however, was that Lacelle mostly soloed ice routes without a rope and mostly in remote places throughout the world.
In an interview with Alpinist, Lacelle said, "I would say that death is a possible outcome of free soloing, but so is rope climbing and driving a car. For me death means losing the game, and I hate losing. I don't live as close to the edge as I used to do. I am a little more comfortable with keeping a better margin of safety then I used to, but I still feel most alive when soloing serious climbs."
Lacelle's untimely death, caused by a freak occurrence, is yet another chapter in what has been a tragic year for climbers throughout the world. So many wonderful climbers and people died in the mountains in 2009. It's a terrible event every time we lose a member of our vertical tribe. We can only hope that next year is safer. Rest in peace Guy, you'll be missed.
Read an interview with Guy Lacelle in Alpinist.
Watch recent film of Guy in Norway from Alstrin Films
Gallery of New England Ice Climbing Photographs By Eric McAllister
Photograph above: Guy Lacelle, one of the world's ace ice climbers, died in a spindrift avalanche in Montana. Photograph courtesy Chris Alstrin/Alstrin Films
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