Canmore Mountaineer Becomes Youngest And Fastest To Complete Rockies' 11,000ers

On the morning of June 14, Haldan Borglum stood alone on the summit of Mount Clemenceau, a remote mountain deep in British Columbia's wilderness.

There was no crowd waiting. No finish-line banner. No medal ceremony.

Just a 26-year-old former biathlete, dozens of kilometres from the nearest road, looking out across a landscape he had spent the last two years traversing in pursuit of one of North America's most demanding mountaineering challenges.

With that final summit, Borglum became both the youngest and fastest person ever to complete Bill Corbett's list of the Canadian Rockies' 11,000-foot peaks.

He finished all 58 mountains in two years and six days, shattering the previous speed record of five and a half years while also surpassing the previous youngest finisher by roughly half a year. Every summit was completed self-propelled, meaning Borglum traveled under his own power from the trailhead rather than using helicopters, motorboats or other mechanized assistance that some climbers have used to access remote objectives.

The marks he eclipsed belonged to two of the Canadian Rockies' most respected mountaineers. Ben Nearingburg, who had held the speed record since 2018, and Steven Song, who became the youngest finisher in 2020, are both well known within the Rockies climbing community for their contributions to the sport. Breaking either benchmark would have been noteworthy. Borglum broke both in a single project.

The accomplishment is difficult to explain to anyone unfamiliar with the Canadian Rockies.

Unlike many famous peak lists, the Rockies' 11,000ers are not simply a collection of tall mountains. They are a test of nearly every skill modern mountaineering demands.

Some require technical rock climbing. Others involve steep snow and ice. Many require glacier travel, route-finding through remote wilderness, winter camping and long approaches carrying heavy packs. Several are so difficult that experienced climbers spend years waiting for the right combination of weather, conditions, and partners.

In nearly five decades, only 23 climbers have completed the Rockies' 11,000ers.

"The 11,000ers are just the warmup for me," Borglum said after finishing.

That confidence is easier to understand once you know where he came from.

Born in Pittsburgh before moving to Alberta as a toddler, Borglum grew up immersed in the outdoors. His father had him skiing by age two and hiking by age six. By age nine he had joined the Foothills Nordic Ski Club, beginning a journey that would eventually take him to the highest levels of international biathlon.

For 17 years, Borglum pursued the sport. He trained full-time for eight of them. He represented Canada internationally and competed at the World Cup and World Championship level.

The training built an unusual engine.

Long before he became known in climbing circles, Borglum had spent years learning how to suffer.

A three-hour training session was routine. Endurance became second nature. The discipline required to train year after year became deeply ingrained.

Mountains began as a way to break up the monotony.

What started as occasional hikes evolved into scrambles. Scrambles became technical objectives. Technical objectives became an obsession.

Around 2020, Borglum first discovered references to the Rockies' 11,000ers while reading trip reports online.

At the time, many of the peaks seemed beyond his abilities.

"I remember thinking, holy, these are gnarly," he said. "I don't know if I'd ever do some of those."

A few years later, he was chasing all of them.

His first summit on the list came in June 2024. Initially, speed wasn't part of the plan.

He simply wanted to become a better mountaineer.

Then something unexpected happened.

By the end of his first season, he had already completed roughly a quarter of the list. As his experience grew, so did his confidence. Soon, he began tackling the mountains most climbers consider the giants of the collection.

Mount Robson.

Mount Alberta.

The Goodsirs.

The Helmet.

These are the names that carry weight in Canadian mountaineering circles.

Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, creates its own weather systems and often turns climbers back with storms, avalanche conditions or complex glacier hazards. Mount Alberta is widely regarded as one of the most difficult mountains in the range, a jagged fortress of rock and exposure that has humbled generations of climbers.

For Borglum, Alberta would become one of the defining climbs of the entire project.

In August 2025, Borglum and three partners approached Mount Alberta during what they hoped would be one of the best weather windows of the year. Instead, they arrived to find the mountain still coated in snow.

They had left their crampons and ice axes behind.

Standing on the Woolley Shoulder, a high alpine pass that offers climbers their first clear view of Mount Alberta and its route to the summit, the group spent roughly 90 minutes debating whether the trip was over.

Borglum was convinced it probably was.

Instead, they continued.

What followed became one of the most memorable climbs of the entire project.

After reaching the summit at 7 p.m., the team immediately began descending. Darkness swallowed the mountain. They rappelled through the night, shivering at anchors between pitches and navigating one of the Rockies' most feared peaks by headlamp.

When they finally returned to their bivouac site, the sun was rising again.

They had been moving for 24 hours.

"That's definitely the craziest thing I've ever done," Borglum said.

The climb reinforced something he had been discovering throughout the project.

Fitness alone wasn't enough.

The speed record wasn't won because Borglum could move quickly. It was won because he learned to adapt.

Weather windows collapsed.

Road closures forced new approaches.

Routes changed.

Partners came and went.

More than a third of his trips involved significant problems that required on-the-fly decisions.

His climbing partner Ian Matthews saw that adaptability firsthand.

"It takes an elite athlete," Matthews said. "He's built differently."

Borglum's athletic background certainly helped. But even experienced climbers noted something else: an unusual willingness to learn.

Many endurance athletes entering mountaineering rely on fitness to compensate for technical weaknesses. Matthews said Borglum did the opposite, deliberately developing the climbing, ropework and decision-making skills needed to safely tackle the range's most serious objectives.

By the final season, Borglum wasn't simply following established routes. He was finding new solutions to old problems, linking objectives together and identifying alternative approaches to remote peaks.

"It still definitely feels like the list is a bit in its early days," he said. "There's still some pioneering to be done."

For Borglum, that meant not only climbing the mountains, but rethinking how to reach them.

That mindset became essential throughout the project. When wildfire damage closed the road to one of his final objectives near Edith Cavell in Jasper, many climbers would have simply waited for access to return. Instead, Borglum and his partner approached from the Marmot Basin area, crossing over Asoria Pass and descending into terrain rarely used for the peak. What is typically completed as a straightforward day trip became a three-day, 50-kilometre expedition through remote backcountry.

As word spread through local climbing circles and online mountain communities, more people began following his progress. Each successful summit brought him closer to a record that had once seemed unimaginable.

Still, the ending was anything but straightforward.

The final peaks, Clemenceau and Tusk, sit among the most remote mountains on the entire list. After previous attempts had been thwarted by mechanical issues, difficult access and changing conditions, Borglum and his partners began exploring an alternative approach.

Using satellite imagery and route-finding skills developed throughout the project, the team identified a new line. Borglum said that, to the best of his knowledge, the approach may never have been used before to reach the peaks.

"The idea of doing a new route is pretty cool," he said. "It does kind of put into perspective how wild some of these peaks are."

The new approach got the team deep into the wilderness below Clemenceau and Tusk, but concerns about the terrain and the long descent eventually convinced Borglum's partners to turn around. He continued alone.

The decision reflected the mindset that had carried him through the previous two years.

Calculated. Competitive. Committed.

And so, on June 14, standing atop Mount Clemenceau, the pursuit finally ended.

The statistics are staggering: 58 peaks, 1,580 kilometres travelled, roughly 110,000 metres of elevation gain and 50 cumulative days spent moving through some of the most demanding terrain in the Canadian Rockies.

But numbers alone fail to capture what the accomplishment represents.

For most finishers, the 11,000ers are a decade-long project. For some, a lifetime pursuit.

Borglum compressed that experience into just over two years.

Then he walked away with both records.

The irony is that he doesn't sound finished.

The rifles and race suits of his biathlon career are gone now. His attention has shifted fully toward alpinism. Future goals include the Columbia Mountains, more technical ice climbing and a planned trip to Peru's 6,000-metre peaks.

The list that once seemed impossible is already behind him.

The next challenge, whatever it turns out to be, is somewhere beyond the horizon.

Read each trip report on Borglum’s website and follow his new adventures on Instagram