Gordon McArthur plays The Game at the Cineplex

Remember the Game, the drytooling testpiece at the Cineplex Cave in Canada which shot to fame during the middle of the last decade as an important reference route, when drytooling was in search of accepted rules and undergoing its leashless, spurless revolution?

Established by Ben Firth in 2004 and climbed without spurs a year later by Will Gadd, this massive M13 was quickly repeated by the likes of Mauro Bubu Bole, Isreal Blanco and Evgeny Kryvosheytsev to name but three. And despite the years gone by, the route has remained one of the hardest of its kind in North America, along with Will Gadd's nearby Steel Koan. Well... after having competed in the Ice Climbing World Cup here in Europe, Canadian Gordon McArthur returned home and sealed his ice climbing season by sending the route just the other day.

With regards to the dry tooling scene in Canada, the 32-year-old from Cranbrook told planetmountain "Dry-tooling is still growing, slowly but surely.  It's certainly a lot bigger in Europe, but I think North America is catching up.  There's a few of us that are establishing more and more dry-tooling routes… which is awesome!"