Aric Fishman has been a rock climber since he was a teenager. When he moved to Thunder Bay 14 years ago to attend Lakehead University, he embraced ice climbing as a natural progression of his passion for climbing.
“The opportunities here are incredible,” says Fishman, who is the president of the Nipigon Ice Fest, an annual event celebrating ice climbing in the region. (The event is being held virtually this year.) “There’s a lot of ice, and good quality ice.”
This season has been a somewhat “thin year” for ice, he says, “but we’re very spoiled by how much ice we have in general. The region is loaded with ice climbs. Even the thinnest year in a decade, there’s still plenty.”