Last Summer (2020) my good friend Justen Bruns and I completed a fifteen hour push of the North and Southern flanks of Mount Tantalus (2603m) otherwise known as the Tantalus Traverse or Enchainment. At the time this felt like one of the more serious objectives I had tackled in the alpine.
Simply because of the amount of relatively technical terrain that one needs to cover if making a push in “fast and light” style. As a child growing up in Squamish the Tantalus range was constantly looming overhead. With a backdrop like that one can only become so curious before setting off to explore and cut my teeth.
Around the age of seventeen along with my family we started making trips into different rather obscure parts of the range. A standout three day trip in the South Tantalus range at the age of eighteen sparked my imagination for future possibilities. After a few years of smaller scrambles, runs, climbs, bushwacks and time spent learning the ranges in’s and outs Justen and I completed the Tantalus Traverse. It was a day filled with learning and pleasant memories that left me motivated to spend more time in the range.
