Pushing the Limits

A Mountaineering Summit
Banff film fest honours climber, skier, and author Chic Scott
Review by Jack Christie in the Georgia Straight

The 25th annual Banff Mountain Film Festival wrapped up on November 5. Alberta author and mountaineer Chic Scott won two awards for his recently published book on the history of mountaineering in Canada, Pushing the Limits. As well, Scott received the Bill March Summit of Excellence Award in recognition of his significant contribution to mountain culture. At 54, Scott has spent the past 34 years making his mark in the close-knit world of mountaineering. He has several firsts to his credit, including becoming the first Canadian to reach the summit of a Himalayan peak, in 1973. This was almost a decade before his fellow Albertans Pat Morrow and Laurie Skreslet became the first Canadians to reach the top of Mount Everest.

At the chapter meeting of the Alpine Club of Canada in 1975, Scott came up with the idea to hold the first Banff Mountain Film Festival. Aware that a similar festival was held in Italy, Scott figured it might be just the thing to attract climbers to Banff in November. "We had the facilities here at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and we're good organizers in this part of the world," said Scott when contacted by the Georgia Straight after this year's festival. Fellow climber John Amatt immediately seized on the idea.

Fittingly, this year's anniversary festival attracted the elite of mountaineering. Sir Edmund Hillary delivered the opening address and made headlines with his ringing condemnation of the current commercialization of climbing on Mount Everest. The usually quiet-spoken New Zealander decried what he calls the cheapening of the reputation of mountaineering in the eyes of the world. In particular, he deplored last year's search for British climber George Mallory's body. Mallory, famous for his quote that the reason that he climbed Everest was "because it's there," became lost near the summit of Everest in 1924. Hillary described the publication of photographs of Mallory's bleached corpse, one of which appeared on the cover of last October's Outside magazine, as "despicable."

Aside from Hillary's harsh comments, Scott described the atmosphere at this year's festival as that of a "big schmooze fest." A thousand people crammed into the ballroom at the Banff Springs Hotel for a final night of revelry. "Around the world, the Banff festival is recognized as being a whole order of magnitude above the rest. It'll be a real challenge to find something new to talk about [next year], particularly from a Canadian perspective. The big climbing thrust of the 1980s, when we saw at least three major Canadian expeditions in the Himalayas, is over. The big edge climbs, the harder and harder challenges, have settled down. Which is why the last chapter of my book ["Into the Future, 1990-2000"] was the hardest to write. Mountaineering in Canada—and the world—is in transition right now. Over the last decade, the main direction has been in sport climbing and the commercialization of mountaineering."

A former guide himself, Scott admits that his life took an abrupt turn in 1993 when he failed the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides' stringent ski exam. "I was crushed," said the man who established a reputation for high-level ski traverses in the Rockies and Columbia Mountains through such feats as the first complete Jasper-to-Lake Louise traverse in 1967, which introduced Nordic equipment into ski mountaineering. Scott's subsequent ski-traverse firsts include Rogers Pass to the Bugaboos in 1973 and the Northern Selkirks in 1976. "Failure showed me that hurtful events can become beneficial. I turned from guiding to guidebook writing." He obviously has a flair for it. Such titles as Summits and Icefields, published in 1994, continue to sell well. Scott is updating one of his earlier guides, 1992's Ski Trails in the Canadian Rockies.

Pushing the Limits is by far his most ambitious achievement. It's small wonder that Scott spent three years working full-time on the research and writing of the 440-page tome, then a further 18 months on editing and design.

Vancouver readers will be enticed not only by the profiles of local climbing greats such as Scott Flavelle but also by personalities such as wilderness educator John Clarke, author-climber Kevin McLane of Squamish, and Mountain Equipment Co-op's Michael Down and Greg Foweraker. Indeed, this book is required reading for anyone even remotely interested in the evolution of Coast mountaineering. Pushing the Limits is written with a verve that will help you scale the summit of your imagination while your butt is still firmly in a Barcalounger. And if you can tolerate a few hours in one of the Ridge Theatre's bum-numbing seats, there's time to catch the buzz from this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival. Ed Douglas appears with his Adventure & Risk slide show on the Thursday (November 16). The Best of the 2000 Fest follows on Friday evening (November 17), with matinee and evening screenings on Saturday (November 18).

As for Scott, he's undertaking three new books: a history of skiing in Western Canada, an instructional book on backcountry skiing, and an ambitious five- to eight-year project researching the classic mountain ski tours of North America.