The Rise of “Scramble Culture” in the Rockies: A Mountain Guide’s Warning

When Sebastian Taborszky rappelled off the upper ridge of Mount Assiniboine last week, he expected the usual quiet descent: anchors, ropes, a slow careful retreat down glazed rock. Instead, he watched two men clamber past in old hiking boots and peeling trail runners, moving unroped on snow-covered slabs where a slip meant death.

“I looked away, stomach knotted up, hair standing on end,” Taborszky recalled later. “We had pitched it out anchor to anchor (climbing in shorter, roped sections for safety) just hours earlier. These guys just walked into it.”

Taborszky, who runs Arise Guiding out of Canmore, says this type of scene has become routine. More and more people, inspired by social media and high-profile films such as Free Solo or The Alpinist, are attempting serious alpine objectives without ropes, harnesses, or the skills to use them. And unlike the golden age of mountaineering, when such risks were taken by a small cadre of experts, today’s “scramble culture” has gone mainstream.

When a Scramble Becomes a Solo

In the Rockies, the term “scramble” has long been used loosely to describe routes where hands are required for balance but ropes are not. Yet, Taborszky insists, the language itself conceals the truth.

“Scrambling and soloing are very different things,” he said. “If you slip and die, it is not a scramble. If you fall and die, it is not a scramble. What people are calling scrambles are really solos, and death is stalking you on every move.”

Mount Assiniboine, Smuts, Edith Cavell, and even Ha Ling’s northeast ridge are now routinely climbed by parties without ropes. To Taborszky, these are not benign hikes but thousands of consecutive climbing moves where a single misstep can be fatal.

A Trend Fueled by Social Media

Why now? Taborszky points to impatience, instant gratification, and the influence of online culture. “There’s a new kind of climber who has never taken a proper course or read a professional manual. All they know is from social media. The people with the most followers are not the qualified ones,” he said.

This appetite for risk is reinforced by a loop of negative feedback: the dangerous climb goes fine, so the lesson learned is not caution but confidence. “Nothing happened, so let’s do it again, but bigger,” he said. “Until something does happen.”

The pattern is not unique to Canada. In the Italian Alps and Dolomites, more than 100 hikers died this summer alone. Local rescue groups cited overcrowding, unsuitable equipment, and social media’s role in trivializing serious terrain. “Too many people approach serious Alpine routes as a simple walk in the park,” the head of Italy’s national rescue corps told Corriere della Sera.

Mistaking Fitness for Skill

The most common mistakes Taborszky sees are underestimating terrain and overestimating ability. Fit runners and climbers accustomed to gym grades or bolted sport climbs assume those skills will translate directly to icy slabs, loose gullies, or snow-covered glaciers.

“They don’t recognize red flags stacking up,” he said. “Walking unroped across a glacier, passing a bergschrund (the large crevasse that often forms where a glacier pulls away from the headwall), climbing low fifth-class rock after a snow slope. Each of those is a red flag, and by the time you add them together, your neck is on the chopping block.”

Guides, he added, often face the ethical question of whether to intervene. He has stopped climbers mid-route and told them to rope up, sometimes forcefully. “A few times a year I come home and lose sleep for days after watching horrific close calls,” he said.

The Tipping Point

Taborszky believes the Rockies are reaching a “tipping point.” On certain well-known summits — Assiniboine, Smuts, Edith Cavell — unroped ascents have become the norm, even though the terrain is technical. What worries him most is that the list of peaks treated as “scrambles” grows longer each year, as more climbers push into objectives that once clearly required ropes and protection. “As the numbers grow, so will the fatalities. Mark my words.”

Part of the danger lies in the Rockies themselves: loose and crumbly rock, complex glaciers, and routes that are easily accessible from the highway. The range has a long tradition of calling climbs “scrambles,” he said, but that tradition is colliding with a modern generation raised on Instagram clips and fast ascents.

What Needs to Change

So what is the way forward? Taborszky does not believe the solution lies only with guiding companies, which have a commercial interest in selling courses. He argues for a broader cultural shift, more transparent communication from Parks Canada, and education that mirrors the avalanche awareness campaigns of the past two decades.

“Parks could publish weekly summaries of rescue calls, with the causes and errors outlined. Not naming names, but showing people what went wrong. It could be an incredible case study resource,” he suggested.

For individuals, he recommends humility, education, and patience. “Buy the ACMG technical manual. Learn everything in the Petzl manual. Take courses. Practice skills in real terrain. There is no fast cure,” he said.

That commitment to the “long game” also shapes his work at Arise Guiding, where he offers courses designed to shorten the learning curve responsibly. His focus is on helping people build decision-making and technical competence so they can eventually operate independently.

Above all: “Understand the stakes. The mountain does not care if you live or die. If you climb unroped and you fall, you die. There is no shortcut around that reality.”

A Culture of Consequences

What alarms Taborszky most is not just the frequency of risky solos but the way language, culture, and digital influence soften the edges of danger. Calling it a “scramble” makes it easier to dismiss the possibility of death.

“Most wrecks are not Hollywood explosions,” he said. “They are a series of small red flags leading to disaster. If you cannot see them, you cannot stop the chain.”

For now, the chain continues to lengthen. And for every party that makes it back to the hut with nothing more than a shaky story and a laugh, Taborszky sees another close call that inches the Rockies closer to an Italian-style summer of consequences.