MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter / Spring 2018

WINTER/SPRING 2018 MLCM 47 m o u n t a i n e e r life. Or her. When Naomi got back to school for the last three weeks of the semester, nothing was different. She was still the same driven, un- princessy girl she’d always been. “It didn’t ever sink in the way I thought it would. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s not like it changed the everyday me.” After training almost non-stop for two years, Prohaska skidded into a surprisingly non- strenuous summer. She didn’t go back into the mountains. She didn’t even think about them or feel the urge to tap back into the alpinist’s zen of putting one foot in front of the other and slogging doggedly upwards. And then, on the Labour Day long weekend her family decided to do Spearhead Traverse one last time before the upcoming Spearhead Hut Project begins building permanent shelters along the route. “I love the Spearhead,” says Prohaska. “I’ve done it four times now. Last winter, I did it with my dad in a day. It was one of the best days of my life. I felt so strong. Mentally. Physically.” Harnessing up that September day, wide- stepping to avoid ripping her pants with her crampons and pacing herself against her sister to keep slack out of the rope, reminded Naomi how much she loves travelling across glaciers. Nearly four months after summitting Canada’s highest peak, she fell back in love with the simplicity and clarity that comes from being in the mountains. “I love doing it. It’s so powerful. It makes me so excited, going out to places where you’re working, your body is working hard, you’re not around people all the time, you’re just doing everything slowly. Out there, no one cares how you look. The experiences you’re having are so much more important than what you look like. All you’re doing is walking and thinking. It’s peaceful.” And it was there, “walking along the beast of ice,” jumping across crevasses and scrambling up steep rock with her parents and sister, that Naomi realized mountaineering had changed her. “I think differently in the wilderness. I dream more, I smile more, I feel alive. Doing the Spearhead again with my family made me remember how much I need the mountains.” Summiting Logan taught Naomi that she can do whatever she sets her mind to. “It was such a big goal for me and I actually did it.” But it wasn’t until she was back in her backyard, on the Spearhead Traverse with her family, that the full meaning of that historic feat came back to where it started. A speaking event full of mountain loving adventurers had inspired Naomi to “be one of them,” she says. “Now I want to be the person who inspires someone to climb, ski, hike or just love the mountains.” Shortly before press time Naomi reached out and confirmed that her next big goal is to climb Denali, North America’s highest peak. Giv’r Naomi!