The John Lauchlan Award (JLA) has been funding Canadian climbing expeditions since 1997 and because it celebrates 256 years of success, now’s your likelihood to use for funding in 2024. The award’s new marquee sponsor is RAB, different sponsors embrace Yamnuska Mountain Adventures, Cilo Gear and Confluence climbing health club. Functions are due by Jan. 30, 2025. To be taught extra about learn how to apply go to right here or e mail jla@alpineclubofcanada.ca.
The purpose of the JLA has assisted Canadian mountaineers and explorers on dozens of cutting-edge journeys and expeditions all world wide. From the start, the award aimed to advertise the event of Canadian mountaineers at a world degree and to perpetuate the daring and adventurous spirit exemplified in John Lauchlan’s mountain exploits.
After making use of by mid-January, recipients might be notified of who’s receiving funding by the beginning of February. All you have to do after your journey is write a post-trip report for the JLA and Alpine Membership of Canada with phrases and photographs. Under are a number of the pointers to recollect when making use of:
Canadian: The vast majority of members should be Canadian or everlasting residents of Canada.
Revolutionary: Journeys which break new floor of their goal, location, fashion or method. Journeys could also be exploratory in nature or they could be activity particular (e.g. a selected summit).
Daring: Journeys which present proof of a excessive degree of dedication and imaginative and prescient that’s not solely difficult to the talents and expertise of the members, however which has worldwide significance.
Exploratory: Choice might be given to journeys that examine areas the place little is understood in regards to the location, or to journeys that go to extra frequent areas in an unusual manner.
Environmentally Delicate: Journeys which attempt to attenuate their environmental and cultural influence.
Gentle and Self-Contained: Journeys that are based mostly on self-reliance quite then dependence on exterior help or giant scale ways equivalent to sieging.
Non-Business: Journeys should be independently run (e.g. no journey tour firms) and never for revenue.
Historical past of Award
The primary award was given in 1997 to Sean Isaac and the late Man Edwards for his or her journey to Towers de Paine in Patagonia; and to Tim Pochay and Grant Statham for his or her journey to Kitchatna Spires in Alaska. Since then, dozens of Canadians have recieved the award, together with Katie Holm in 2005 (now co-owner of Climb On in Squamish), Jon Walsh, Sean Easton, Jia Condon, Ian Welsted, Raphael Slawinski, Paul McSorley, Steve Holeczi, Eamon Walsh, Jen Olson, Lilla Molnar, Joshua Lavigne, Simon Meis, the late Anna Smith, the late Carlye Norman, Jason Kruk, Chris Atkinson, Kris Irwin, Max Fischer, Tim Banfield, Quentin Roberts and lots of extra. Journeys that had been supported embrace to: Karakoram, Alaska, Patagonia, Peru, Himalayas, Greenland, Baffin Island and extra.
John Lauchlan
The next biography was compiled from a wide range of sources together with an obituary revealed in Discover Journal in April 1982.
John Lauchlan was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Sept. 12, 1954. The Lauchlan household settled in Calgary in 1966 after residing in each Edmonton and Saskatoon. John attended Henry Sensible Wooden Excessive Faculty the place artwork and music had been an enormous a part of his life. On this time he found mountaineering, a ardour that may quickly dominate all his actions. When he graduated from highschool in 1972, “…the course of his life was nicely established. It could be climbing first and all different issues as they match.”
Within the 10 years after highschool, John was to change into the undisputed chief of the mountaineering group. His climbs turned extra daring and he introduced new that means to the phrases potential and inconceivable. His depth and dedication had been incomparable to any Canadian climber earlier than him.
John was a pioneer in setting new requirements each nationally and internationally. In 1978, he made the primary winter ascent of the 1,300-metre North Face of Mt Kitchener in Jasper Nationwide Park with Jim Elzinga. One 12 months later, John and three others made a 16-day alpine-style ascent of the extremely prized and unclimbed 3,000-metre southwest buttress of Mount Logan 5,959 m, Canada’s highest mountain.
In the summertime of 1980, with Dwayne Congdon, he represented Canada on the Rassemblement Worldwide, a bi-annual occasion held in Chamonix, France, that draws two of the most effective climbers from every nation. John and Dwayne succeeded in making the third ascent of the MacIntyre/Coulton Route on the Grande Jorasses, a route that had defeated a lot of Europe’s high alpinists. John went on to climb the North Face of Les Droites and to solo the Gabbaroux Couloir on Mt Blanc.
In Canada, mountain climbing was one in all John’s primary pursuits and he led the motion in direction of new routes and bolder types. His record of first ascents consists of Takakkaw Falls, Pilsner Pillar, Slipstream and Nemesis (the primary free ascent).
In spring 1980, John led a four-man expedition to Nepal to determine a really technical new route on the south face of Ganga Purna, a 7,454-metre peak within the Annapurna space. This was a landmark ascent and to at the present time, ranks as some of the troublesome climbs Canadians have achieved within the Himalayas.
Climbing was not only a sport for John, it was his way of life life to the fullest; it supplied a way of understanding and a coming to phrases with himself. He was consistently testing himself, pushing a bit of tougher on the wonderful edge that seperates success from failure. Every time he got here nearer to realizing his full potential.
John was not solely a world-class climber, he was a pacesetter and a pioneer of recent concepts. He was instumental in what would evolve into right now’s Mountain Tools Coop and he additionally helped developYamnuska Inc., now Canada’s largest mountain college.
John impressed everybody he met. He was a instructor, a climber and a pacesetter of his technology. His loss of life in an avalanche within the winter of 1982 left an unbelievable void within the Canadian climbing group. However in his lifetime he created a legend and he gave each climber a fearless instance of what they will change into. This, maybe, was his biggest reward of all.
