Ken Wallator - Jasper Climbing Legend - Dead at 52

In the early 1990s, at the age of 20, I learned to climb in Edmonton at the (now defunct) climbing wall located in the corner of the Butterdome at the University of Alberta.  I had wanted to climb for many years, but growing up in the farmland of northern Alberta precluded any mountain adventures.  After a winter of indoor climbing, I ventured forth to climb the rock faces and canyons of Jasper, first with my brother Wayne and then with a growing family of like-minded climbing folk.  Climbing was less urbane and sedate then, and with a genuine sense of adventure we explored the rock climbing arenas of the Canadian Rockies.

Of course, I was not the first to explore the blue-grey limestone crags of the northern Rockies.  Numerous names graced the pages of climbing guidebooks, listing the first ascents of routes they had climbed.  In conversations in climbing shops and around campfires, these same names were heard again and again, associated with adventures and exploits that fascinated me then, as they do now.

One of the names was Ken Wallator.  I never met Ken, but I certainly followed in his footsteps - in a very minor way - as I climbed throughout the Jasper area and made first ascents of my own. 


Ken Wallator, northern Rockies climbing legend, dead at the age of 52.

Though I never met Ken, my life was influenced by him.  I always felt privileged to join (though in a peripheral way) the community of northern climbers whose names I could list without hesitation - Dale and Grant Diduck, Bruno Tassone, Sean Elliot, Eric Hoogstraten, among others - and the list was long.

So it was a shock to me today to learn that earlier this month Ken had sent off a final message on social media, and then disappeared into the northern Rockies.  Ken was 52 (just a few years older than I am), and was still climbing (a lot, and well, I gather).  In one of his final photos, he looks much like I do - a grizzled grey short beard, a weathered face, wearing a down jacket and toque.  When I head off to the climbing gym tonight I'll look and be dressed a lot like Ken.

Ken's story is not an unfamiliar one in the climbing community.  As the giants of the climbing tribe age, as their joints grow sore and their adventures increasingly become stories of yesteryear instead of the plans of tomorrow, they decide to leave the game entirely.  I can't say that I cannot understand the drive of many adventurers to leave on their own terms, to be carried out on their shield.  I turn 49 in a few days, and yet I still dream of climbs in the new year, wandering the deserts and canyons of the world.  But a life of adventure is precarious, and can't last forever.

Rest in peace, Ken, and godspeed.  I'll raise a glass to you - and your life - tonight.