The sunlight is fading over the Haines Highway and it’s bitterly cold, but Robert Reid is moving methodically up a chunk of ice near the airport. 

Ten feet above the Haines Highway, he chips away at the face of a slab until he can find a steady hold, then tests his weight on it over and over again before he finally shifts fully onto his crampons to take the next step. 

There isn’t a rope or an ice anchor in sight; Reid is free-soloing, without climbing protection. And, while he’s only 10 to 12 feet up from the ground, the consequences are high. Ice climbing requires sharp-edged crampons and ice tools, so a fall can lead to deep lacerations, stab wounds or broken bones. 

There’s little margin for error and Reid likes it that way. 

“It’s the purest form of climbing. It’s just you and the ice or the mountain. It’s completely dependent on your competence and the conditions and your ability to judge them,” he said. 

And, while that sentiment is conveyed with the confidence of someone who has been climbing for decades, this is the 25-year-old’s first season climbing. Reid moved to Haines last year to work for SECON. 

He doesn’t really have anyone here yet, and said there’s no one in his family to ask about what he’s learning and how he’s doing.  “My parents aren’t around anymore,” he said. “My dad died when I was 23, of cancer, and my mom … passed away when I was young.” 

There are plenty of other climbers here, and, upon hearing of Reid, many seemed to reflexively offer help. 

“I’ve got some ice anchors he could use,” said John Svenson. Once a mountain guide and climber, Svenson is now widely known for his paintings of mountaineering. 

“Ice climbers come and go but there’s not like a group [in the Chilkat Valley]. There used to be, but we’ve all kind of grown up,” he said. 

Reid is right at the beginning of that journey. He was born in Fairbanks, grew up largely in Arizona with stints in Hawaii and California. But, he describes his time in California as an economic prison and once he graduated with a construction management degree he said he beelined back to Alaska. 

“I’ve had an interest in climbing since 2018 when Free Solo came out,” Reid said.  

That documentary follows Alex Honnold as he climbs the 3,000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, with no rope. 

It’s an alternative route to making it to the top of a mountain — one that doesn’t require chartering a plane and hauling a bunch of expensive gear around. While he was reading, he stumbled across the phrase “blue-collar alpinism.” 

“I couldn’t think of a better way to describe it because… there are places where you just have to suffer to get there. You have to cut through brush and alder and there’s moose and bears. It’s so inaccessible,” he said. “That’s what leaves some of those peaks unascended.” 

And it’s those peaks he’s aiming for. Reid is drawn to the range of steep, glaciated mountains within view of the Chilkat Valley where few routes are documented and, in some cases, may be unclimbed. 

He started up his first ice route on Dec. 21 on a low-angle piece of ice. “So if I fell I would slide down it and come straight down,” he said. 

Since that time he said he’s set five solo ice routes, three along Lutak and the rest up the Haines Highway. He’s reading books, including one by Canadian ice climber Will Gadd, the first person to ice climb Niagara Falls. Then he’s going out, practicing the fundamentals, and learning to read the ice. 

“The ice changes every season. The medium is always fluctuating,” he said. “If you’re not precise and accurate enough, you could very well fracture the medium that you’re climbing on.” 

There’s a route he called Nosebleeds near the one he was climbing at sunset on the Haines Highway. Part of that one flaked away and at the top the ice was hollow.

“I had to commit my front crampon to a mixed move because I was putting it on rock. Then commit a lot of weight onto that while I’m hooking underneath where the water had washed out underneath this little channel and you can’t swing at that or you’re going to fracture the edge of it,” he said. “So there’s a time and place to be precise and there’s a time where you… need to smash the ice out of the way and get to the good ice. So I’m just playing that game.” 

As Reid talks, he seems to vacillate between the why and the how of what he’s doing.“I don’t want to die. I like living. It’s alright,” he said. 

For Reid, one of the hardest parts of climbing in Haines so far hasn’t been the ice, it has been finding a partner. 

“Climbing is pretty cliquish,” he said. “You’re trusting someone with your life when you’re on belay.” 

So, for now, he’s practicing alone, on short routes close to the road, working on fundamentals and slowly expanding what he attempts. 

Svenson said that kind of isolation is partly a function of the Chilkat Valley. Unlike places like Juneau, with easily accessible rock or large climbing scenes and a gym, Haines has always had a smaller, more scattered community of climbers. 

He said at times there have been groups climbing the frozen waterfalls along the highway or near the cannery, but those waves tend to pass as people move away or find other hobbies.  

And, Svenson said, in the Chilkat Valley, climbing has traditionally been more expedition-oriented – long approaches, remote terrain, and partners ready to spend days or weeks moving through mountains and glaciers. 

For beginners especially, Svenson said, the safest approach is to rope up and climb with a partner. Particularly along ice flows near town where top ropes can be anchored to trees and allow climbers to practice without committing to a fall. 

“You can protect each other.” There’s no reason to climb unprotected, he said. 

But not everyone who hears of Reid’s experiments sees them as recklessness. Ryan Irvin, a snowboarder and climber who has spent years in the mountains, said the sport’s history is rooted in people figuring things out for themselves. 

In his view, modern climbing culture – especially around rock gyms and mountaineering courses – has become structured. Cautious. 

“I think the generation we’re in, it has gotten sanitized a bit,” he said. 

Reid’s approach, Irvin said, echoes an older mentality: “It was all about taking risks and gumption.” 

Irvin knows firsthand how quickly small mistakes can cascade.  A few years ago, while ice climbing in Valdez, he was lowered off the end of a rope and fell about 45 feet, breaking his ankle and injuring his wrists. When he looks back on it now, Irvin said that the accident was the result of several small failures. A rope without a knot at the end, a partner distracted by falling ice and a climb he hadn’t reviewed beforehand. 

“A lot of little mistakes added up,” he said. The experience changed how he thinks about risk. 

But at the same time, when he hears about what Reid is doing it reminds him of his own journey into climbing. 

“I did have a good partner but he wasn’t any more skilled than me necessarily. We were both just reading … we kind of just went and figured it out,” he said. “Going back, I kind of feel like that’s the energy of climbing to some extent. Not everybody is going to get an amazing mentor. 

Longtime Haines climber Norm Hughes also recognizes the same impulse Reid has that drove Hughes into the sport a decade ago. He moved to Alaska in the mid-1980s and largely taught himself how to ice climb when there were few partners around. 

“You look back and think: that was really stupid, or I got really lucky,” he said. 

And, he warns about lifelong injuries. 

“I used to break dance. ****ed my knee up, got two surgeries in one year,” he said. “Now, my knee, it’s talking to me a little. Is it worth it? I don’t know. I love dancing.” 

Hughes thinks Reid will find a partner. 

“A buddy will find him. He’s climbing next to the highway, eventually someone’s going to stop,” he said. 

He spends hours studying the terrain on digital mapping tools, switching between satellite layers on CalTopo and older accounts of expeditions, trying to understand how other climbers have approached them. He sees possibility in the remote ridgelines. 

One peak in particular has caught his attention, though he’s asked that it remains unnamed. It’s near Mount Emmerich and doesn’t seem to have seen a lot of climbing activity since the mid-20th century. It has been hard to track down information about it. 

“There’s probably three or four photos that exist of that thing. But I haven’t seen any videos,” he said. 

He feels uniquely positioned to reach that objective, living here within sight of it. But the challenge is building the skills required to reach peaks safely, and for now that means getting as much experience as possible. The short ice routes he’s been climbing this winter are the beginning of that process. 

On a recent trip up Mount Ripinsky, Reid said he came within a few hundred feet of the summit before turning around as the sun was starting to set. Physically, he’s certain he could have reached the top. 

But reaching the summit is just one measure of success and he repeats an old adage like an incantation. Turning around was the right decision and he’s proud of himself for making it. 

“Going up is optional, descending is mandatory,” he said.