BURSTA team of four Italian climbers, Dario Eynard, Davide Bacci, Enrico Bittelli, and Giacomo Meliffi, have established a new route on Middle Huey Spire in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, Canada. The climbers were supported by the Italian Alpine Club and the Ragni di Lecco.
In a satellite message, Bacci wrote: “Everything’s fine here, a lot of rain, but we managed to open a 400-meter route with difficulties of 6c/A3; pretty tough, two days of work and L’oro dello Yukon was born with an incredible final splitter on Middle Huey Spire. Well done to the guys for giving 100%, now it’s going to be bad again for a few days.”
Climbers began exploring the area in 1952, when Dudley Bolyard’s Yale Logan Expedition, flew in to Glacier Lake and made the first ascents of West Cathedral Peak and half a dozen peaks south of the Cirque. Bolyard’s 1953 Canadian Alpine Journal article described “unlimited possibilities of virgin mountains rivaling the Alps and Cascades in grandeur and difficulty.” In 1955, Arnold Wexler, a research engineer from New York who helped pioneer the idea of dynamic belaying and made the first ascent of nearly 50 Canadian mountains, declared most of the peaks “unclimbable,” thus giving the Cirque its name.
In 1963, Jim McCarthy established Yukon Tears on the Mount Proboscis with Layton Kor, Royal Robbins and Dick McCracken. Five years later, McCarthy (along with Tom Frost and Sandy Bill) made the first ascent of what is undoubtedly the area’s most famous route with the Southeast Face of Lotus Flower Tower. Steven Levin, Mark Robinson, and Sandy Stewart made the first free ascent of it in 1977. It was featured in the book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America (see the full list of routes here).
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