Deep-water soloing meets ice climbing in Squamish

words :: Feet Banks photography :: Jimmy Martinello

It happens almost every winter on the south coast: An arctic outflow weather system dips down and turns most of the south coast into a deep freeze. It’s unpredictable and ephemeral, but for those willing to face the north winds head on—there is always fun to be had. And in January 2024, Squamish adventurers Jimmy Martinello, Tim Emmett, Matt Maddaloni, Valtteri Rantala and Luca Malaguti pulled out the extra layers and did just that.

Jimmy Martinello: Mamquam Falls has been a project of mine for the past five years, after first accessing and exploring the bottom of the falls by paddleboard. Initially, the smooth granite caught my eye for rock climbing. It’s a spectacular setting. I rappelled in and bolted a few lines and the routes climbed amazing. I knew there was potential for some incredible mixed ice climbs. Caught in this wild cauldron of rock, mist and spray, in cold weather spray ice would form on the surrounding walls.

Tim Emmett: Jimmy always has a mission in mind. Mamquam is a 60-plus-foot waterfall that’s become increasingly popular with kayakers and hikers over the years. In spring and summer, tourists are common. During an icy, freezing arctic outflow though—not so much.

Matt Maddaloni: No sane person would have thought to climb it. Jimmy was excited to play around down there but I don’t think any of us thought it would actually go. And then as we got closer I thought, Maybe this will go

Tim: Ever since my first spray-ice climbing on a trip to Helmcken Falls in Wells Gray Provincial Park in 2010, my climbing radar has been locked onto waterfalls that don’t freeze solid. Mamquam is one of those. Climbing the frozen spray beside the waterfall is like being beside a living organism. It’s noisy and constantly moving. It adds a new dimension to the experience and definitely opens up the adrenaline floodgates. The other draw of ice climbing on frozen spray is that it’s generally softer and more aerated than pure water ice, allowing for first-time placements with sharp axes. This offers a better chance of getting into the flow state because there is less battling with the placements and repeatedly striking the ice trying to get a good one. When you add all these together you get an iceclimbing experience like no other. It’s very cool, indeed!

Matt: Jimmy went first. He tried a traverse and got into a hard overhanging section about fifteen feet up when a piece of ice broke off and he fell into the water. He had his drysuit on, so he just came up and gave it another go. Then Valtteri tried, and then Tim started tooling around…

Jimmy: Keenan Nowak and I had bolted a route here previously, but I always believed it was possible to access by paddleboard and deep-water solo it. Deep-water ice soloing in that area was always the dream. I checked every winter during a cold snap, and this time the dream became a reality. And sitting on an inflatable paddleboard, putting on crampons and holding ice axes only adds a new element to the thrill.

Tim: I helped pioneer deep-water soloing—climbing above water without ropes for protection—in the UK and Mallorca, Spain. It’s my favourite style of climbing, but usually you’re climbing in shorts and dropping into warm water. A little different than dropping into ice-cold water while wearing a drysuit! Sinking my first tool into the ice and traversing towards the waterfall, I felt like a character in a cartoon—this was an outrageous position and a wild proposition, yet here we were. A thin shell of ice snaked to the top of the waterfall on the left side. Was it solid enough to climb? I carefully ventured upwards, placing each tool with precision like a surgeon making calculated incisions with a scalpel. With each placement, I ventured closer to the top. Falling off now, with axes and crampons, into the raging torrent below, was unthinkable.

Matt: Tim just started tooling around and he just kept going and kind of explored his way to the top!

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Tim: I made it to the top and turned to take in the splendor of my surroundings. From that high up I wasn’t too excited about jumping off in a drysuit armed with ice axes and crampons, so the only option was to reverse down what I’d just climbed. I carefully descended a bit then jumped into the caldron where Valtteri picked me up on a board.

Jimmy: We came back the next day to freedive because the water was so clear. The river can change so quickly if the temperatures rise, and the water can get murky-brown and silty. We took advantage of the calm and the clear.

Tim: Wearing 7mm wetsuits, weight belts, fins and masks, we dove to the bottom of the turbulent pools and played with the currents. Bubbles from the waterfall drifted past in a mesmerizing swirl. It didn’t feel real. Surfacing for each breath, I could feel the bite of the cold air on my cheeks. The air was colder than the water. How lucky we were to share this magical experience above and below the waterline. And no one was more stoked than Jimmy. I love it when a good plan comes together.

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After the loss of his mother, Marcus Paladino takes to the water with thoughts on grief and passion and being exactly where you need to be.

I drive back to the coast with tears in my eyes, receiving text after text from friends, family and surfers sending their love and asking about the upcoming swell, wondering if I’m going to be able to make it. I’ve seen this forecast on the horizon for a while now but now I face a moral dilemma: Should I even be here?

I arrive earlier than usual to embraces, hugs and kind words from my closest friends and colleagues in the surf community. Slowly I slip into my wetsuit and arrange my camera inside its water housing. Normally when the waves are pumping like this, I can’t help but feel anxious, excited and nervous about what’s to come. But today, in this moment, I feel nothing. Numb before I even touch the bone-chilling water. At the uneven shoreline, navigating the slippery rocks with the high tide and solid swell pushing into me, I have difficulty timing my way out into the lineup. Instead, I simply stand there and speak, repeating out loud with no one around to hear me, “Let me in, let me in. I need to heal. Please, let me in.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, I woke up to a 3 a.m. phone call from my aunt: “Marcus, your mom has gone...peacefully in her sleep.” It felt more like facts and less like destructively emotional news—we had been anticipating this news for a few days. The first words out of my mouth were, “She’s so smart. She never would have left if my sister or I were in the room with her.”

Rushing to the palliative care unit at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, I found my family—in tears—waiting for me, the last to arrive, to come say goodbye. I walked quietly and mindfully down the hall, listening to my footsteps and holding my breath. The room was lit with battery-powered candles, surrounding my mother with their gentle glow. Her mouth was slightly open, looking peaceful, as if sleeping. Realizing this would be my last time seeing her, I touched her forehead, surprised at how cold she was. My girlfriend asked if I wanted a moment alone. I instantly replied, “There’s nothing left to say. It’s not her anymore.”

Shortly after making my way into the lineup, I’m mesmerized by empty waves hitting the shallow reef at the top of the point and rooster tails of water streaking skyward from the howling offshore wind. I sit in a trance and forget I even have my camera. I start shooting just in time to see Pete Devries catch the biggest wave of the morning, speeding down the face, only for the bottom to suddenly drop out beneath him. He dives through the barrel to avoid injury, but surfaces with all the fins blown out of his board and blood trickling from tears in his wetsuit. He gives me a half-hearted thumbsup and paddles in. I notice the stunned faces in the lineup: If someone like Pete, one of the best, can take such a close-call spill, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Later we learned that, once he reached the beach and the adrenaline wore off, Pete fainted and had a minor seizure. In that moment, I was reminded of how fragile even the strongest can be when something vital gives way. It’s a strange thing to witness— that split-second when someone is no longer invincible. Pete was okay, but his day was over before it even began, and I can’t help but wonder how many moments we don’t see coming, others ending before they even start.

My mom had been suffering from breast cancer for the last eight months—a tumultuous experience, to say the least. In and out of the hospital, with doctors and specialists, in and out of chemotherapy; watching her body deteriorate and age twenty years in such a short amount of time. The pain of watching a loved one in pain is unimaginable—until it happens.

It happened relatively quickly, but I also had a feeling things were getting close to the end, despite an initial diagnosis saying she would have a few years to live. I wrote my mom a letter, letting her know everything

I ever wanted to say, thanking her for being the best mom she could ever be to me. I was lucky enough to ask her all the questions I was curious about, like what her favourite childhood memory was and what she was most excited about in the world when she was my age. In the end, I read that letter to her as she lay bedridden. I’ve always struggled to express my thoughts and feelings accurately in the moment; words would often fail me. But writing it all down gave me the space to share how I truly felt, expressing gratitude and saying goodbye. A few weeks prior to her passing, I got a tattoo honouring one of mom’s famous catchphrases: “Good morning, canary.” She’d say this to me every morning as a kid, so I had started saying it to her every morning in the hospital.

Back in the water with Pete watching from the sidelines, two of my good friends, Blair Forsyth and Michael Darling, go wave-forwave on the incoming sets. I can’t believe how well they’re surfing without the subconscious obligation of handing priority over to one of the most iconic guys in the lineup. Somewhere in all the excitement, I forget that my mom died yesterday. Then Michael paddles back to the lineup, chats to me briefly about the previous wave then asks how I’m doing. I reply with tears. Michael—soft-spoken, quiet, and often at a loss for words—gets off his board to hug me in the water then he says something I’ll never forget: “You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

My mom was always so proud of the photographer I became, but more so of the person I am. I credit all the traits she loved in me—honesty, hard work, generosity, positivity—to her. She never had an agenda for me in life; she just wanted me to be happy, and I’m truly grateful that she got to see how happy I am with the life I’ve created for myself. She often worried about me swimming out and shooting in waves of consequence but she never voiced her concerns, out of respect for the effort and determination she’d seen me put into my craft. Regardless, I started wearing a helmet this past year, just in case.

I swim for about six hours that day, shivering to the core, because I know if I get out of the water, reality will start to settle in. I’ll have to start thinking about how to plan her funeral, what to do with her condo, how to tell people the news and how to find a way to deal with an experience I never thought would come so soon in my life. It’s incredible how the ocean has such a powerful energy and can make you feel such an array of emotions, almost an out-of-body experience. The time I spend in the water— just a day after my mom’s passing—feels as if I’m being lifted somewhere, a place of knowing that, with enough time, everything is going to be all right. Later, I speak with my family and tell them to go out and do something they love, for her, to find an outlet of joy to temporarily numb this loss. And I believe it just as much today. If you are hurting, or lost, go do what you love. Find your equivalent to swimming in the ocean and photographing your friends. Whatever it is, go do it. Maybe because it’s what you need right now, and definitely because that’s what Laura Eaton would’ve wanted you to do. But also because it will fill those empty moments in your heart. It will produce moments of joy, maybe not many, but they will be there—and they will add up until there is more joy than pain. Like the tide, time sweeps over the wounds of grief, wearing down the sharpest edges until they’re smooth enough to bear.