Queen Bee Direct, 5.15a, at The Coliseum in Echo Canyon was bolted by Matt Pieterson during the initial development of the wall in the early 2000s. The Coliseum is located halfway up Grotto Mountain in Canmore, Alberta. It is home to long 40m pitches and has some of the hardest routes in Canada.
Queen Bee Direct goes straight up the blankest part of the gently overhanging center of the Saddle Up sector at Coliseum. Matt immediately recognized it as one of the most stunning lines on the wall, and also one of the hardest and he left it open for others to try.
I always had the direct start in the back of my mind to one day revisit, especially as I continued to get stronger and improve in my climbing. I was mostly focused on other routes, but whenever I thought about the remaining holds on the direct start, I started believing again that it could still be climbed. Adam Ondra tried the route briefly during his visit to the Bow Valley in 2018 and agreed with the assessment although he was not able to send during his trip.
I didn’t get back on Queen Bee Direct until 2020 and I was able to unlock all of the moves in the crux section and got inspired to work on it again. However, it would take another 4 years to link it all together. There were some years I would get close, but I wasn’t able to finish it off in the brutally short windows when conditions were good enough to climb the route. The Coliseum seeps badly and is often wet. Queen Bee Direct is one of the routes that take the longest to dry and is rarely dry enough to climb.
Knowing I would only have a short window of time to send, I dedicated my entire winter 2023-2024 training season to training specifically for Queen Bee Direct to make sure I would show up ready to send in the spring of 2024. In the end I couldn’t get it done that spring and had to walk away for the summer due to wetness, but I was gifted another great weather window in the fall and on October 14, 2025, I sent Queen Bee Direct.
