Gumbies! On! Crack!

Vancouver hipsters

2011-08-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

The other day I was cycling down Main Street on my 18-speed racing bike, which has brakes. (See? I'm uncool, or however you say that nowadays). I passed a hipster on his bike, one of these single-speed, five-spoke-wheeled, impeccably colour-coordinated affairs. The guy had the tight pants, underwear showing, full beard, T-shirt with band logo, mid-'80s glasses, etc.

We were both headed for the liquor store, me for my daily bottle of Jack Daniel's, hipster for his twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I bought my bottle, stepped outside, sat down outside McDonald's, and took a massive swig. Suddenly 10:00 AM felt good. Hipster emerged, un U-locked his "whip," stuffed his U-lock into his tight pants pocket, and rode off. I wondered how he was going to skid-stop his fixie with a case of beer under one arm.

At this point I thought of a conversation a friend had with her bike mechanic:
Sheena: How do hipsters stop if their bikes have no brakes?
Mechanic: They don't-- they just keep on being hipsters

Then I realised, he wasn't riding a fixie-- it was a single-speed bike with f+b brakes. I went home and on a whim googled the band name on the guy's T-shirt. (I am always on the make for cool bands to download and then not listen to). The band in question was, it seems, an alt-music (whatever that is) parody act.

So...let me get this straight. He rides something that looks like a fixie, but isn't. He buys PBR-- the cheapest of American beers-- which isn't the cheapest of Canadian cheap beers (that honour, at least at my local liquor store, goes to Cariboo). He dresses hipster, presumably to show how cool he is (or is not, which of course is even cooler). The guy, I thought, is like a copy of a hipster, signalling membership in the tribe via proper purchases.

Then I thought about his T-shirt, and got lost in the many levels of irony involved in advertising your love of a band that made fun of you...and realised, OK, this is meta-hipsterdom. I am no longer smart enough to figure out-- or to even determine whether or not it is WORTH figuring out-- whether or not this is real hipsterdom, or a copy, or a lame imitation, or majorly meta. Hipsters, you win.

Beware the Brit

2010-10-04T16:46:00.001-07:00

This entry should basically be a warning: beware of old-school Brit trad climbers.

I have been trying to "get on the hill" with Squamish hardman Kevin McLane for years. His son, former hair model and now rock-climbing guide, Tony, and I have had a few days, but I've always wanted to see what McLane pére was all about.

While I like making assumptions and generalisations, I LOVE stereotypes, so I went right ahead and assumed that McLane Sr. would be a bad-assed and fearless gear-minimalist with more black humour than shiny new cams. And, after years of are ya free Sunday?s, we finally met up in Squamish at Napoleon's Favorite, where we began the day as all good climbers do, by getting stupidly overcaffeinated while the once-dry pavement outside became slowly darker with invisible mist, and people of every sporting persuasion dropped by to avoid the...mist? rain? cool?

McLane and I spent three hours avoiding the rain, then finally said "well fuck it!" and headed toward the Squaw, or whatever it is now Natively Correct to call it/her. Loaded with a ridiculously small rack, a few bieners and 5 slings, plus a Barley topo that looked like black spaghetti drooled by a retarded abstract artist onto a crag picture taken by a blind photographer, we ambled up.

At the base of The Sleeping Native Woman, we found a plethora of black bolts heading up into some oddly-bleached-looking fine cracks. We were in the general area of Straight Outta Squampton, White Feather etc, but since Barley's topo looked like a schizophrenic's Cubist rendition of the Squ-- oops, I mean, the Nobly Reclining Native Goddess-- we hopped on the easiest-looking thing there.

A mere five minutes after roping up with McLane Sr., who has nailed the Grand, done early FAs in Yosemite, climbed grit when there were only pins, hammers and balls for gear, and most recently celebrated his 60th birthday by doing both the Grand Wall and the Test of Metal in one day, sucky me was whining like a puppy as I crammed a left leg into a 5" offwidth and pawed with my right at rain-greased granite.

McLane Sr.'s largest cam, one of those Wild Cunt blue things, rattled around inside the off-wdith flake. The cam was like monogamy for a Mormon sex addict (and they are legion...Utah has the highest rate of porn downloads per capita in the U.S.): it impressed Mom wen you told her about it, but it wasn't nearly enough once you got into action. I whimpered and grunted and then mantled to something safer.

McLane Sr., it turned out, was doing a Buddhist thing and reducing his gear-stash. No draws, long slings, or chalk...oddly like back in 1970, when his roadie self discovered the joys of fear, pain and near-death and abandoned the world of Spandex, speed and speed. His climbing partner-- with whom young McLane was to do some hairy shit in the Alps and the Valley, back when hemp ropes, Whillans harnesses, glass wine-jugs and headbands were de rigeur-- had one rule about gear: one brought six pins, six slings and twelve bieners on a route. Period.

Kevin did the 6th ascent of the Becky Chouinard in 1971 or so. This being early in the game, beta came from Fred Beckey, who they found in a bar in Jasper, waiting out the rains and seducing the waitresses, one per night. Beckey's beta-- written on a napkin-- included three sentences. One each on how to get to the Bugaboos, how to find the Howsers, and what the route looked like. It took them 1.5 days and they had 6 pins, 6 slings and 12 bieners. 30 years later to the week, McLane repeated the route with Mark Piche, who at the time of the FA had been a swimmer in Papa Piche's nut-sack, in 9 hours...but with a rack that weighed three times as much.

(The most remarkable part of this story is not the climbing, which was balls-out for its time, nor the micro-rack, nor the fact that Fred had by this time slept with half of the waitresses in Jasper, but rather that all the waitresses were still keen on serving him beer, much of it free, and none appeared to be fighting about their conquest.)

Hardman set off up our second pitch and styled the wet slab, and then the no-gear wide crack, with only the occasional huff and puff. When I followed I noticed an enormous gap between his second piece and his third-- like 10 meters-- and again shuddered. We rapped off this pitch and into the neighbouring route, and I led a fine 10- pitch, and then, darkness approaching, we rapped.

OK the man is a full-on hardman...but the ultimate evidence for this had come to me some years ago, when young Tony told me that his Dad and Mom, even after a divorce, got along splendidly.

"That's cool," I said, happy to hear that young McLane wasn't in the midst of custody battles or arguments over finances.

"Yeah," said Tony, "they get along great! Actually my Mom is getting re-married and my Dad is going to the wedding. Err, no, wait, he's not. He WAS going to go, but he got invited to go to the Bugs." You can take the man away from climbing...

So! McLane Sr is a bad-assed and largely fearless gear minimalist. Be careful if you get the invite to climb with Kevin...he'll want half the gear and twice the runout you do...at age 62.

Ed Spatt 1963-2010

2010-09-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

Ed Spatt died in August, of lung cancer. That a guy who'd spent his whole life in the mountains, and probably smoked less than ten cigarettes in his lifetime, should die of lung cancer, is one of those fucked-up things that nobody can really explain.

I climbed once with Ed, a slab route on the Apron. I don't remember the route, but I do remember that it was incredibly hard (but Ed, who'd said "I'm in pretty lousy shape, onsighted the 11+ pitches), and that Ed's enormous climbing shoes stunk like sun-warmed dumpster when he peeled them off on Broadway. He was my physio. I last saw him in February, in the gym, revving up to train after finishing radiation therapy.

So I drove yesterday in the rain to Squamish for the celebration of Ed's life and I'll pass on a few of the stories that brothers, parents and friends passed on.

Ed was born in Bolivia. Red-haired and gangly, he wold respond to locals' stares by saying "Soy boliviano, pues!" and smiling. On arriving in Canada at age two, he quickly figured out that when he couldn't get what he wanted (usually more food), he could say "you're discriminating against me because I'm Bolivian!"

Ed grew up with two brothers and, well before he was old enough, he was doing adult stuff. One day a horrid stench came from his closet. On investigation, it turned out that young Ed was brewing beer in secret, having asked his mother, who'd said "absolutely not!" He was in the mountains early, hiking and skiing with family and climbing Slesse by age 16. Ed's teen climbing adventures also included beer-fuelled night-time ascents of the Lion's Gate Bridge towers and various UBC buildings.

Friends and family remembered Ed as somebody with a serious cholcolate habit, an infinite appetite for both food and the outdoors, and as somebody who, no matter how bad things got-- and they get pretty bad in the alpine sometimes-- never complained.

One day in the late 1970s after a first ascent in Squamish, Ed and the two first ascentionists were sitting around the top of the cliff. They were thining what the route should be called. A Beatles tune? A Carlos Castaneda character? Ed, staring across the channel at the fast food on the 99, said "man, all I can think about is burgers and fries!"

Greg Foweraker told about Ed's appetite. At a popular local place in the late 1970s, it was all you could eat for $5. Ed would eat a head of lettuce the night before to try to expand his stomach, and often managed to get down four or five platefuls. Years later, when Peter Croft (another guy with a legendary appetite) returned to give a slide show, Ed put his hand up and asked Croft "Hey, is it really true that you only ever got two plates of food at the all you can eat place?"

Ed qualified as a teacher, and, after teaching physics and math for five years, quit, because he was bored, and became a physio. He often wondered why people retired at the end of their lives, since that was when you'd be old and worn out, and unable to do fun stuff like ice-climbing and bike-racing. Ed wore red pants and red jackets. Ed needed food and would go hypoglycemic. More than one climber said it was dangerous to climb with a sans-breakfast Ed.

Rachel Stenberg told about kayaking with Ed and a group of people in the Charlottes years ago. One of them was into the Zen of rudderless kayaking, and when one day injuries prompted kayak-shuffling, superfit and superconfident Ed ended up in the rudderless kayak. And, on the trip's calmest day, in the middle of the sunny ocean, with nary a wave in sight, Ed managed to dump the kayak! After a letter-perfect ocean rescue, Ed was reinstalled in the rudderless, and instead of cussing the kayak, told the rescuers that he was happy -- after years in boats-- to have been shown how to pull off rescues properly.

One partner told of Ed's first attempt at Penny Lane. Ed whipped, ripped a piece, and stopped, a few feet above the ground, hanging upside-down, an ear-to-ear grin splitting his face. "Pretty intense, huh?" he said, and got back on the horse. Lots of people, including Ed's girlfriend Nica, told about how, last summer before his death, even when he could no longer walk or talk, Ed's enormous smile brightened his hospital room.

Food, food, food, beer, wine, food, mountains, food, biking, oceans, his friends, food, math, his brothers, food, his parents and relatives: Ed loved 'em all and made all of us smile. We'll miss you, tall man.

May there be a fucking MASSIVE chocolate buffet wherever you now are.

Into the Great Wide Open...

2010-08-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

I knew exactly what was coming up, and I was stoked. Tomorrow, Oz and Hobbit Book: perfect Tuolomne granite, six pitches, a super mix of bolts and bomber gear climbing. The day after, we would climb the Harding Route on Mt Conness: ten pitches of 5.9 in a spectaclar position, ending at 13,000 feet. The good Peter Croft gives both the maximum number of stars.

We pulled otu of town, loaded with food, booze and gas, and would our way up to the Sawmill Campground, where we hauled our tents to the site and swatted bugs. My partner, The Captain, was however oddly quiet. As we finished set-up, I asked him what was up, and he said that his Mom had gone to hospital with some as-of-yet undiagnosed ailment. He was worried.

The next day The Captain led us through the first two pitches of Oz, and I launched into the coolest-looking crack I'd ever seen, outside of the Split Pillar: 40 meters of overhanging dihedral, perfetc hands, and feet to take the edge off. And as I placed my third cam, it hit me.

Suddenly, I couldn't move. My right arm, jammed into the smooth clean crack, stiffened. My legs felt frozen, and yet my feet stuttered and skated on the knobby stance. My left palm dripped with sweat.

"What's up?" yelled the Captain.

"I, uhh--" came out before I realised, I had no idea. I had bomber gear, loads of it. I had no chance of hitting anything like the deck, a cam at eye-level, loads more gear, a bomber stance, and seven years experience climbing exactly this sort of route, mostly at harder grades. I was fed, rested, fit and psyched. And I was totally fucked.

Long story short, I downclimbed and down-aided back to the Captain, and could not explain what had happened. I was paralysed, scared shitless, and what was worse was, there was no reason for this.

We bailed. At the ungodly hour of 10 AM, we arrived back in the campground, and I sunk into my chair, dazed, a sick hollowed-out emptiness inside me, and yet I was oddly glad that here I sat, on a perfect climbing day.

The Captain went to town to use the phone, and I self-examined. It bugged me. WHAT was going on? I had FREESOLOED the grade I'd bailed off, for Christ's sake! Don't get me wrong-- I am as chickenshit as the next guy. I have bailed off alpine routes, ski tours, boulder problems and all kinds of climbs because I was worred about either objective hazard or my own skill. I am no stranger to wussiness! But this one...this one didn't provide me with an answer. WHY?

The Captain returned and said "bad news."

His Mom in Vancouver had been diagnosed with cancer. He might have to bail from our Sierras trip and go home. I told him I'd drive him wherever he needed to geta bus or a plane. He said "let's see how I feel in the morning, but I gotta warn ya, I might not be into this."

At 4 AM, the Captain said, "might as well" as I shook his tent, and later we trudged through mint-scented pine forest and crunched up onto a snowfield, and won the ridge crest as the sun dawned, pale and clear, into an icy still blue sky. We made our way down to the start of the Harding route. The Captain geared up and led. After placing two nuts, he stopped, hung, and said "I can't do it," before backing off.

Now if you are going to bail, the base of Conness is a great place to do it. Below us stretched a talus field, trees, and Tuolmne, and way out West in the haze was what might have been The Valley. The Captain sat, totally still, eyes closed, sweating. I drank in the still and the quiet, and my mind returned to yesterday. Still no answer.

It being obvious that we were not gonna get up the Harding Route, I wondered about the West Ridge. Croft gives it four stars and says that, outside of the first ascent of an 8,000 foot 5.11 route he did, in one day, with Conrad Anker in Pakistan, it is his favorite route. The Captain and I loaded the gear into the packs, and ambled off to the west. I wanted to see the ridge.

And beautiful it was...a low-angle start, then a cleaner and cleaner, and steeper and steeper line, on beautiful golden granite.

We sat on a lovely clean boulder and munched lunch. And suddenly the Captain stood up.

"Fuck THIS," he said.

"Wha?"

"Let's climb this."

"Are you--"

"Yeah."

I didn't ask any questions. We put on rock shoes and chalk bags, and started soloing on perfect cracks, with endless incuts everywhere. After the arch-bridge-- the part where Croft writes how he tried to make himself feel light-- we figured we'd done about a third of the route, and roped up. I handed the Captain my Tiblocs, and when he'd installed the first started climbing. Cussing not having brought the gri-gri, I decided, what the hell, u8ntied from the rope, and attached myself to the rope using only a prussik.

Here's a pic I scavenged online...what the route felt like.

With 20 meters of rope trailing below me, I followed the Captain as the rope snaked up into the sky. We did the last two-thirds of the route in three long simul-pitches. The rock flowed, the air was warm, the entire Sierra spread out below us, and at times I waved my right arm over hundreds of meters of still air off the side of the ridge. On top, I found myself high-fiving the Captain with a shit-eating grin on both our faces. The whole route must have taken an hour.

Wordlessly, we picked our way down the descent, glimpses of El Capitan and Half Done away, way DOWN, in the hazy distance.

Back at camp, we sat amongst the mosquito wail in the sun, and again the Captain said "fuck it."

"?"

"I'm not going home. You know, my Mom has cancer...but they can't do anything till tests are done. I could go home and worry, and do nothing, or I can climb."

Two days later, I began shitting myself on Sun Ribbon Arete when the only gear in the crux was a blue Alien (which is nobody's friend). And then I realised, again-- I was so worried about falling (onto an Alien, and then three bomber nuts, in utter safety), worried about things not going as planned, that I wasn't paying attention to what was right in front of me.

And then I understood. I had known what I was going to do, four days ago. The Captain had known that his Mom wouldn't get cancer, and then he'd KNOWN he'd have to leave his trip to see her. We were both wrong.

This was the real gift, it turned out: the totally unexpected happened. Failing is a part of climbing...and so is failing when the possibility seems remote. Emotional pain is part of life...and so is looking it in the eye, feeling it, and dealing with it. We got handed what we didn't expect, our plans changed, and what did we get? I stopped worrying about the "causes" of my silent, day-ending freakout. The Captain stopped pointlessly worrying about Mom. And the Universe threw in an awesome route-- the West Ridge-- we hadn't planned on.

I swung my right leg out, toed the nubbin, reeled in the sidepull, sunk my hands into a nice deep crack, and smiled.

Butch Makes Lemonade (2)

2010-08-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

So there I was after my second day of climbing, wandering around the campground, looking for partners. My very limited set of options-- 5.8-- was used up. I now needed to step up, or rope up, and since I am WAY too much of a wuss to step up and solo some 5.9, I went a-partner hunting.

Now you gotta love Applebee Campground. You thought that the hottest people in the world were in porn films, or perhaps on America's Next Top Model, or maybe in Napoleon's new SUV, or perhaps lounging about the Gossip Girl set? NOOO! The hottest people in the world are at Applebee Campground, and when the daytime highs are 25 Celsius (that's "freakin' hawt" for you Yankees) what you get is people stripping down to the essentials: clothes that reveal bellies and forearms, and a chance to rock the coolest possible headwear. Ladies and gents alike stood around, sat around, even strummed around-- one guy and his girlfriend, who were not climbers, had hauled in a guitar, some comfy chairs and a mean stock of vodka, and sat while their buddies climbed, wailing away, even pulling some major rock-star moves one evening when dry lightning and Twi-hard clouds brooded.

There were so many sexy people around that Butch, your humble narrator, couldn't keep it in his pants. Especially when his spraying Coloradan-- Sprayradan-- neighbours were joined by more Coloradan buddies, this newest batch of whom upped the spray ante by spraying about not mere All-Along-The-Watchtower-esque 5.12-, but 5.13b! ooooh! They turned the spray into a downpour when one of them told me that "yeah, it was a couple of Germans who did it, so it might be easier than 5.13b." Pretty good, but not anywhere near as good as

THE GREATEST PIECE OF SPRAY I HAVE EVER HEARD:

(posted on the V.O.C. bulletin board after a certain climber, well known to the now-14 followers of this blog, returned from their first trip to the Valley)

"I WENT AND LOOKED AT ASTROMAN. DIDN'T GET ON IT. BUT I THINK IT WOULD HAVE GONE REALLY WELL."

After my chat with the Sprayradans, I ambled down to the Smoking Spaniards. En route, I passed the miniature tent which contained the California Girl and her husky boyfriend. I had been dutifully eavesdropping outside their tent every night, waiting, penis in hand (the Sprayradan truck in the Porcupine Lot had had a massive one drawn on it), for their sex sounds, which turn me on ever so much, but none were forthcoming. (I later found out that this was because I had forgotten to remove my earplugs before creeping around camp, which also accounted for the odd breathing sound i constantly heard the next two days of climbing, and how my partner-to-be would resort to sign language and thrown rocks to get me to haul the rope up.) The husky Yankee lay about, reading George Orwell. I said to him "weapons of mass destruction" and he said "yup" and I left it at that. The girl was nowhere in sight.

The Spaniards were gone, off to do the Becky-Chouinard, having left behind only the older guy's sick girlfriend, who complained about la grippe and her dolor de cabeza, and in true Spanish style threw cigarettes and whiskey at the virus. The Koreans were eyei9ng their new route-- now four pitches long-- with an array of binoculars, while one of them fried Spam. I then finally hit the jackpot-- I met one Nelson from Nelson, BC, and we had soon hatched plans for doing the Super Direct on Snowpatch.

OK now Butch will S.T.F.U. for a bit and show you some pictures.

This is Nelson leading P2 (5.10c?) of Super Direct. It was somewhat mossy...so...we (I) cleaned it. I spent about two hours seconding this pitch, and when I was done, an enormous shit-stain of moss, dirt and rocks spewed onto the glacier below the route, much like my computer screen drips with my saliva when I spray about my routes.

This is the route base when we finished. MMM...but seriously, now the AWESOME P2 is clean

Here Nelson follows P5. Awesome position and very easy chimney/stembox climbing.

This is Nelson ont he scary (but cool) P6, which has a hair-raising traverse, amazing position, clean rock...you know, all of the good stuff you expect of the Bugaboos (except there was no beer stashed on top).

Here, Hardman Nelson follows me on the final pitch, an epic of weird moves, traverses and end-of-route surprises.

Well anyway, we had a super day up there on Super direct-- if you are in the Bugs, and there aren't enough smoking Spaniards or Sprayoradans in camp to entertain you, and you don't want to do Sunshine Cracks AGAIN, do this route. If only because Peter Croft (and me) have climbed it, so you can be like him (and me).

Back at camp, the young lady Spaniard continued to cough and smoke away. The Koreans were now 6 pitches off the deck, tink tink tink, and as I lay me down to wait for my espresso pot, I closed my eyes for a nap, and the Yankee Girl in the mini tent ambled over and said "I hear you're massively badass, plus I was checking out your rack earlier and you're totally hot, so would you like to hook up tonight-- I'll do anything you like [at which pooint I imagined having her go to the food locker and dig my sugar out of my dry bag]-- and go climbing with me tomorrow?" I then woke from my afternoon nap, but did in fact find the Yankke Girl there. She launched into a tirade about her lazy-assed partner, asked me if I had plans, and I told her sorry, since I was, like Elizabeth Bennet would have said, "firmly engaged," at which point her face fell.

The Sprayoradans returned from their day-- "just some twelve-minus, we were tired"-- and then began spraying about tomorrow's big day, where they were sure to onsight the 13- (err, they mean, 12+) and show the Germans what was up with grades.

The Ground Crew guitar player had created a song. We sat about and chatted awhile, and discussed music. I, being the old fart in the group, said that I was amazed at how much good music was out there, and what a huge variety there was, and how many artists were selling themselves via the Internet. The guitar player, Dustin, said, "yeah, and a lot of them are really creative!"

"Like who?"

"Nickleback. Pushing the aesthetic limits."

"Yeah. First, the singer was blond, with wavy hair. Second album, even blonder!"

"Totally."

"Third album...even blonder, a-a-and he STRAIGHTENED it!"

"Yeah man. THAT is innovation."

On my final day, Nelson and I went to do West Side Story, which was pretty cool...except opposite us, on PAddle Spray Direct, were yet MORE Sprayoradans, who went on and on about what a bummer it was that they were climbing only Paddle Spray, and not The Power of Lard (5.14R, WI7+, M13, A5+, V13, VI). We enjoyed our day, and watched the leading Sprayoradan grunt nd heave through the crux of Paddle Spray. "That," said Nelson, "should have looked easier" and we both laughed. The hardest thing of course was the rappels: since McCrowd Arete shares raps with WSS and Paddle Spray, it was a veritable international village of rap techniques and knots and waits.

Back at camp, I soaked up the view, brewed more coffee, fantasised about the Becky, said goodbye to the Yankee Girl, the SPaniard Girl, the Sprayoradans, and went to bed, hoping that Lisbeth Salander would finally corral the bad guys.

And now it is time to head BACK to the Bugs...I am hoping that over the next four days I will at least get to check out some more international accents and cooking styles.

Butch Makes Lemonade (1)

2010-07-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

The voicemail took three rambling, drawling minutes to say "A boulder crashed onto my hand and I can't go to the Bugs." Loreen, after a heli-rescue off Serratus, was out, at which point I started getting superstitious. Last year's partner-to-be, the good Mr Holgate, injured an ankle. Wanna get fucked up? Make climbing plans with Butch. Well, that's what Napoleon would-- and did-- say, after spraying about how he had done an aid climbing course with not just any old person, but with NameDrop, in this case Matt Maddaloni.

So I ended up in Golden, shopping like a Korean girl enjoying her last day ever on Robson Street. I bought Landjaeger sausages (the alpinist's power-bar), and of course granola bars (the suburban man's alpinist food). I bought a Stieg Larsson novel about the political failure of Swedish socialism, err I mean, about a bunch of pimps and perverts and murderers, and I bought a guide's tarp. This last I got mainly because I was too lazy to haul a tent all the thousand meters up to Applebee, and cos it made me feel hardcore...like, if I have this, I will consider trying All Along The Watchtower, which is 12-, 34 pitches, and majorly bad-ass.

As I arrived, muffler intact, at the porcupine lot, I had an Indian Creek flashback, set off by the assembled hordes of Colorado SUVs, one of which had an enormous grinning penis etched into its muddy back window. The symbolic import of this penis escaped me. I humped my to-me epic pack up to Applebee, and promptly turned into a climbing mendicant. I wandered the campground like the ghost of a long-dead soul, begging for a climbing partner.

This was a convenient way to scope out the whole campground close-up...and what a mix of people there were! First up were the Koreans, who were working some massive aid line, siege-style, beside the Beckey-Mather route on the east side of Snowpatch. You could tell the Koreans were in fact Korean, and not (God forbid) Japanese or some other inscrutable ethnicity, from the massive stacks of Spam tins, their shiny new haul-bags and other gear, their radio station, and the occasional blast of kim-chi that spread like a stealthy mixture of ninja and giardia fart through the campground.

Beside them were a cluster of long-haired smokers who were obviously Spanish. French smoke too but they go for shorter hair and they don't do the alpine, being pussies and all. Oh wait, that was the Iraq war. Oops, sorry to all the hot French women I have seen over the years, puffing on a cigarette, and saying "I weel climb zees roooote, I sink iss fife zirteen, fife fourteen, somesimg like zat, of course I don't know" then actually sending it.

The Colorado flashbacks came thick and fast. I found a spot to throw down my tarp and my Stieg Larsson novel (both about the same size) and heard a donkey-like braying.

"Yeah, uh--huhh, we decided that we wouldn't get on the Watchtower, there were some clouds in the morning" sprayed one. Now if you are going to announce how bad-assed you are (Watchtower) you generally don't want to appear frightened by a few hours' worth of cumulonimbal tomfoolery, which is standard fare in the Bugs. The three sprayers stood around like a bad imitation of John Long, Jim Bridwell and Billy Westbay after firing the Nose in a day in 1973 (now THAT is majorly bad-assed...imagine how many cigarettes Bridwell must have needed to keep his shit together on that one, and what a logistical nightmare it would have been to haul all them smokes, and keep The Bird adequately stoked at all moments).

Then there were a pair of Russians, da priviert, and a Yankee couple who shared what appeared to be a one-man cycling tent. Oooh-la-la, they are either in total lust, or seriously retarded, how the f&^+$$? could two people sleep in something that looked like a bivvy sack with an aluminum hard-on? There were four medical professionals from Chicago, who (loudly...what IS it with Americans in climbing campgrounds?) discussed I.N.T. insertkions, standards of care, and how the thing they were eating looked something that had recently come out of one of their patients' anuses.

Anyway I ran into five groups of three, all of whom said "naw we're OK, we don't need a fourth" which drove me nuts...why would you want to climb in three? Ridiculously slow, etc. I decided it must have been one of three things that was preventing me from finding a partner: I had not shaved for three days, or cut my hair for two months, so I looked like a red-neck version of John Lennon; I had not adequately sprayed to Coloradan standards how bad-assed I was (or wanted to be); or I was not a nubile 24-year-old girl.

So I went to bed and a moon of Falstavian immensity bellied up to the horizon and encouraged me to have irrational dreams of foolith things, like freesoloing. As the moon etched the Spires against the pale white night sky I fell asleep, and was at three A.M. awakened by hordes of climbers hissing with stoves and clattering with crampons, getting the good old alpine start.

When I awoke the campground was deserted except for a lone yogini and a Korean reading. I drank as much coffee as I could, and when I could no longer sit still, I said "fuck it" to myself, stuffed a pair of rock shoes and my 60om half rope into my pack, and headed for the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire.

i got to the base of the route in about an hour, stuffed my big boots into my pack, and put on the rock shoes. It was noon and above me was a party who were bailing.

"We're too slow," said one, "we started at 3:30 but we should have got up at midnight."

I launched into this route with barely any thought. On the first pitch, I did a slightly awkward reach-around to sink a stonker fingerjam, and then had to do one dicey move off a slightly loose flake before the bomber locks returned. On the third pitch, a rising dyke traverse that crossed the ridgecrest, I locked off with my left fingers, hiked my left foot, and swept my right across what felt like ten feet into a stem, and then, air brushing my ankles, I pulled myself across. I passed five parties on the route. At the summit, a bit of ridge-fuckery led to four or five rappels, and then the scariest part of the route: downwalking the Kain route past party after party of rock-knockers.

I got back to camp at three, made coffee, lit a smoke, and soaked up what I'd just done. My first-ever multi-pitch freesolo. Another of the fifty classics. I wish i could say that I got into some kind of Honnoldian or Croftian zone where everything just flowed, but it wasn't like that. My feet hurt. I had to piss. I wanted a smoke. I got thirsty. I got hot. Above all, I was incredibly breathing hard and had to make myself slow down and take some mental pictures of where I was.

That evening KI cooked up some KD, read some more Stieg, and then did the beggar circuit again. Again, I had no luck. People asked me what I'd done, and I told them "I climbed the N.E. Ridge" and when they asked with whom, I had to say "alone," at which point people either said "that's fucking crazy" or "wow," neither of which reaction was getting me closer to a climbing partner.

The next day I awoke, drank coffee with the Russians until again I couldn't stop myself from vibrating, and finally said "fuck it" and headed off to do Snowpatch. This one is different from the N.E. Ridge in that the crux is the last 3 pitches. I got lost on p4 or so, and found myself doing what felt like 10- stemming about 100m up a beautiful dihedral, pawing at grass in the crack, having forgotten to exit the dihedral to logical ledges. At the Wiessner overhang-- a 15 meter 5.6 hand traverse-- water poured into the horizontal handcrack, but the jams were so good that the fear didn't hit me. Above, I minced my way up slabs and cracks past the massive snowpatch, rested at the Inverted Pear, and then launched into the cruxes.

After about 20m of traversing, I did a 10m 5.7 corner-- perfect hands-- and then a 5.7 undercling, at which point, for the first time, I really noticed how much my ass was hanging out, over the snowpatch and then, a thousand meters down, the talus. Next up was the hand traverse, and finally the dreaded off-width with 5.8 climbing after it. The off-width had huge jugs in it, the 5.8 was bomber crimps and feet, and my only mistake was, at the top of the 5.8, I launched left along the handtraverse. I found myself in a blank, overhanging corner and had to reverse about 10m to the right, after which it was 20m to the summit.

As I sat on my second peak, it was the old cliche that hit me. The thing in climbing you worry about is the next move. You do not worry about falling, being tired, how long the route is, yadda yadda. Sure, you need to think about these things when you plan the day, and you better check your route, weather, etc, when you need to. But really, if you focus on one move at a time, things take care of themselves. Freesoloing clears the brain, much as meditation does, by forcing you to focus on the now. While your tiny, 16 bit-per-second conscious mind is heel-hooking or manteling, it is letting your subconscious do its own thing, and so all of those background things you can't really control, but that bug you, either get forgotten, or re-framed.

I rapped Krauss-McCarthy and was back in camp at four, buzzed out of my mind. It is no wonder that alpine climbing, and freesoloing, get used as metaphors for spiritual enlightenment. As you climb, you see more and more, and when you top out, your sense of "I am awesome!"-ness is tempered with the reality that you are only a tiny part done with the mountains. Bust out the cliches: it's a process, not a goal. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. My ass is too sweaty.

Most of all, the thing I liked about soloing was, sleep in, sit around, drink coffee, carry almost no weight, and back in camp with enough time to enjoy the sun and yet more coffee.

And then it hit me: I had just done both of the routes that I could reasonably free-solo, so I had better get off my ass and find a partner\. Round three. More later, including a few pictures.

Alphabet Soup

2010-07-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Climbers, like cats, are a territorial bunch. Woe unto them that piss on our territory, unless of course our territory is the Split Pillar on a hot Saturday in mid-August, at which point the Left Side becomes not just the Right Side's evil kid brother but also the route's outhouse.

Climbers are also a notoriously finicky bunch. Did it go free? How much aid was used? Did you French-free, fully free, aid, what? Is chalk aid? Yadda yadda. Now, these definitions are pretty clear, after fifty-plus years of campfire debates and Arcing Plot fistfights. There is another set of terms whose meaning also tends to be clear, and today I want to explore the meanings of the terms FA, FCA, FFA and FCFA.

After climbing, for the first time, our route from bottom to top in one go (the 5.11b A0 version), the Driller and I decided to publish the topo. We need feedback, it's dry right now, and hot (good weather for our route), the route needs traffic cos it's new, etc. Well after posting the topo, a bit of a shit-storm started. There was some dispute over the meaning of FA, FCA, FCFA, etc, and how these letters, strung by climbers after their names the way British astronomers hang FRC, D.Ph etc after theirs, should apply to various members of the team who put up La Gota Fria.

Well, as we well know, "FA" stands for nothing other than "first ass". This means, the first guy (or girl) to get their ass up a route. Or a pitch. The first time you go up a pitch, if nobody has done it (birds excluded) you get say "yea, I am the First Ass on that." Long-time hardmen (and women) get to say "I've had a lot of First Asses." It's kind of like a pedophile (or zoophile) having at the anus of a young boy or girl or Labrador Retriever (or sheep, if s/he is Scottish or from New Zealand)...ooooohh....mmmmmm...first ass....

Now, the next term of contention is "FCA," which as we well know stands for "First Complete Ass." Now this is a term used when you have a route that includes more than one pitch. So, you could have the First Ass on one (or more) pitches of a multi-pitch route, but when the route as a whole gets climbed in one go, from bottom to top, the person doing that qualifies as First Complete Ass.

"FCA" also stands for "First Colorado Ass," which refers to Indian Creek. You are camped at the Bridger Jacks, enjoying an evening of whiskey, bluegrass and pedophile jokes, when you hear the high-pitched whining sound of non-work-trucks in the distance. Then they come-- the Colorado Asses, loosed from their tedious nine-to-fives, and out to slay some 10- handcracks in gangs of seven-- and the first SUV to pull into the Jacks is the First Colorado Ass.

The, third but not forgotten, is FFA. This stands for First Full Ass. This refers to when a pitch (or problem) is first climbed in one go, no falls, without using gear to support the climber's bodyweight.

The last term of contention is "FCFA." This one, obviously, means "First Complete Full Ass." Now, this refers to the hard-person who first climbs a route, bottom to top, with no aid. You don't just want to be the First Ass, or the First Complete Ass...you want to be the First Complete Full Ass.

Just to be clear on this, I busted out Kevin Mclane's trusty "The Climbers' Guide to Squamish" to see how this worked. I asked the good Mr McLane how his book, which keeps track of who climbed what, and when, and how, and how hard, and how much whiskey they needed afterward, uses these various acronyms.

In his book, no acronym = FA = First Ass = the first guys/girls to go up a route, by whatever means, including helicopter, climbing gear and magic spells, though to be fair mostly climbing gear. Some routes-- let's take Freeway as an example-- are just loads of alphabet soup. The FA is Tom Gibson and Rob Rohn's, who used "some aid" to get their First Ass. Then, there are a buttload of individual pitches, variations, etc. Then we have this: and FFA (first full ass) of P1-6 by Mssrs. Hart, Atkinson, Eltis and Jones, all of whom had been involved in cleaning and projecting individual pitches. Finally, there is the FCFA-- First Complete Full Ass-- by Atkinson and Hart, where these two gentlemen hauled both their asses completely. and without aid, fully up the route.

So as we can see, you can be part of the FA of individual pitches, but not of the FCFA. You could be part of the FA of the whole thing, but not the FFA, or the FCFA.
As I contemplated this alphabet soup, I wondered how it applied to our route. And as nearly as I can tell, the First Ass of various pitches of route go 60% or so to Napoleon and others, and 40% to Driller and I and others. The First Complete Ass goes the the Driller and I, July 11, 2010. But the biggest prize of all-- the First Complete Full Ass-- is waiting to be claimed by Napoleon.

The work that remains...

2010-07-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

What is left to be done with our route? Aside from Napoleon trying to free P5 and P7, here is a list of maintenance-type stuff

a) move anchor at top of v-slot to ledge.

b) do a minor scrub on P15 (undercling).

c) same for P13 and P12-- they need minor moss removal. However as it is, they are perfectly climbable, and no gear or hand will be pawing through munge.

d) Possibly clean first few meters of P2.

e) Move fixed line from top part of P16

f) Finish Upper Powaqatsi-- p17 and 18 of our route go, but we could easily add a few bolts and clean up the line (and belay).

g) Look at variations-- P11 and P16 have some interesting possibilities. Napoleon thinks that it would be possible to bypass P7,8,9 and 10 on climber's right...we'll see if he can link the features.

So far a couple of parties have had late starts on the route and bailed off P3 or P4. They confirm the grades and say the climbing is good, with one guy raving about how cool the P3 fingercrack is. There is still a bit of munge on P1 and 2, but nothing that will cause any gear or movement problems. So here's hoping that (a) Napoleon manages to send W.L.Y.W. and (b) more parties get on the route!

minor updates

2010-07-15T09:50:00.001-07:00

So yesterday I went on a solo mission, and jugged the first 11 pitches, on Napoleon's epic (and I mean EPIC) fixed line. I drilled a variation (which will remain secret for now), removed the white fixed line from p11 and p10.

I added one bolt to P10 (the "munge traverse"). There is a cam placement near the bolt, but when I whacked it with the crowbar, i got that hollow whoomping sound that makes me head for the shitter. So now that 5.5 pitch is no hassle at all. This pitch is kinda dirty, but I left it. It is 5.5, all the trees etc have been chopped, no hassle route-finding, etc. We have this pitch, and the traverse that starts 2 pitches higher, which are "natural" so to speak, and we left these more or less as-is. HOWEVER...rest assured, if you climb the route, all of the technical stuff is clean. You will not be placing cams in muck.

I moved Napoleon's epic fixed line away from the start of P3 with one discreet bolt. Once his fixed lines come down, nobody will ever see that bolt again. So if you are up there climbing the route, you will see the fixed lines, but you will not actually be near them (except on the p7 bolt-ladder).

On P11, I cleaned up one edge of the wide-crack section and cleaned out a few placements opposite the wide crack (some wide stemming is possible for the tall and the flexible among us). Now, about the wide-crack section:

After the first ascent, Driller and I debated adding another bolt to this pitch. As it is, I used 1x #2, 3, 4, and 5 Camalot in that corner, in that order, before I got to the bolts I had drilled. We had installed two bolts, because, if we hadn't, you would have needed 2x #5 Camalot and at least 1x #6 Camalot to safely climb it, making for an epic rack. I am satisfied with our decision, in much the same way that Perry Beckham was satisfied with having put bolts on Perry's Lieback on the Grand Wall: if he hadn't, you would have needed to haul 5 #6s up there, which would have been not only a pain in the ass for hardmen, but a buzz-killer for everybody else. Now, the hard-assed tradmasters might complain-- "hey, they don't do that in the Valley"-- but those people can go to the Valley, and climb the off-width pitch on Freerider (5.11d) at 40m with two cams.

As it stands now, you put in a bomber #4, then, six feet higher, a bomber #5 (which you can easily move up as you go) for ten feet, and then you clip the first bolt. After we climbed the pitch, we debated the grade. Compare those 15 feet to Split Beaver (5.10b) in the Bluffs. This is wider, but MUCH lower-angled than the Beaver. Plus, you are gunning for a bolt, and the thing can be liebacked, and you can get a stem rest off the crack to the right. Plus the crux is shorter than the Beaver. So we think 10bish is the grade, and it doesn't need any more bolts.

On the ground, I cleaned up the arete that is to the immediate right of the v-groove. I added one bolt to this and knocked off some loose rocks. If the V-groove (a tricky, cool start) is ever wet, you can scramble up the arete (at 5.7), clip a bolt, go 10 feet higher, and step across onto the route and good gear placements.

Finally I hauled out most of the garbage, and the 100m of old static line that Ben Roy donated to us. It felt oddly anticlimactic, working on the route after having done the first ascent with the Driller.

I am now hoping folks climb it! As of today there is a week of dry weather, the route is shaded so it's great hot-day excursion, even the "wet like your wife" pitch is dry...go do it!

one-page topo for your climbing convenience

2010-07-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

So Jeremy Frimer, aka the Squampton Janitor, is back from Peru. Having spent a month dong alpine routes, he is now something like a Tyrannosaurus Rx, with massive legs, and tiny arms. This also means that he is perfectly suited to making a nice topo of the route...so thanks Jeremy!

You can print this out and take it with you-- it should fit onto one computer-printer page. FCA Dylan Connelly & Chris Stolz July 11, 2010. FA many individual pitches: Mike Blicker, Dylan Connelly, Chris Stolz, Ian Bennett (P1). FCFA (whole thing at 12+(?))...maybe Mike Blicker, Aug 2010...

Pics from the send day

2010-07-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

OK...if my computer skills are functional, I should be able to put these into order. get ready to enjoy a LOT of pictures of The Driller. Sorry, ladies, he is not single.

Here is the Driller on P1. A this point, you can go straight up, into an 11b lieback (first freed by Ian Bennet, onsight), or you step slightly left and do the 10d bolts + gear undercling. You can also see the v-groove that starts the route. If it is wet, simply scramble up the arete that makes up the v-groove's right side. V-groove was cleaned by Tony McLane.

Here, Driller has just finished the fingery 11b crux. This pitch has a 5.8 move to start past a fixed nut. After that, you have about 10m of 11b (bomber gear) which could be EASILY French-freed-- two fingery moves, then a solid handjam or lock.

After the P5 dihedral bolt ladder, here is Driller setting out across the Green Line Ledge-- at 5.6 or so, easy and has wild exposure. he will then go up the bolt ladder that bypasses the 5.12+ "Wet Like Your Wife" pitch.

This is the Driller pulling the crux mantle on P8. This pitch features swinging from trees, wild and airy balancing between a rock-rib and a hanging flake, and an exposed mantel-- very cool!

Here is me atop P8, with the Badge in the background.

At one point, before the slabby traverse, asked the Driller for a purple Camalot, and he offered me some choices...

Here, in the gathering gloom, Driller finishes P15 (5.8). It was a pleasant surprise: this pitch is only 5.8, and has superb exposure. It's also given us new ideas about other finishes in the enormous v-slot...

And finally this is us at the top. We topped out at 10 PM exactly, so 17 pitches took 12 hours exactly. Now...readers...go climb it, and send us some pictures!

The send!

2010-07-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Two years.
$1100.
65 man-days
3 pairs of pruning shears.
1 new rope.
10 fixed lines of varying lengths
1 almost-broken shin
Several hundred cups of coffee
Three near-death experiences
80 bolts
7 chopped bolts

None of this was in my mind as The Driller and I, at the crack of ten, left our little car on the Mamquam, giggled as we shoved headlamps into pockets, and ducked into the forest. Ahead of us lay more like a set of hypotheses to be tested: pitch X was 5.10a, confirm or deny; there were too many bolts on Pitch Y, confirm or deny.

It was a sweltering day, and, well let's not screw around-- blow-by-blows are bring, so here's the highlights. The route goes at 11b A0. You could reduce the grade further by French-freeing the first 15m of P3. We FINALLY sent P3. P8-- the "death block" pitch-- is 11a and may want another bolt. At one point as I was madly grasping at no-falling straws, Driller yelled "LEFT SIDE!" and I realised he was telling me where my chalk bag had rotated to. Now THAT is attentive belaying.

P11 went with one #5 Camalot, but may want another bolt. P14 has one hard 11a move (aidable) and may want another bolt. Driller began madly pawing the rest of my precious water as the cedars turned warmish yellow and the skies deepened in colour. The first ascent's great surprise was that P15-- the undercling-- is not only one of the nicest pitches (great position, hanging right over the entire route) but alos the easiest, at 5.8! The final V-slot pitch-- 55 meters-- took everything I had. Dehydrated, exhausted and deeply concerned that we wouldn't make Starbucks' closing time, I injdulged myself with a whole lot of stemming trickery and self-pitying grunts and made it up the awesome 10c pitch.

We topped out at 10pm exactly. 16 pitches, one 60-meter 5th-class scramble in the dark, and one utterly quiet Second Summit, wind whistling and stars mixed with glowing clouds, and the first ascent of La Gota Fria was complete.

I am still too fried to say anything much...except, thanks to the Driller, Napoleon, Mom, Larisa and Jen, and of course...GO CLIMB OUR ROUTE!

La Gota Fría 18p 5.11b A0 (5.12d)

2010-07-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

La Gota Fría
18p 5.11b A0 (5.12+)
Deputy Wall, Squamish, BC
FCA Dylan Connelly & Chris Stolz July 11, 2010; other pitches FA individually by Ian Bennett, Mike Blicker, Dylan Connelly, Chris Stolz

This long, mostly free route is characterised by excellent protection, good positions, a wide variety of good climbing and a superb finish. All pitches except #13 have bolted belays. The route is dry May-Sept. P3 and 5 can be easily French freed; P7 has a bolt-ladder bypass.

Thanks to Ian Bennet, Jeremy Frimer, Myles Holt, Kevin McLane, Tony McLane, Paul Cordy, Sebastian Mejia, Kasper Podgorski, Rob Owens, Ben Roy, Scott Semple, and our girlfriends Larisa O. and Jenn N.

THE SOUNDTRACK: Carlos Vives sings Emiliano Zuleta's "La Gota Fría"

GEAR: double Camalots from .3 to #3, 1x #4 and #5 1 Blue Aliens and/or TCU, nuts, long slings.

APPROACH: take the Sheriff's Badge trail. About 30 meters before the Philistine groove area, turn right (cairn and piece of shoelace hanging from tree branch). Head up a faint trail to a slab, go to climber's left up and around the slab, and head past bits of fixed ropes to a short, clean obvious v-groove beside which hangs a blue rope.

P1: 35m 5.11b or 5.10d Climb the obvious v-groove. Then, either

a) lieback the crack (11b) to the tree, another bolt, and the belay
b) go left, past 3 bolts (10d) to the tree, another bolt, and the belay
If P1's V-groove is wet, scramble up the short arete on its right side and step over (5.7)

P2: 5.9 40m Go up two meters to a ledge, right to a tree tree stump, and straight up into a flake-crack. Pass a tree, step right onto a ledge. Traverse right past bolts.

P3: 30m 5.11b Up the superb fingers-to-hands crack. Easily French-freed.

P4: 30m 5.10c Straight up the hand-and-fist crack to a ledge.

P5: 20m 5.9 A0 or 5.12c/d Straight up the perfect dihedral past bolts to a two-bolt belay. Very easily aided.

P6: 25m 5.4 Traverse the ledge right to a two-bolt belay.

P7: 25m 5.12+ Up and left into burly underclinging and jamming with sketchy feet on good gear to a bolted stance by an old fragment of tree. Airy, wild, sustained and superb. often wet.

P7 BYPASS: 45m A0 From the station atop P5, traverse along the Green Line Ledge and climb the bolt ladder that starts about 2/3 of the way across, straight up to the belay atop P7. Bring a #2 or #3 camalot for last move.

P8: 20m 5.11a Use bolts and trees to get to the base of an inverted V-slot, with a hanging flake in it. Then, either

a) do some crazed-ape moves involving funky stemming, put gear atop the flake then wildly mantle over the lip, to two bolts and left to the belay
b) do some exposed moves up and left, then pass finger and hand jams

P9: 25m 5.10a From an airy stance, up the nice corner.

P10 20m 5.5 Crap pitch: traverse right past a few bolts ans some trees and bushes then up to a belay at the base of a nice corner.

P11 25m 5.10b Climb the fine widening corner past 2 bolts to a ledge.

P12 5.10b 30m Cross to the right side of the ledge, then go up the left side of chimneyish blocks to a bolt. Go straight up past more bolts and gear, exit right, to a ledge.

P13 35m 5.10b Straight up to under the roof, then make a slabby traverse (one reachy move) left past bolts and a final short crack to a tree belay.

Traverse left through the forested ledge about 30m.

P14 25m 5.11a Climb a blocky right-trending feature to a crack in a shallow left-facing corner, then pass 4 bolts.

P15 25m 5.8 Climb up the left side of the huge yellow flake, then undercling left underneath the enormous roof through an awesome position to the bottom of the gigantic V-slot.

P16 45m 5.10c/d Climb up the right side of the massive V-slot through the steepening crack to a ledge, then up left through a couple of thin crack moves past one bolt to belay off a tree. A superb pitch in an awesome position in a cool feature.

P17 30m 5.8 From the top of the V-slot, make your way about 10m to climber's right to a 2-bolt belay. About 3m right of this, start up a very easy left-leaning crack. At the first tree, step up and right onto the slab and go up and slightly right. There is one .4 camalot placement, and just past a tiny overlap there is 1 bolt. Past this move up and right to a dirty crack, and belay off a lone tree on the left.

P18 30m 5.8 Make your way up any # of treed cracks or the slabby face to a two-bolt belay

Alternative end: from the bolted belay at the bottom of P17, follow the wooded crack up in a long leftward arc (58m) to the top-- a couple of 5.6 moves.

RETREAT: The route can be easily rappeled with one 60m rope from the top of P12. From the top of P8, rap straight down to the Green Line Ledge, then down and left to the top of P4. From the top of P2, rap 30m to a station, then 25m to the ground.

COMBINE PITCHES: Green Line Ledge and bolt ladder easily combine (40m)
P9 & 10 would be about 50 m, very easy; use long slings for rope drag at station atop P9

WHAT REMAINS...Connelly & Stolz freed "Fría Lite." "Fría Heavy" will involve freeing the P5 dihedral and the P7 "Wet Like Your Wife" overhanng.

THE ROUTE NAME: "La Gota Fría" is a song by Colombian vallenato master Emiliano Zuleta, and was famously covered by Carlos Vives. La gota fría literally means "a cold drop." Metaphorically, it means (a) a sudden and unexpected flood or (b) a cold drop of sweat (as in fear). The song, sung from Zuleta's point of view, describes the Colombian version of a rapper's feud: Zuleta and Lorenzo Morales, two famous accordeonistas, have been trash-talking each other, and the song details a musical battle, with the final line-- cuando me oyó tocar, le cayó la gota fría meaning roughly "and when he heard me play [the accordion], he felt cold drops of sweat." You can listen to Carlos Vives' version here The song is, as they say, based on a true story: Zuleta did have a musical feud with Morales, and did beat him at the yearly vallenato festival in Valledupar. Afterwards, Morales and Zuleta became fast friends and musical collaborators...

ASCENT CREDITS for individual pitches.
Most were done at various times with different groups of people.

First Continuous Free Ascent (5.11b A0 version) Dylan Connelly and Chris Stolz, July 11, 2010

P1 Myles Holt (aid), FA 5.11b version Ian Bennet, Oct 12 2009 (onsight!) FA 10d version Chris Stolz, June 2010
P2 Chris Stolz and Kasper Podgorski (aid), FFA Chris Stolz, Mike Blicker 4 Oct 2009
P3 Chris Stolz, Mike Blicker (aid), FFA Mike Blicker July 2010
P4 Chris Stolz, Mike Blicker (aid); FFA Chris Stolz, Mike Blicker 4 Oct 2009
P5 Dylan Connelly, Chris Stolz (aid)
P6 Chris Stolz, Dylan Connelly
P7 Dylan Connelly, Chris Stolz (aid)
P8 Chris Stolz, Dylan Connelly (aid), FFA Mike Blicker July 2010
P9 Dylan Connelly, Chris Stolz (aid), FFA Mike Blicker July 2010
P10 Mike Blicker
P11 Chris Stolz, Dylan Connelly
P12 Mike Blicker July 2010
P13 Chris Stolz, Dylan Connelly July 11, 2010
P14 Mike Blicker, July 2010
P15 Chris Stolz, Dylan Connelly, Mike Blicker July 2010
P16 Mike Blicker, July 2010

Chainsaw Love

2010-07-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

The send approaches...a feeling somewhere between circling the date of having a wisdom tooth pulled, and that near-certain feeling you get halfway through the dinner you have made that is going to seduce the object of your affection. The Driller is madly studying for the next part of his Cunthoo-- err, I mean, accounting exams, and I am done work, and so free, for awhile, at least until the RCMP gets the warrant from the judge.

As you certainly know, Jeremy Frimer, aside from being a bad-assed Peruvian alpinist, PhD candidate (he is doing his dissertation on the psychology of using climbing as procrastination) and adopter of neurotic, anti-social cats, is a route cleaner. After dealing with the Mosquito area, putting up Optimus Prime (very cool) and cleaning up the Wire Tap area, Frimer turned his attention away from his charming (and majorly bad-- err, I mean, trad- assed) wife, cats, dissertation and photography habit, and cleaned up Milk Run, adding a few pitches. The thing at 10d now goes to the rim of Tantalus Wall and as Borat would say is liek my sister, easy to get onto, and very nice, and give great pleasure.

So I met up with my friend Lorreen. Now Lorreen is one of those awesome younger climber girls, in this case 15 years my junior (which makes her ten), who is super-organised and always on time. But not on Friday. I had spent the evening playing bluegrass on Psyche ledge with a bunch of Americans, including a double-bassist, a fiddler, and a singer-guitarist. The hoedown ended at midnight because the band was preparing for a Grand Wall ascent on their final day in BC, and so I drove out to the bivvy boulder, unrolled my bearskin rug, busted out the K-Y and the 12", and prepared myself for the evening. The night passed blissfully.

The next day I luxuriated in the sun at the coffeeshop and Lorreen let me know that she would unfortunately be late. When she showed up she was grinning ear to ear. That could only mean one thing, boys...you know what it means when a woman shows up in the morning with that special smile on her face.

Yes sirree, chainsaws. Lorreen had just driven out from Abbotsford, where her current lust interest has been working on chainsaws. And them chainsaws gotta be tested before them fallers get 'em back...so my young climbing partner spent our racking session gushing about 375s, oiling up and choke adjustments. Lorreen likes this guy, cos, well...bad narrator fast-flashback...she'd gone to Smith with another younger female climber, and reported that the sport-climber boys, on seeing these two nubile young ladies climbing together, would immediately find excuses for removing shirts.

"So were you psyched about that?" I asked Lorreen.

"Fuck NO! I need a man, not a bolt-clipper."

Not only does this apply to climbing-- where obviously we trad climbers outrank you sporting types, at least in this young lady's eyes-- but more so in real life, where a guy who can fix stuff outranks an iDork, a hipster or a yuppie cunt. Anyway, Lorreen had met Chainsaw Man at a logging camp, on his remarking that her power-spraying of the underside of her engine was un-femininely meticulous, and their romance bloomed around oil changes, cylinder adjustments and of course chainsaws. She was psyched that he could fix things, he let her go climbing, and most of all that, when he DID fix things, she was allowed to watch and ask questions.

By the time this was all revealed, we stood at the base of Milk Road and I had that wisdom-tooth pulling cum shot-of-heroin feeling as I stared up at this mass of awesomeness.

OK, climbing stories are boring, so we climbed it, I hung on the long 5.10d pitch, we had to pull on bolts since the first crux was totally wet and I was blown away by the amount of work that went into this (26 days for Frimer!) and by the final "5.10c" pitch (could have been 5.11c as far as I was concerned...but the onsight always feels harder). The thing that REALLY got us, though...was the chainsawing! Frimer has done some serious work on that route ands that includes chopping down some big trees. For which he initially caught shit from a few squamishclimbing.com blowhards, but whatever...it's not like the Chief is lacking in vegetation...i mean if it were 100 years ago, fair enough. But there were ramps, chimneys and cracks all made climbable by the Husqua-Varna's tough teethy love, and so we were both warm and fuzzy toward chainsaws when we arrived on top.

Afterward I ran into Napoleon in the Starbucks, and he told me all the Valley gossip. After sending Steph Davis, bailing off the Nose due to a snowstorm, dodging tools for six weeks (take THAT, Tony McLane!) and allegedly watching The Filth get in a fight, he found a girlfriend, got a job (in Montreal), bought an SUV (I actualy saw it...it's big and grey and will make a great road-tripping vehicle, at least until that 60 hour-a-week corporate job kicks in) and was doign what we all do best...sitting in Starbucks and talking shit about climbing.

Anyway, we go for the send next Sunday July 11. Until then, the Driller is in accounting recovery at Lake Tahoe, where he will spend some time with The Filth, I am going to Washington Pass with Lorreen, and the Rain Gods will hold off for seven days. Right? Right?

The World's Worst Climbing Partner (2)

2010-06-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

"Bones," I said as I heaved my weak ass onto the top of the Buttress crux pitch, grateful for the top-rope "there's this guy I climbed with last year who's totally trash-talking you. His name is--"

"Telemark29@yahoo.com?"

"Wha? You KNOW this guy?"

"Oh yeah..."

Bones was out from Canmore for work, and we'd squeezed in a precious day between work and rains. I clipped in, sat down, rolled a smoke and asked Bones to explain.

The winter before, Bones-- marginally employed, and on a mixed sending spree of epic duration-- had been living in the Canmore clubhouse of the Alpine Club. In exchange for ten hours a week of scrubbing shitters and shoveling snow, he got a cot and a squat. The Clubhouse was something of a ritual stop for ice and mixed climbers showing up in town. You went there, cooked, and posted a partner-wanted note.

One day a couple of signs appeared: "WANTED: ICE CLIMBING PARTNER. I HAVE RACK, GEAR AND LOTS OF ENERGY. PSYCHED TO GET OUT. LEAD WI4, WILL FOLLOW ANYTHING ELSE. Telemark29@yahoo.com"

Underneath that "FOR SALE: ROCK CLIMBING GEAR. VARIETY OF CAMS, NUTS, DRAWS, GOOD CONDITION. I AM MOVING TO CANMORE TO CLIMB ICE THIS WINTER AND DON'T NEED ROCK GEAR. TELEMARK29@YAHOO.COM

Bones was busy, but passed the email on to a friend. Phone calls ensued and Bones' friend-- let's call him The Psyche-- agreed to meet at the Fireside at 6 AM for brekkie, to be followed by a day of ice-climbing.

The Psyche was there at 6. Two hours and seventy-nine cups of coffee later, no telemark29@yahoo.com, so The Psyche went home to vibrate uncontrolably in the comfort of his own house, at which point the phone rang. It was telemark29@yahoo.com, who said "Dude! I'm at the breakfast place! I'm psyched! Let's go!"

Against his better judgment, The Psyche drove back to the greasy spoon to find a shaven-headed, muscular-looking type, Les, who-- after no excuse for lateness was forthcoming-- convinced The Psyche that a three-hours-late start would be no impediment to what was sure to be a lightning-quick ascent of Professor's (WI4).

Our heroes found themselves at the base of Professor's at about 10:30 AM. Now, Professor's is, if I recall correctly from my own ascent with Bones and The Anus, is about 250 meters, so that's about five longish pitches, separated by short snow slopes.

Well, in scene eerily reminiscent of my own adventure with Les on Vector, Les got twenty-five feet up, put in his third screw, and hung, panting. The Psyche gently urged him on, and, an hour later, Les had aided his way to the top of the first WI3 pitch. The Psyche convinced Les to let him lead the rest of the route, but Les stepped in at the final crux pitch-- WI4+ some years-- and launched into it as that lovely alpenglow, ideally enjoyed from the warmth of a chalet with a beer in one hand and a brunette in one's lap, crept across the mountains and The Psyche shivered into his jacket.

Les installed all ten screws within the first twnety meters, climbed up onto a shelf, shook out, and took stock. He had no more gear, twenty meters to go, and the only option for getting out and handing off the sharp end was to downclimb and then lower off his top screw. Les then did the only thing he could think of-- he completely lost his shit. He stood, heels shaking, tools sunk to the shaft, screaming bloody fucking murder, while The Psyche racked his brain for a way to get a weak, freaked-out, in-over-head nutjob who clearly needed another hit of crack (the drug, not the rock feature) to downclimb 5 meters of 4+ before 3 AM in the now fully enveloping gloom.

In the end, somehow, faced with spending a night on his front-points, losing his hands and getting hypothermia, Les managed the brief downclimb, and The Psyche fired up under headlamp power to retrieve his gear. Our heroes returned to Canmore exactly thirteen hours after leaving. With two hours of approach and walk-out time, they averaged two hours and twelve minutes per fifty meter pitch.

The Psyche got a few more calls from Les, and, when the phone calls petered out, his friends started getting them. Les somehow didn't find a whole lot of partners that winter.

"So," I asked Bones, "is he still in Canmore?"

"Doubt it," he said, taking a drag on my smoke. In mid-March, a sign appeared on the Canmore Clubhouse bulletin board.

"FOR SALE: ICE CLIMBING GEAR. TWO PULSARS, NEWISH MAKOS, 6 SCREWS, TWO SCREAMERS. I AM MOVING TO SQUAMISH FOR THE SUMMER AND DON'T NEED MY ICE GEAR. EMAIL TELEMARK29@YAHOO.COM"

The World's Worst Climbing Partner (1)

2010-06-23T09:41:00.001-07:00

Since our route is closed until July 11, while we dutifully throw ourselves at rigorous ARC sessions in the gym to try to get strong enough to climb the thing (yesI am aware of the irony, thank you very much), I will (try to) entertain the readers with this true story.

Back in the day, when 5.9 was hard and skipping work was easy, I was between regular partners, and was blind-dating a variety of types off the M.E.C. board. I'd had, for example, a climb with Old Slow Joe, who really should have been sitting on a porch in Tenessee, with a jug and a banjo, rather than climbing. I'd been out with The Lawyer, but he was too busy making assloads of money to make it regularly, plus he couldn't crack-climb much, since it trashed his hands, which made his Indian clients suspicious (I shit you not, best pussy-out excuse I've yet heard). I'd been out with a really, really dumb girl. Now, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer by any means, but this girl made me look like a MENSA member, and when I realsed that I would have to check every knot, cam placement etc that she had, and ever would make, that one ended. I emailed aother guy one Monday afternoon-- telemark29@yahoo.com. So one day I got a call from a guy we'll call Les, who was telemark29 himself.

After some palaver, it seemed like Sunday would be a good time, so I proposed to meet at 9 at the coffeeshop. But Les had to go to church, so 11 sharp it was.

On arriving, I found a shaven-headed, muscular man, with one of those goatees that hip white guys used to have in the '90s and are now found on middle-aged men with pot-bellies, and waring a Cletic-looking crucifix, encamped beside a rusting dirtbag van crammed with ski and climbing gear. And the guy was HARDCORE in more than looks: he led 5.11. which to me was something only Gods, Sponsored Climbers and Climbing Guides did, and he'd been living in his van all winter, working in Whistler, cooking, and touring as much as he could. His van was full of generally old and filthy junk, neatly organised, with an oddly beautifully new set of touring and downhill skis and boots. I offered to grab him a coffee and he refused-- religious reasons. I had clearly hit paydirt: a ripped, clean-living, God-fearing climbing machine.

We headed up to Vector (5.9) and Les loaded up with our rack. I had five cams and a few nuts. Les had a collection that had clearly been entirely pried and yanked out of leaver palcements: a shiny new #2 Camalot hung beside something that had probably been hand-machined by Ray Jardine himself in the back of his van, which was beside a hex apparently slung with a friendship bracelet made of Nepalese hemp, and quickdraws with what felt like steel bieners.

Les got about ten feet into Vector, installed every piece of gear, hung, and began to curse. "This God-damed cock-sucking, mother-fucking, ass-licking piece of mother-fucking faggot-assed fucking gayness is mother-fucking gay-assed fucking shit!" he screamed, pounding the rock, his heels just over my head. After many more hyphentated curses, he lowered off and handed me the RPs to finish the 40 meter off-width pitch.

I passed his anchor, removed all the large stuff, and headed up. I did some weird moves in the unusually wide crack, went over the bulge, found a bolt, threw in a cam, hauled up and put Les on. I wouldn't know for a few years that I had just climbed what I would learn was an "off-width," and that there were in fact cams bigger than 3". Way down below, Les huffed and chuffed, and then I heard a "FUCKING TA-AA-AKE!" The rope went tight.

And stayed tight. After twenty minutes I yelled to see if he was OK. "FUCKING YEAH I'M COMING" came the reply. Fifteen minutes after that, rope still tight, Les appeared at the bulge...jugging. He'd rigged a pair of prusskis and had jugged the low-angle 5.9 pitch. His hands and ankles bled. He was white, and shaking. We clearly should have retreated, but you can't do that off one bolt with a 50 meter rope, so I launched up.

Instead of heading up and left, through the bushes, I went right, and found myself freaking out on what I would later learn was a 10b or 10c flake and crack. I made it...and Les repeated his previous performance, prussiks a-go!

Back in the parking lot, I decided enough, not gonna see this guy again. Aside from the obvious bullshit factor, there was something oddly unbalanced, plus of course the weirdness of a religious guy cussing like a sailor.

Next weekend, on Friday night, at 9 PM, The Lawyer bailed on me, placating a sniffling me with promises of endless patient belays and beers on a perfectly sunny future day yet to be named. Fuck. Argh. Kill. I was still in the full-on addiction phase and had trouble understanding what people who didn't climb actualy did with spare time.

Then Les called. Beginners can't be choosers, so we agreed to go to Cal Cheak.

On arriving at Peanut's Playground, Les handed me his five random cams. I put them on the ground beside my gear as I was packing.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" screamed Les. "DON'T PUT MY FUCKING CAMS ON THE GROUND! I JUST OILED THEM!" I picked them up, and haded them to the suddenly hyperventilating Les, and wondered how long the day was going to be. Les put the cams into a small grey stuff sack beside his pack.

On the walk in, Les asked me about my climbing background. I told him I'd spent a winter climbing ice around Canmore, and he asked me if I knew Bones. Yes, I told him, Bones was basically my intro to ice climbing and was a longtime friend.

"That guy," said Les, "is a cock-sucking, poser asshole."

"Do tell," I said, wondering if there were two Bones in Canmore, and whether Les had taken his happy pills that week, or if perhaps Les and I lived in alternate Universes.

Les said mixed climbing grades were bullshit, mixed climbing was bullshit, Jews controlled the world, Canmore climbers were assholes, ice grades were generally bullshit, magazines about climbing were generally bullshit, photographs of climbing were bullshit, 9/11 was an inside job, only God could save us, Canmore sport-climbing grades were inflated, and Bones' and my mutual friend The Albino was not only gay, but mentally challenged, a poser, a jerk, a weak climber...the cedars en route to Peanut's make a beautiful short forest trek. Eventually his voice stopped.

"Have you told Bones and The Albino any of this?"

"FUCK YEA I TOLD THOSE ASSHOLES WHAT I THINK"

We started with some 5.8s which Les hung from and I went up to rescue his draws. Same thing happened on 5.9 and 5.10a. Les eventually made it up a 10c, whining like a teenager who's just found out he's failed Grade Eleven English and now has to spend six weeks of precious summer sitting in a classroom.

We walked out and on reaching my car les asked me for his cams. I told him I had given them back to him before we'd started

"THE FUCK! FUCK! COCKSUCKER! JESUS FUCK! GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING CAR KEYS!"

Les had that oddly white face and shook as he threw the floor mats out of my trunk and passenger compartment. "FUCK! THAT'S $300 WORTH OF GEAR!" he howled, and ran back up to the crag. Yelling filtered down through the trees as I debated leaving him there. He had obviously left the cams in the sack on the ground, and some unscrupulous other climbers had taken his mix'n'match rack.

As I turned onto the 99 and headed toward Squamish, Les asked me if I had household insurance. "No, why?"

"Cos you can say, you got robbed, and give me the insurance money."

Have I mentioned he was wearing a crucifix? Anyway, I said no, and found myself explaining the terms "fraud" and "raised rates."

"FUCK!" said Les, banging the dash, "let's go to the cops and tell them your car got broken into!"

I then explained "fraud" again and told Les that, frankly, I thought he was a bit of a jerk, and I really didn't want to climb with hm again.

We pulled into the parking lot of the coffeeshop and Les got out. His pack lay in the backseat and he grabbed a small stuffsack and headed off to the bathroom. He was gone for twenty minutes. I wanted to throw his pack out and bust out of there.

Les returned form the washroom, clutching his tiny stuff sack, grinning ear to ear. His colour had returned. No more shaking. Hs eyes were wide, empty pools. He must have taken some kind of epic crap in there. "Are you SURE you don't want to run this through your insurance company?" he asked. I said no, gave him his pack, and started the engine. In seconds, I thought, I would never have to see telemark29@yahoo.com ever again.

"Dude," he said, "I'm free tomorrow. Let's meet at nine. No, wait, later. I have church."

La Gota, freer

2010-06-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

The first ascent of La Gota Fria (18 pitches, 5.11b A0 (5.12c) was exactly as we had both imagined. We blasted up the fucker, managing to redpoint both crux pitches, and we fired it in about seven hours. On top, our girlfriends showed up unexpectedly, carrying cold beers and vials of Ibuprofen. The sun hung low in the sky, the breeze was warm, we got a good beer buzz, the ladies carried the gear down...

And then I woke up from my dream.

Actually...we drove through rain to Squamish. We were forced to pull a Napoleon, or a me, and hang out at the coffee shop for an hour and a half while the wind caressed our route like our hands caressed our private parts as we sat staring at our to-be-epic upcoming send, both wind and hands warming things. We managed to pose and spray with some skill in the coffee shop, where we ran into Anders Ourom. Now it was a kind of funny historical accident. Anders is restoring Slab Alley (now 50 years old) while we are trying to put up a new route. You got both ends of Squamish: ancient 5.8, and new-school 5.12+ (the only qualifier here beng that Hamish Mutch could actually climb his route, while Driller and I basically clean and thrash on ours).

We also found some Americans to spray to, and then sprayed the barrista, who-- as if my rippling muscles, awesomely colour-co-ordinated outfit and chiseled visage, along with The Driller's accounting profession weren't enough-- pretty much wet her panties when we announced that we were new routing. That precipitated another woman-mob, from which we barely escaped via the back door...oh wait, sorry, I was back in dream mode there.

Anyway, I promise not to shit-talk any more. The helicopter flew us up to the base of our route, where our gear had been laid out for us and Bhung, our Nepali porter, was brewing tea. OK OK I'll shut up soon.

Driller wanted to free P1 and couldn'tcos the crux was wet. The first 15 feet-- a funky V-slot-- was also wet, but the Driller clambered up the arete to the right of it, at 5.7, and stepped across, so we now have an alternative wet-day start. P1 is 5.10d and easily aided (bolts and #3 Camalot) if the crux is wet.

P2 we decided is 5.9 due to the nice face holds.

P3 AGAIN kicked my ass. Not training is really not paying off.

P4 is 5.10c. Bomber gear, good rests.

P5 is the hardest thing I have ever tried. Massively sequential, miniscule holds, the kind of thing where if you take a hand or foot off to clip, you fall. The top 1/2 of this thing will be 11a or b, the bottom will be 12c or d. Most sane people will pull on bolts for the first bit then free the rest.

We rapped and set a new date: July 11. Till then, we both train like mo-fos-- a bit of endurance is all it will take. "All" and "bit" are like "if"....awfully big small words...stay tuned, folks.

If at first you don't succeed...

2010-06-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

Well sometimes a weekend warrior gets to join the full-timers, so on Tuesday Ginger Slack and I went and had a go at the first four pitches of La Gota Fria, which is what our route (should we ever be men, err, I mean, courageous-- enough to actually climb the entire thing) is called.

Now Ginger Slack is a guy who knows what extreme sports are REALLY all about: meeting women and working as little as possible. When not modeling neural artchitecture, or discussing now neural networks' signal-to-noise ratios correlate with adaptivity to new challenges, you can find him with his slackline, which is basically a kind of fishing net for a certain kind of girl. For this, he is sponsored! Nice work, young man. Anyway, between his horrendously busy schedule of slacklining, sex and neural modeling (oh and selling clothes at M.E.C.), Slack sometimes climbs. So on Tuesday we huffed and puffed our way through the humidity to the base of the route.

I freed P1 which Slack thinks is 5.10d (it has one short bolted crux). I was psyched to free the pitch, and then I realised that Driller and I had fucked the bolts up AGAIN, being gumbies and all. The first is too high, the second too far right. There is a good reason why purists drill on lead...anyway, the thing is doable, but not ideal. Driller would later say "we are using oil to clean up water" which makes about as much sense as BP trying to stop an oil-well explosion with some nice mud, but was actually accurate.

Slack led P2 which is IMHO 5.9 but he says 10a...but then I have them mad face-hold-detection skillz. P3 was another story. I managed to fall off on lead, then on the yo-yo, and then again a whopping two feet higher than my first two tries. This thing is 5.11B for sure. Basically, it is two hard awkward fingery move, then either a solid rest, or a bomber handjam. It is like the Squamish Buttress crux pitch-- very easy to aid.

Slack led P4 which he thinks is 5.10b, then we rapped.

The good news is that while P1 and 2 need some cleaning, the route dries more quickly than we thought for a north-facing route. After one day of no rain, with +15 temps, it is climbable with the odd wet spot. If it has 2 dry days and is +10 (e.g. April, late Sept) it will go. Wind helps hugely. The nice thing is, since the route starts off Caramba Terrace, it escapes the summer humidity trap that affects the valley-floor-starts of routes, and it gets wind.

Anyway, I know this post is really boring. But...stay tuned. We are going for the FA of La Gota Fria (Lite) on Sunday, and we will have pictures and a good story for all ten of you. That's a 25% increase over two weeks ago...and all I had to do to get new followers was, try to kill Perry Beckham and Jia Condon, and then get trash-talked on the comments part of this blog. Maybe I should try to kill Peter Croft or Steph Davis (after Napoleon finishes with her, of course) that way I could up the readership to, say, 15 and Google would come running with offers of not just $$ but also hordes of nude willing women (invisible to Driller and my girlfriends), plus free Timmy Ho coffee forever, man oh man, I can see it now...

Comment moderation changed; rockfall issues

2010-06-02T12:01:00.001-07:00

Hi readers-- we love ocmments, but since we are starting to get the odd nasty one, we would ask you to please become a member of the blog if you want to leave comments. I will publish all comments (unelss they are defamantory) but i need to know who is writing. Becoming a member should take less than one minute.

Thanks to people who are reading and commenting-- your feedback is appreciated, even when you are critical.

Regarding rockfall comments made by Perry Beckham on Squamishclimbing.com (thanks to Mr Beckham for his comments):

-- we have worked on the route for 28 days now and have seen people on the trail once. Last Spring we had to chop our way to the base, there were so many bushes etc. We had no idea or physical sign that others were using the trail.

-- After hearing via another pair of route developers (to our left) and via John Howe that rockfall was hitting the trail, we started posting both physical signs and online warnings on cleaning days.

-- We are done (for now, we think; hopefully forever) the cleaning phase. However, one member of the party has a 200m fixed line stashed on our route, and plans to scrub some variations once we climb the thing. He will let the community know what his plans are.

Freeing La Gota

2010-05-30T23:12:00.001-07:00

As the soon-to-be-renamed Driller and I drove through the mist to Squamish on Sunday, we dismissed a barrage of weather reports that called for rain, mist, clouds and other staples of the Squamish climbing diet. "Fuck THAT," we said, echoing The Filth, who refers to anything other than a shower with his charming brilliant beautiful wife as "piss."

We squelched our way up to the base of The Proj and discussed the merits of bringing a rack and rock shoes. I thought we would finish re-bolting the dihedral, fix the Green Line traverse bolts, climb the bolt ladder, and chop the trees on P8. Then-- since that would only take three hours-- we could free a few more pitches.

We jugged to the base of the dihedral and the Driller set off, trying to see how French-freeable it was. It turned out that, well, "not so much" was the answer. At the mid-pitch flake, which you protect with a nut, the Driller yelled down "hey do we have any hooks?" and of course I said "Do I look liek an aid climber?" But not to worry: Driller got out his nut tool. Then, with the same kind of care that gay men use when selecting the morning's moisturising cream, or that I use when picking my excuse for not leading whatever pitch is in front of me, the Driller set up a bathook move off his nut tool and made the mantle onto the flake. The Driller was actually more like the Thriller with his awesome ball-out McGyverish aid moves.

The rest of the dihedral went fine, and we decided to chop one bolt, and move it a foot lower, and we would liek to remind you, dear readers (all 8 of you) that when YOU get on this pitch, bring a medium nut or two, or a .4 Camalot, if you want to French-free it.

I then had the privilege of trying to traverse the Green Line Ledge, aka The Electric Pepper Grinder pitch. Now Paul Cordy had been on our route a couple of months earlier, and had commented that our bolting was, well, not perfect. As I clambered past my second bolt and clipped the third, I realised what he was talking about. Looking back, this is what I saw:

This is the kind of drilling that happens when you have nothing too hook off, and when your toes are jammed into two feet of munge, and behind you is a 300 m fall to the deck, and you are pushng UP with your other arm to hold yourself on, whileyour drilling arm holds what feels like a bucking, rabid and steroidal ferret, out of sight and over your head.

Now here is a close-up of a Bad, Bad Bolt!

We chopped this one and re-did it. This is what a GOOD bolt looks like, for all those of you who have never clipped one.

The bolt itself should be sunk as far as you can get it. Basically the issue with these bolts was, they were not pounded in far enough, so I loosened the nuts and pounded them in more, and now they are bomber. The key to drilling (other than picking a proper spot, and having a good bit) is to make the hole super-deep, so that if you must chop, you just pound the end into the rock and epoxy the opening.

The bolt ladder saw its first "ascent" today and it works perfectly. I had been a bit apprehensive after climbing the Grand Wall, whose bolt ladder seemed sparser. Ours, is much longer, has bolts closer together, but is easier to get up. You can make "fake aiders" by clipping both a long and a short sling into one biener. The "Wet Like Your Wife" pitch was, well, wet. We added a bolt to the p7 belay, hung the saw, and rapped.

Down with the crowbars, the fixed ropes, the bolt-chopper, the hacksaw, the monster rack, the aiders...there is little work to be done and now it is time to try to climb the thing with hands and feet instead of aiders and jugs. We lefta pink ribbon on the project, and removed a couple of stations, to indicate that the poroject is not yet open. Here is us with the stuff we carried off the route:

On the way back, we pondered the Universe's manifold mysteries, like why our girlfriends want so much sex, and what exactly happened to The Filth and The Yankee in The Valley (apparently they hired a guide, who took them up a route called "Shirking Fear") that caused The Yankee to lose 25 pounds and The Filth to get a sprained ankle and three sprained ribs. No, no, I must confess, that last sentence was half shit-talk: they did in fact get up Lurking Fear under their own power-- awesome job, boys. Other mysteries included, where was Napoleon, who seems to have lost all interest in our route, and how bad-assed waas Driller-- aka Thriller.

Well it turns out there are three, count 'em, three kinds of accountants: chartered accountants, certified managerial accountants, certified financial accountants, and certified business accoutants. The Driller will soon be a C.A., which is the bad-assedest of all three kinds of accountant. How bad-assed, you ask is that? Well he will be able to not only climb the outside of any building, using only nut-tools and slings for pro, he will then be able to climb the inside, and audit you so hard it will feel like a rectal examaination by a drunken Filth. THAT, clearly, is why our girlfriends want so much sex from us.

Oh, wait-- what about me? I'm not an accoutnant. Hmm, another mystery. Well perhaps next weekend, when we start freeing La Gota, answers will come. Stay tuned...

Yuppie Cunt Weekend!

2010-05-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Well the May Long, aka May Two-Four, was notable for our total lack of progress on our route, but that will not prevent me from talking shit.

The Driller succumbed to familial demands and took his charming brilliant beautiful girlfriend Jenn to Penticton, which is the epicenter of the romantic universe, for a yuppie cunt weekend involving wine, cheese, winery tours, discussions about which kind of granite to use to finish the countertops in the Whistler condo, and of course which colour the next BMW should be, the Driller's current model being a 2009 and somewhat long in the tooth.

Napoleon is incommunicado in the Valley, but Camp Four reports suggest that after an epic drinking session with the newly-single Steph Davis, Napoleon sent not only Davis but the Nose, which he feels does not warrant its current 5.13d grade but should be reduced to something along the lines of 12d. He apparently did not downgrade Davis.

As for your humble narrator, Butch Hillhurst, I spent Saturday in the Bluffs freesoloing the easiest things I could find and whondering why they don't grade things easier than 5.1, I mean, there should be rock-climbing that's say 4.13C, right?, and when I finally managed to tie a rope on, I promptly had my ass handed to me by a newish route that is immediately to the left of Electric Ball and to the right of one of those nice 5.8 cracks in Octopus Garden. Whimpering, I moved over and tried Electric Ball and managed to get up that, mostly because a foolhardy Albertan had placed the gear there for me.

Then it was time for Yuppie Cunt Weekend. My beautiful brilliant and charming girlfriend Lala and I took the ferry over to Salt Spring Island, where we rode our bikes to Steven and Steven's Super Gay Bed Bath-house and Breakfast. Our hosts at SSSGBBB were Steven and Steven (gay men never have one-syllable names). Steven was a refugee from the American real-estate corporate world and his partner, Steven, had been a keyboard player in the Fuzztones before joining Steven's real-estate outfit. Now gay men knwo from one thing for sure: things that are over-rated, and so the two of them sold their L.A. house in 2006 and bought the SSSGBBB before the market became like me in front of a hard trad climb: soft. Anyway I got the feeling the two had met at work, had probably had some heavy after-hours sex in the server room, and then developed a proper romantic relationship, which they consummated in Canada with marriage.

Anyway, SSSGBBB was immaculately appointed, with a really elegant, long-haired and utterly indifferent cat, magnificent furniture somewhere between Pennsylvania in 1803 and Thompson and Page, pumpkin and chocolate muffins a-baking, and bathrooms bursting with a staggering variety of oils, lotions, soaps, moisturisers, creams, poultices, rubs and washes, along with scented lavender towels (I'm saying lavender cos it sounds scented), all anally arranged and even the bolts anchoring the toilet to the floor were Calvin Klein. I think Driller and I should get some CK bolts for our route. A designer route. But I digress.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, not talking about climbing. Anyway we rode our bikes around Salt Spring, which is a kind of enormous yuppie museum. You can buy Organic Aromatherapy Products. You can stop and visit Organic Artisanal Cheese farms, where the cheese grows in soil fed only vegetable compost, and it is harvested by lesbian Tibetan amputee refugees guaranteed a living fair-trade wage. You can visit galleries that sell both functional! and aesthetic! carving. You can have any kind of spa appointment you want, including aromatherapy, massage (Swedish, or any other nation that has some kind of exotic woman in its national image) and of course things like mud-baths, manure-rubs and most definitely yoga.

In the evening we met a few other SSSGBBB guests, mostly couples, none of which, oddly, we heard fucking that evening. In the morning we spent some time with Steven and Steven, who asked questions like "is everybody's breakfast ogay?" and "can I offer you some more rosemary and organic peach marmalade?" You gotta love gay couples: the older Steven was in his mid-fifties, and while he had a few wrinkles on him, he was hard as a rock, and ripped. Perhaps this is a source of homophobia: let's face it, boys-- gay guys look, dress and live better than their straight-boy counterparts. When I think mid-50s het, I think belly-donut and minivan.

Ok so no route last weekend but tomorrow, Sunday, we head up for what I hope will be our final construction day. Oh yea!

Day 25

2010-05-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

The Driller and I blasted up to Squamptown. We rehashed the week's events, including the missing Napoleon, whose campaign of rock conquest has taken him south to the Valley, along with The Filth and The Yankee, rumours of a dirtbag's newly-found riches, and of course sending in the Valley.

An email had come earlier in the week.

>Yea get the route done, I want to scrub
>some variations.

Now there are three problems with this sentence.

a) In order to scrub a variation, you need a route to vary from. We need to get on that.
b) In order to scrub, you have to scrub the route, which you cannot do when you are contemplating the hard-to-send treasures of Yosemite, like the newly-single Steph Davis' butt in her Pradaguccia tights, or the Harding Slit, or finding a 4th blue Alien in Camp Four at 3 A.M. on the day you are setting off to do a nude speed ascent of Iron Hawk.
c) In order to scrub, you have to scrub...

But then, the emailer has been to Yosemite, while I am scared shitless to go anywhere near the place, partly because I am like ice-cream on a warm summer's day-- soft-- and partly because I have been using my car to sun-dry beef jerky and to smoke salmon for nearly 25 years now, so the thing must smell like a little slice of ursal Heaven to the Valley bears.

On Sunday it was The Driller and I. Now you know you've been working too much when hauling 60 pounds of gear to the base, and spending a day hanging from ropes, scrubbing cracks and drilling bolts, is fun. Such is The Driller's life. He has learned the first lesson of yuppie cunt-hood: you take up either heavy drinking or a heavy physical sport so that you don't turn into a donut-pasty, muffin-and-coffee rounded algorithm during your nine to five. Basically you could call new-routing a version of midlife-crisis aversion. "I am still a MAN," one (mentally) roars, shirking from nightmare visions of cramming one's waist-donut behind the up-tilted wheel of a mall-parked minivan after bundling the three kids in.

We arrived at the base of the route, eight months after last being on it, and found our ropes still hanging, and a few new rocks on the ground. We ended up getting a fair bit done. We chopped one bolt on our first pitch's left-hand variation, moved it 2 feet left, which means that people shorter than the newly-single Dean Potter will be able to reach it. We added one more bolt, and then we scrubbed it like The Filth scrubs his ass before his wife gets busy on it with the 18-incher, which is to say, not that much, but to sendability. The scariest thing was an epic, enormous grating sound that tumbled down slowly toward us, the sound of a few thousand pounds of rock grating into a new position. There was utter silence and then we remembered to breathe.

Here is the Driller following P1. The blue rope is (I think) Myles Holt's, from an (abandoned?) project.

Here is The Driller, doing his thing.

No, that is NOT a cigarette. Recall that we gave up smoking, masturbation and alcohol till we send. No, really...Driller is cleaning drill-dust out of the hole.

Coincidentally, this was the day when Frimer finally climbed The Milk Road and I was cheering him on-- the thing looks like it totally rocks, but I was
made a bit self-conscious, cos Frimer is as anal as a new-router can possibly be, cleaning-wise. I mean, you could probably eat out of those handjams, store your bagels and lox in there, etc, they are so nice and white.

We then rapped, and climbed to the top of P2 the direct way, and moved the rap station to the left as Paul Cordy told us to. Driller successfully chopped one old bolt and successfully made another one spin on its axis. I know this belay is gonna look fucked-up when everybody else climbs this route, but we had little choice: when I drilled it, the now-huge-incut-white-spot was a set of leaning death flakes that bulged out, and it would have been insane to put a station in that stuff.

We jugged to the bottom of the dihedral, and I chopped The Driller's 2nd bolt, moved it down and right a foot (now you can fall without hitting the ledge) and added one more. it looks like the dihedral may need one more bolt-- it has to be French-freeable-- so next time we go there, The Driller, who is about 4 inches shorter than me, and has lots less ape, will see if he can French-free it.

It being Mother's Day, I spent off-moments, much to The Driller's delight, texting my girlfriend and telling her how awesome she was. 10 reasons. I got from 10 to 5, and 4 to 1 are going to be the M.I.L.F. reasons, which will remain au boudoir, which I believe is French for "let's talk about that over some poutine and a bottle or two of Cinquante.

At the end of the day, we sat and neither smoked nor drank (Napoleon, you better be holding up your end of the deal...I will station The Yankee outside your tent in Camp Four to ensure compliance) and catalogued what total gumbies we are.

a) We will have chopped six of our own bolts successfully, and two unsuccessfully, by the time we are done. So not only can we not really install them properly, we can't uninstall them either. WOOT!

b) We have built the longest bolt ladder in Squamish. But that one's for the punters, like us and the sub-12 crowd...and we know you are legion...

c) Our shoes. Have a look at how gumbies re-lace and life-lengthen their shoes. Can you spot the erratic brilliance of our solutions?

Next Sunday, we return to the project...to FINISH! We will move a station, chop two trees, add one bolt to P8 and then hopefully down with the fixed lines.

Grand Wall Lite

2010-05-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago the clouds parted, and Sarah Spankovsky-- she of new-and-5.13A-improved Zombie Roof fame-- and I decided to go up the Grand Wall. Now I have a long and storied history with the Grand Wall. Well, that's true, except for the "long" and "storied" part. So today-- just to tease this blog's 10 readers-- I will delay reporting on recent new route activity and tell some Grand Wall stories.

I first got hauled up the Pillar by Mish Abrahams in about 2000 or so, and, as The Filth would put it, I hung like a bitch. Yes, I was the person who couldn't tell a handcrack from an asscrack (more on this later) and who at 7 PM was irritating the shit out of the two hardmen, stuck at the cedar tree, who were racing up the wall for a little post-dinner exercise, and now had to watch Yours Truly, like the sport bikers whining by on the Sea-To-Die highway below, donating blood and rubber to the rock.

Next time out, I led the Grand, with my pal Lucie. This excursion was notable for two reasons: one, I met Johnny Thrash (apparently this is actually his name). So? Well the cool thing about Johnny (at least in his own mind) is that he had been climbing for ten years, couldn't be fucked to climb harder than 5.10, and yet had managed to have sex on every major multi-pitch 5.10 route in the Corridor. As such he was an inspiration to men everywhere who think women dig boys who climb at insane levels and get frustrated.

Two, I got my ass kicked by the Sword. So? Well, after I finally made it over that mantle and up the Ladder, Lucie told me about how she had gotten into climbing. She had been out a few times, then had married, and had a kid. She woke up in hospital after a car accident on Christmas Eve, and on waking was told that both her husband and son had died, and that she had cancer. Well, after a year under psychiatric care, as well as sans hair, she decided that, man, she had better not waste time. She sold her house and car, quit her job, and began the life of a full-time dirtbag, skiing, climbing and honourary-Autiee-ing on three continents. As usual a bit of real life makes climbing bearable.

Next summer I was belaying my partner at Burgers and Fries, when a lovely young American woman caught my eye, and my nose. Love-- or lust, at any rate-- has a certain scent, and within five minutes there was some serious flirting going on. Now, the only thing that turns me on more than killer legs and ass is self-confidence, and this young woman had it in spades. I was psyched: this girl led WAY harder than me, like 5.11+ hard, had a killer smile, and wanted to climb with me. Back in the day, those would have been grounds for a marriage proposal. We arranged a climbing, uhh, "day" for the next week, and (let's call her) Tiara smiled at me as she hauled her friend up the 5.7 crack and we headed off.

Two days before our climbing "day," I found myself on the Grand again, this time with The Barnacle. Now, The Barnacle...well...The Barnacle merits an entire blog entry. At the time, I had done one route with The Barnacle, who onsighted some 11+ slab, and so I was stoked: he seemed pretty full-on competent. But on this day, let's just say that The Barnacle had managed one of his legendary tricks with which I would eventually become familiar: taking a true thing, and making it mean something entirely different, and then taking that new thing, and using it to blow up your plans. In this case, it became quite evident that The Barnacle's "I've been training" and "I'm feeling strong" were in reference to something other than climbing. As I arrived at the Pillar's base, I looked up and there was a sight: Tiara, in tights, about to follow the Pillar. Ooooh, I had to pay special attention to the belay, as a great ass generally reduces my cortex to limbic-system-only functionality.

Anyway, something odd then happened: Tiara hung like, well, a bitch. It probably took the poor girl forty minutes to hang-dog her way up the Pillar. 11+, huh? I gave her a 20 meter head start, and arrived at the top of the Pillar, to an epic stench. As her partner lead up the Sword, I found it difficult to concentrate. Because the epic stench came from her shoes. Somewhere between the smell of greenish-fuzzed Saturday-afternoon dumpster oranges and fresh Green Bay Packers jock-straps, the reek from the shoes assaulted my nose and made my eyes water. Her partner finished The Ladder, and I hauled on The Barnacle, whose "Man, if only I had my Kaukulators, ohhhh" and "the bone spur on my left hand really makes this hard, ohhh" mixed in with Tiara's "TAKE! TAKE!" At the end of the day I wanted to trade The Barnacle to Tiara for her partner.

So Spankovsky and I managed to make it up the Grand Wall Lite, with a decent hour atop the Pilalr to gossip about McBennet, Napoleon, our sex lives and how much of a pussy I really was. We were halfway toward bailing when SPankovsky looked me in the eye and said "just do it" and when I hopped on the Sword and just did it, it was fine. I can always psyche myself out.

Anyway, The Driller and I are heading up, hopefully next weekend, to do a wee bit more route maintenance, and possibly some climbing...stay tuned.

Back in the Saddle

2010-05-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

Well folks, if you are like me, God help you, climbing replaces drugs, porn, mountain biking and even coffee for some of us. Anyway The Driller, fresh from 33 straight days of accounting madness-- if as exciting a word as "madness" can be properly applied to accounting-- and I are heading up tomorrow, Sunday, to push ourselves one day closer to the send.

This being the season to work on the route, Napoleon is nowhere to be found, and The Filth-- currently dodging wardens, waterfalls and aid climbing epics in Yosemite-- sends email missives, warning us how he will go and onsight the route first thing back, and of course the 8 people who reads this blog are pestering me to finish the damned route, since it is summer and soon it will be too hot to climb the Grand Wall, yadda.

Anyway, stay tuned, there should be lots of rockfall, bolt chopping, cussing, forgetting of gear, shit-talk and other good climbing stuff. I honestly estimate two more days of construction/cleaning, and then we stop hauling gear up there, and start with this activity called "climbing."

Excuses, excuses

2010-04-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Masturbation, smoking and drinking. These are what Driller, Napoleon and I-- not necessarily in that order-- are giving up until our route is done. Think of it as climbing Lent.

Of course, that we have made these epic vows hasn't spurred us on to actually DOING anything. Napoleon, incipient yuppie cunt that he is, claims he is in the home stretch of a business or accounting degree, and claims to have put away not only his climbing shoes but also his K-Y jelly, his epic stack of XXX DVDs and of course his pink shotgun.

The Driller, marginally further along the path of yuppie cunthood, is actually employed as an accountant. Now, they say April (just FYI, April is the new March) comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

The Driller is changing that-- for him, March comes in like a tax return, and goes out like another, even longer, tax return-- but is still confining him to his cube, and iPhone fantasies about actually seeing the sun and touching real rock, not to mention his charming girlfriend.

I am the luckiest of the three of us route-stooges. After a delightful three weeks in Indian Creek and Zion, I came back to a girlfriend, cool job and-- after seeing the residents of Ginger Slack's old house smoking weed and doing trackstands-- vague fantasies about converting my ancient pink-and-yellow Dave Scott into a fixie. In other words, only Spring was on my mind and I was fully vacillating between yuppie cunthood and half-baked hipsterism.

But my Dad got sick, and it rained, and I was seduced into climbing with Sarah Spankofsky, she who for the SECOND time last summer spanked Zombie Roof into new-and-improved 5.13a submission. So basically I have been doing with my route what I have been doing with my fixie bike: fantasising.

So in the meantime, let's visit Indian Creek together, shall we?

I got off the plane in Las Vegas and met The Filth, whose wife had departed for work up north the night before. After one evening doing tequila shots, sucking on strippers' toes and getting into fights with Las Vegas' finest, The Filth spent the day cruising around Vegas, trying to not spend $400 to replace his muffler, which, trying to find free camping in the Grand Canyon and high-centering his ancient Subie, he had ripped off and then tied back on with baling wire. Perhaps, he reasoned, some down-and-out Mexican would weld the thing back on, which is what happened for $40. After cramming my 5 cubic feet of gear into the 3 cubic feet available, The Filth grinned as the Subie rumbled to life-- and I mean that literally; the car shook and made a massive, Transformer-sized sound somewhere between a ripping beer fart and a schoolbus being crushed into recycling. You know you're a dirtbag when you're totally psyched that your car starts.

Since we had a six-hour drive to Moab, we bought 12 beers, and by the time we pulled off the 191 into a mud pit, the howling sideways wind and rain were barely noticeable. We woke the next morning to more of the same, and luckily hadn't driven 30 feet further along the gravel track, where a diahrea-like spew of brown flashflood would have made life miserable for the poor Subie.

We provisioned in Moab and headed out to the Creek, where we found camping under the Jacks. Now I am not going to bore you even more than I already am with a blow-by-blow of the next 2.5 weeks, so I will just include a few highlights and pictures.

On the way in, fantasising about an epic Zion day doing The Big Lebowski, The Filth proposed that we have a Half-Dome day: 20 pitches. That would get us in shape for T.B.L.

First, this is what getting into the Jacks was like. We were horrified. However, on our first day off, we consulted a mechanic in Moab about the muffler, which sounded every day more and more like one of those Hummers that the Indo-Canadian Surrey drug-dealers or the Langley pot-growers drive-- fart-canned. The mechanic said that the three inches of mud caked onto the car were actually holding the muffler in place.

Now, sometimes the weather was wonderful.

At other times, we huddled under a tarp that The Filth had gotten from Dickfinger. Yes, that's right: while in J-Tree, The Filth had run into a former fat-kid and now incipient hardman, had a few snow-day drinking sessions and had become climbing buddies with him, and ended up re-naming him Dickfinger.

"Why..."

"Cos he's got a finger shaped like a dick. Industrial accident."

Well, thank Christ for Dickfinger's tarp, because after our first day of getting shit-kicked by Creek Cracks-- the old adage, "5.10 is HARD in the Creek" proved true-- we started getting shit-kicked by the weather. Luckily we managed to drink whiskey, cook beans and talk shit about the endless parade of Coloradan SUVs that paraded in and out of the Jacks. I am always flabberghasted that people complain about how much they have to work, and how little time they have to climb, and here they are, driving $40,000 trucks. The Filth, on the other hand, has it right: he drives a $2,000 beater, and, in the last 18 months, has worked precisely zero days.

So here is The Filth, in the Hole:

Other days were picture-perfect for climbing, like the day we went back to SuperCrowd crag and did some classics. First, The Filth did Supercrack:

We then ran into the unlikeliest of things: a pair of French trad climbers. One of them led Fingers in a Lightsocket. His buddy then led it on his gear, and fell, ripping his third-to-last piece. After many, many attempts, he got to the top. I tried it next.

"You bring ze black Alien" said the Frenchie, which I did, and inserted into the crux, and then fell off, ripping the fucking thing and scaring myself shitless.

We did the usual thing on days off-- fixing the car in grocery-store parking lots, enjoying the views, drinking.

One day a blonde showed up in a truck, her late-teen son in tow.
"You got any big stuff?" she asked.
"Sure do," I said, and we both laughed.
This was Sybille Hechtel, who in 1973, at the tender age of what must have been 14 or so, did the first all-girl ascent of El Cap.
The Filth was unwilling to lend her big gear, and her son said "MOM! Can't we take the day off? I'm TIRED!" and then told us that he'd been climbing (read: leading all pitches for Mom) for four days straight.
But the same grit that got her up El Cap got The Filth and I digging our #6s out of the bin, and she drove off, shushing her son.

On our last night, our neighbours, a pair of bluegrass-playing college students from Colorado, showed up at our fire with two banjos, a keg and a mission. It being in Utah illegal for anybody other than a licensed drinking establishment to have a keg, the Coloradans were breaking the law by schlepping a bi silver keg full of brown ale around.

"We gotta get rid of this!" said George.

"I'm not getting wrecked," said The Filth, "we gotta drive to Zion tomorrow, and rack for our aid route."

Two hours later, all thoughts of Zion had disappeared as a new mission had appeared: kegstands! This involves inverting yourself and drinking beer out of the keg.

I don't remember much of the evening: I know that there was a blonde named Chelsea, who only giggled, and there was bluegrass being played, and that there were a couple of super straight-laced Coloradans who were not amenable to trash talk, and that The Filth did hs usual with me, which is to throw me to the ground in preparation for anal sex, which I, like a corporate wife or a high-end hooker, deny him, in order to maintain his interest, and that the Filth decided-- "in what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity"-- he would learn to play the banjo, and that there was absolutely no alcohol or firewood left the next morning when we crawled out of our tents and into mind-numbing epic hangovers.

We then drove to Zion, where we tried Lunar Ecstasy (V,5.10+, C2). Now this is what I learned about aid climbing.

Well first there is the business of racking. Aid climbing is not like cragging, where you can go and have a bite between burns. Your entire life, from eating and climbing to sleeping and shitting, has to be packed into a haulbag. This proves surprisingly complicated and long:

I also learned that...

a) I will never be an aid climber.

b) It is THE SLOWEST activity that you can still reasonably call a sport. Aid climbing makes golf look like Formula One.

c) Other than, say, invading Iraq, or keeping track of 300,000,000 social insurance numbers, aid climbing is the most amount of clusterfucking that one could possibly attempt.

d) The only thing less comfortable than a portaledge to sleep on would be a cell in Guantanamo, or perhaps a toilet in Abu Ghraib.

e) Free-climbing C2 without offset DMMs is heart-attack material. At one point, I was quite literally screaming at the top of my lungs with fear, before I slammed in a cam and, shaking and whimpering, lowered off, past ten pieces that, when The Filth aided up them, blew, one by one, when he bounce-tested them. I felt "better" after that-- a fall would have broken legs, and likely worse, so retreat was not merely the act of a wuss but also logical.

We ended up being so slow that we only did the first 4 pitches before realising that we were in way over our heads (no offsets = major fear and big falls). So the Filth led the first of the A2 pitches-- 3 hours for 25 meters-- and we bailed. Here's some pics:

This looks like a huge clusterfuck, but it's actually a well-organised belay, set up to not only keep The Filth from dying as he seconds, but to haul the alcohol up to us.

And here The Filth leads some C2+, without offsets, making things scary.

Anyway. The trip ended with getting some presents for the Girl and her girls, and no trip to the US would be complete without a cop encounter. I was pulled over in Utah and the cop said "in Utah, you must signal for at least two seconds before making a lane change." Which really obviously means "this car is such a piece of shit that you guys must be meth dealers or Mexicans." Anyway, he didn't charge us with Driving While Poor and we made it to 13 Mile in Vegas, where Tony and Hannah had saved us a spot. This is them in the A.M., off to do Cloud Tower.

On our last day, we snuck into A Casino, got into the pool, where I underwater-shaved and we enjoyed stunning views of The Pool Attendant Girls. I went back to Vancouver, while The Filth hightailed it back to Zion. And now I await Driller and Napoleon's return to the new-route arena, where we have a couple of lion cubs to slay, and then the Chief to challenge.

Climbing, or having babies?

2010-04-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I got out with my oldest and dearest climbing partner, Bones, the man who taught me how to ice-climb, multi-pitch and take a crap while wearing full winter gear. I was happy to be out of the city, and we fully busted out the politically incorrect shit-talk. No women present and all.

But, since we are both in LTRs, we are talking about babies.

"I can't imagine anything cooler than having a kid," said Bones.

"Hard trad climbing," I said.

"Yeah, climbing is pretty awesome" gushed Bones

"Ok but, climbing can kill you. You can't die from fucking."

We laughed for awhile, and then did a few more routes at the weirdly-utterly-deserted-on-a-perfect-day Penny Lane crag.

At the end of the day, I started up Crime of the Century and got my ass handed to me. Bones and I were laughing about me being as weak as a pre-coffee Napoleon, or a post-Friday Driller, or just me in my natural state, no similes necessary, he mentioned how at least one young Squamish trad climber (and there are many) who shall remain unnamed recently soloed Crime (5.11b) while totally loaded. Young people in bars get beer goggles at closing time, when pretty much every sexual option looks perfect, and climbers apparently get beer goggles too. Except that Crime, whether or not you are well-oiled, is awesome. Even if you woke up the morning after, hung to the gills, you would roll over, look at it, and want to jump right back on it.

We also ran into King Can Al at the base of Crime. Now, this man is legendary in Squamish. Of a Saturday, you will (and I mean WILL) find him cruising around the Bluffs or the Apron, with three things in his hands: shoes, smokes and King cans. He will pull up to a crag, crack one, light up, and then freesolo something.

It's often hard to tell what offends people more: that a climber is smoking and drinking beer at the crag, or that he is freesoloing. I have seen people quite literally freak out when seeing somebody solo-- "HEY MAN! TIE IN! I'LL THROW YOU A ROPE! DON'T DO IT!"-- this sort of thing is standard. But this is NOTHING compared to smoking or, God forbid, having a beer. People take climbing VERY seriously. Which, after even a moment's realisation, is ridiculous. What are you accomplishing when you climb? Well, it's fun, or thrilling, or challenging, or whatever...but you are most certainly not making the world a better place, or helping the poor, or alleviating suffering, yadda yadda yadda. Let's face it, we climbers are selfish thrill-seeking bastards, often with massive egos (which I would have if only I climbed better), and our sport, while kinda cool, is ultimately silly.

OK, fair enough, if there are children at the crag, you might want to lay off discussing Sensitive Topics, like anal sex with animals, or how the poor are responsible for fucking up their own lives, or who is responsible for the recent economic meltdown. But other than that...

Anyway, sorry, I could see immediately that all was not well with Al. He had beer and smokes and shoes, but no chalk, and then he told us-- four days earlier, he'd take a 55-footer off Penny Lane (5.9) while soloing. On his way down, he fell backwards until he was upside down, but then hit his shoulder just above the fingercrack mini-dihedral, which rotated him just enough to land him basically flat on his back. He got four broken ribs, a broken clavicle, some kind of muscle injury in his shoulder, and his bell rung pretty good.

Al chatted away. The poor guy not only wasn't gonna be climbing for awhile, but cos he sounded like a broken record. Classic symptoms of head trauma include short-term memory issues, and it seemed like Al had to repeat things two or three times to make sure he'd remembered them. He ambled off. I wondered about the accident. He's been climbing forever and he's probably soloed Penny Lane a couple of hundred times. Had he been boozing? Was it wet? Was he distracted? Did a foothold break?

So, yeah. Babies. Free-soloing. Beer. Falling. As dusk fell we walked down the trail. I was happy for a great day with a great partner, and oddly glad when my phone beeped, and it was a text from my girlfriend, and I was able to answer.

Problem?

2010-04-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

I spotted him across the room. He was wearing a harness, and bouldering, and so was I. We were both climbing single. Our eyes met, and locked, they way they do in Filipino romance novels, or gay bath-houses. Next thing you know, we were roped together.

Let's call him "Pavel," from Czech Republic. No "the." Pavel was in Canada, visiting his brother, and had come to the gym, expecting to find something like the scene at his local ba-- I mean, home crag: fifty people who were all equally psyched to be getting sweaty and sore together. But Pavel met with the usual "do I even know you?" stares, this either because it was Vancouver, or because he was wearing a very tight, bright pink wifebeater and striped Spandex tights. Since this was before the appearance of hipsters, poor Pavel enjoyed neither ironic nor genuine acclaim, and rather dejectedly bouldered away, wondering why none of the groups of three wanted to rope up with him.

After we had a couple of burns on my 5.3 project-- burns which were as scary as they were difficult, since I had to be careful to not fall off the crux and onto the children's birthday party below--Pavel said

"I have for you present" and disappeared into the locker room. He reappeared with two enormous bottles of Urquel and inserted one into his mouth to remove the cap.

"Hey!" I said, brushing aside a couple of eight year-olds, "you can't do that here!"

"Why not? Is problem?"

"Yea, it's Canada, you can't drink beer here. Sorry Pavel."

"Is strange. In Czech Republic, we drink beer in climbing gym, always."

Pavel, smile drooping somewhat, returned the beers to his pack, and I thought I'd console him with an invite to climb in Squamish, which he hadn't yet visited.

Two days later, we stood at the base of The Bottom Line, two pitches of bolted 10a that lead to Deirdre 5.7.

I had a harness, rope, rack and waterbottle. Pavel had a thirty-litre pack, out of which he pulled a rack that had Cyrillic lettering, metal slings and totally random sizes of nuts and what looked vaguely like cams.

"Thees equipment from Russia. I can get for you. Very good price," said Pavel, fondling what looked like an Alien that appeared to work backward. I began to wonder if there was something wrong with my eyes or brain. It seemed like there was something missing from this cam, or perhaps it was designed to work in reverse gravity environments.

"You want to buy?" asked Pavel.

"No, but thanks."

"Why not? Is problem?"

Pavel jumped on the first pitch and hung on the first bolt, gasping. I got worried. Pavel had told me some stories about climbing sandstone in Czech Republic, from which I got three main points:

a) there is almost no gear
b) what gear there is, is either crap, or pieces of tat, wadded into balls, and crammed into shallow cracks.
c) the climbing is so scary you need to be well-lubed to be successful.

I thought, "ok, the guy climbs that, he must be a hardman," a thought process that gumby me used to regularly engage in with anybody who climbed harder than me, which was to say, everybody. But not only was Pavel having trouble with the moves, his pack was enormous. ONE of us was going to have to lead these slab moves, and the other was going to have to haul the monster. Pavel lowered down and pulled out a bottle of Urquel from the pack.

"Wha?"

"In Czech Republic, we climb one pitch, we drink one beer, always. Is problem?"

He handed the lead off to me, lit a smoke, and I set off up the route. On the third or so pitch of Deirdre-- oddly deserted-- he tried to lead again, with his rack of alien Aliens and weird Friends, but downclimbed back to the safety of smokes and beer. By the time we reached the top, the pack was six bottles lighter, and there was singing in Czech at the other end of the rope.

As we sat on Broadway and pulled our shoes on, Pavel fired an empty bottle down the Apron. Lovely rink-a-tink-tink turned into a CRASH and a "FUUUUUCK" from far below.

"Hey!" I said, "you can't do that here."

"Why not? I should not leave bottle here to make litter. Is problem?"

We made our way down, and, as was my wont even before Napoleon stepped on the scene, hoochies screaming, we went for a coffee. Pavel swayed in the coffee-shop lineup, and when we got to the barista, he pulled out a cigarette, and said

"Please one beer."

"Uhh, we don't serve beer, and you can't smoke in here, sir" said the girl.

"Why not? Is problem?"

As we drove home, I asked Pavel how he'd liked his stay in Canada.

"Is very nice, Canada," he said, "very clean, pretty. In Czech Republic, we drink one beer, smoke one cigarette for one pitch, always. But here, you must put bottle in pack, and you cannot drink, and you must smoke only in outside, this makes pollute of outside. I do not understand Canada and beer. I think is problem."

We're BACK!

2010-04-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

Like Led Zeppelin said, it's been a long time, a long lonely (x5) time!

I have set up a hit counter and it astonishes me that there are often as many as 200 people with nothing better to do than to read this blog. So therefore I will only temporarily disappoint the .00000065% of the Internet who reads this, and tell you that, yes, I have material coming out of my ass (no, not THAT kind of material-- this is GOOD shit) and yes I will publish some of it soon. For those of you who are bored shitless, there are buttloads of good porn sites, discussion sites, etc, to tide you over while Gumbies Off Blog dithers-- feel free to email or post your suggestions.

So stay tuned. Coming up-- hair sponsorships, dirtbag style, The Vow Of Abstinence, another trip to the Creek, some old stories, and, oh yeah, we will eventually be getting back onto our route. So tie up your helper monkeys, feed your cat some cheese slices, check out American Idol, buff them pipes, buy a pair of tighter pants (a fashion dictum that for the first time in about fifty years applies to both men and women) and bust out those musty ropes and pads...it's Spring!

Gestation

2009-11-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

Gumbies! On! Crack!, like Napoleon in Starbucks, Ian Bennett at an organic vegetable stand, or Butch in his girlfriend's underwear drawer, has been somewhat sidetracked of late. This is because

a) It rains-- weird, I know; you would think we were living on the Coast or something

b) A bunch of us went to Indian Crack, Utah, the most addictive place in the world, other than Pornhub or BikesnobNYC or a White Sale at your local Army and Navy.

c) I have so many blog entry ideas, that, like a kind of really retarded Hamlet, I don't know where to start. Between David Bloom's Indian Crock guidebook (which is to real guidebooks what Homer's Odyssey is to GPS navigation) to Napoleon's battles with rabbits, Digital Readout and coffee-makers, to Tony McLane's imminent hair sponsorship, to Sarah Panofsky's human bouldering, I've been swamped.

Stay tuned, folks...like a finely-tuned toilet, Gumbies!On!Crack! will be back, transporting the goods you want, exactly where you want 'em.

How To Make A Guidebook Suck

2009-11-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

Continuing on with ways to de-improve your climbing experience, Gumbies! On! Crack! brings you advice on extending The Suck to your guidebook experience. We will base our handy make-it-work-as-well-as-the-Canadian-mission-in-Afghanistan advice around David Bloom's Indian Crock: A Climbing Guide (2nd Ed.)

We will however have to detour before we get to the main event, in the way that Napoleon needs to do Starbucks before climbing, or I need to visit www.pornhub.com before getting on my bike. Yes, porn makes one ride faster (like if I were a golfer, you know what they say about one Mr Woods, whose money shots sure didn't affect his money shooting). Anyway, our reference points will be Kevin McLane's The Climbers Guide To Squamish and the Supertopo guidebooks.

Now, Mr McLane has made a guidebook which has several outstanding and essential features. These include

a) clear and detailed topos
b) accurate descriptions of gear needed
c) accurate information about how to get to the climbs
d) a total lack of essay (or other) non-essential writing
e) being staggeringly comprehensive (last edition had 1,250 routes)
f) a lack of colour photography
g) a total lack of spray by sponsored and other climbers.

Moral: for a GOOD guidebook, write a la McLane.

Then there are the Stupidtopo books, which are actually for blind and retarded climbers. Consider: move by move beta, detailed gear beta (in some cases piece by piece), advice on how to succeed on long routes (e.g. Astroman strategy: "The key is to keep moving quickly through the many long 5.11 pitches") and descent beta that would allow a retarded, blind and seriously beer-deprived climber to safely and quickly make his or her way back to the cooler, walking stick and/or group home. Only problem is, Supertopo did not write their guides in Braille, so blind climbers will need to get their retarded partners to read them the beta in order to memorise the beta, and, take it from me-- a slow dumm guy-- us retards will need a LOOONG time to read the beta, cos, believe me, it's that detailed. It would probably take the typical rock-climber 25 or so minutes to read the description for Epinephrine IV 5.9 in Red Rocks, time which could be spent watching porn (if you are The Filth), drinking Starbucks (if your name is Napoleon), or approaching the route.

The one thing you have to say for Stupidtopo is that the info is, well, all there. Failing on a route you have Stupidtopo'd into your head, by getting lost, or because you forgot to bring that essential 17th blue Alien fromt he gear list, would be like being unable to drive out of your driveway while having your significant other, GPS system, rear-view mirrors and all other systems perfectly functioning and guiding you.

Now let's look at Mr Bloom's book, so you too, should you decide to write a climbing guide, will be able to make your book suck, should you so choose. You could opt for the excellent McLane style, or the for-the-blind-and-retarded style of Stupidtopo, or for something more Bloomian.

EIGHT WAYS TO MAKE YOUR INDIAN CROCK (or other) GUIDEBOOK SUCK.

8) Make the edges square-cornered, not rounded. This will eventually make the dog-eared edges so thick that you will be able to use the book in place of a .5 Camalot. And as Crock climbers know, those .5 Camlots, well, that means you are in 5.12-cos-it's-sustained-like-a-Spinal Tap-guitarist's-favorite-1959 Gibson.

7) Add a full-colour front and back flap-- and don't add anything useful, like a pocket to put notes etc into.

6) Make your guidebook expensive by adding colour photos-- hundreds of them-- to it. It is important that these colour photos look great and be inspirational. But they should not under any conditions provide actual information about the climb.

5) Take the photos of the crags and routes from as far away as possible. This will add to the difficulty of finding one's desired route. Bloom's book is about 10 inches in height; his crag photos are about 1". Go squint.

4) Make the book low value. Bloom's book has 1,116 routes and sells for ~$37.60 Cdn. That's 3.4 cents/route. McLane's book, on the other hand, has 1,250 routes for $34.00 Cdn, so you get each route for 2.5 cents. Bloom's book is therefore almost ONE CENT/ROUTE more expensive. Multiply this by 1,116 routes and you are playing ten bucks more than you would at nice, logical, Canadian, free-market prices. And ten bucks is, well, four bottles of Two-Buck Chuck, or 12 PBRs, or 1/4 of a bottle of decent wine, or two plates of tacos...

3) Include essays and memoirs. Thanks, Steve Hong, for doing the FAs of so many awesome routes...and I am happy that you think we really need to hear that you are bummed that the Creek has been over-run by crowds. Yes, the Creek should be your private climbing preserve, and not pasture for we the arrivistes. I am glad that, having told others about your routes, you did not expect them to be climbed. Mr Hong, don't do what Mugs Stump suggested: climb the most awesome route in the world, and don't tell anybody about it. Climb awesome routes, tell everybody, get bummed that your area is now over-run...and then whine about it!

Scott Carson, if you "absolutely hate" to write about yourself...thanks for doing it anyway. Yes, I would rather read your story of climbing the Optimator for the first time than have a clear topo to look at. And then there is Lisa Hensel, saying that she loves the Creek because of the "growth" that she and her partners experienced while climbing there. Really? I want to be in the book, too-- I want to tell the world that breathing and walking are important to me. I want some essay space to say that. Oh, also I like climbing.

Mr Bloom, however, did one thing right-- he ditched the Timmy O'Neil memoir. If there is anything more boring than watching people eat dinner, smoke pot and then try to play the drum, it's reading about people eating dinner, smoking pot and trying to play the drum. I mean if you want see Mr O'Neil doing it right, you watch this.

2) Make the beta wrong. List too little gear, of the wrong size, and get your pitch lengths wrong. This is an especially good strategy if you have, as the jacket blurb says, twenty years of climbing experience and a Creek regular. Then you can REALLY screw with the gumbie masses. Do NOT pass on accurate knowledge.

1) Leave out hundreds of routes. And leave out every third or fourth route on each crag. This allows you and "the locals" to have their own private climbing Idaho where the (m)asses won't go. Here's a riddle:

Q: How many yellow Camalots does "Staggering out of the Bar" (5 stars, 5.11-, 35m, at Cat Wall) take?
A: You mean you don't know?

Gumbies! In! Creek!

2009-11-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

Well, the curse of the Coast are the Saturday rains, and last week was no exception. I peered carefully into the future, and it became obvious that there was not going to be anything mega-exciting in Squamish, such as another Cobra Crack ascent, or big-wall going free, or, for that matter, a sudden spike in the sale of boudering pants at Valhalla Pure in Squamish. Nothing exciting happening...

So I went to Indian Creek, along with Napoleon and Ginger Slack. Mr Slack is, well, a slack-liner, and he had plans to not only climb but to string a highline between the Bridger Jacks and then walk across it. I thought you might as well just kill yourself from the ground up, save yourself all that work, but then I was told that these highliners use harnesses and, like hippies on acid confronting the Army at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 Chicago, they also use daisies to make life nicer for themselves (or so, like those hippies, they hope)

The thing about this trip was, we would (later, alas) realise the sheer power of words. If we said it, it happened. Now, being idiots, we naturally failed to discuss either Roman orgies,,
sending 5.13,
or the key to winning the lottery, and we stuck to yapping about cops, snow, mechanical hassles and killing animals.

As we drove through Blinkandmissit, UT, Slack said "and there's these American towns where they nail you for speeding even if you're like 2 mph over, cos that way the town gets more revenue." At literally that exact moment a cop pulled us over-- 58 in a 50-- "that will be $90, please, and no sir, you do not need to tongue my balls. Enjoy your visit to Utah." Muthaf**kin' 5-oh on my TIP, y'all as Ian Bennet or the rapper of your choice other than L'il Wayne would say.

Now Hemingway famously (and allegedly) said that "there are only three sports: mountain-climbing, auto-racing and bull-fighting. The rest are mere games." Now there was obviously a fourth sport: the correct use of hyphens: a noun (person, place, thing, idea) in front of a gerund (a noun ending in "ing") needs to be followed by a hyphen. Hemingway by all accounts mastered the fourth, as you can see by his exhaustive sport-and-hyphen dictum, and the fifth (epic drinking sessions).

Now of course it was ironic that Napoleon wasn't driving. Napoleon drives like it's a race. He climbs. And his bullfighting involves arguing with me. Come to think of it, Napoleon, at the moment that Officer David Mormon pulled us over, was actually doing one of two things: jerking off to tax spreadsheets or fast asleep, while I (if memory serves, which it frequently doesn't) was jerking off to either midget porn or images of Indian Crack.

Now let's not make fun of people who jerk off to income tax and retirement spreadsheets, (as they say, 95% of us jerk off, and the other 5% lie about it, and, ladies, you, as that famous Seinfeld episode showed us, are part of this too)), since doing income-tax spreadsheets is pretty rough sport and also massively sexy to others. If you f**k it up, you may end up in the pen, like this guy.

So we drove on, chastened, the way Tiger Woods feels after his soon-to-be ex-wife rescues him from his SUV driving problems by using a golf club on the back window of his SUV.

We dropped Mr Slack in Moab to meet his slacklining buddy, and, McLane style, scored nearly free pizza, and then blasted out into the desert, where we immediately got lost. I warned young Napoleon about the dangers of mixing high-speed driving, night-time, and animals on the road (pick any TWO and you're OK). So of course we nearly hit a deer, and then smoked a rabbit. Napoleon wanted to make sure it was dead, so, on reversing, he backed over it and on later inspection that was a good move because the rabbit was not only totally doubly thoroughly dead, but also split open with guts coming out its mouth, belly and anus. Napoleon wanted to cook it up etc, but we are yuppie cunts with no clue about how to actually skin gut and eat once-living things, so we left it for the wolves, escaped convicts and Mormons having revelations.

We next drove somewhere into the Creek, threw down sleeping bags, and passed out, awaking to the sound of rustling leaves, the rattle of gear, bright sun and of course German. Naturally we had a flat tire and so our car got what in retrospect Napoleon (and the poor rabbit)should have gotten last night: a wheel that can't be driven over 40 MPH. Word quickly spread through the Creek's non-Napoleon'd wildlife that Napoleon was a whole lot safer to graze in front of, which, as it would turn out, nearly prove our undoing.

So the bill to that point was one dead rabbit, $90 ticket and a flat tire.

As we tried to leave the campground, we ran into a bunch of random dirtbags (you know the type...down jackets, stubble, toques, headlamps, "stoked to get on ________," i.e. generally interchangeable). They said there was a "leave the campground" toll which consisted of two jokes, which rate was reduced to one if yours was politically incorrect enough. The Yankee to the rescue:

Q: How is sport climbing like having your dick sucked by a guy?
A: it feels great until you look down and realise you're a fag!

Now I would like to apologise to all of my gay or sportclimber friends, and also to all of my gay AND sportclimber friends. I really needed to get out of that campground to get in line for this:

And our random dirtbag interlocutor replied with

Q: How come Asian drivers can't drive?
A: Cos they're Asian?

This got our car limping out of the lot and off we drove. Then we went climbing. Oh, sorry, did you want a blow-by-blow of the day's sends? I thought not! Let's just say that Indian Creek is wonderful-- lots of gear, clean falls, beautiful, ass-kicking, etc. One climbing story is pretty much like another, well, at least if you're me: we came, we tried, we didn't think we coudl do it, we ha da moment of epiphany, we sent. So, yeah.

Next: Part 2 of Gumbies! In! Creek!, wherein Ginger slacks, Napoleon tries to kill a cow, Sarah Panofsky does Human Bouldering, Tony McLane acquires a hair Sponsorship from L'Oreal, and yours truly has The Cleaner's Riot Act read to him by the Squampton Janitor. And now, as rappers say before they kill some niggaz and slap some bitches, peace out.

HardCore in the City!

2009-10-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Above, the clouds threaten. He wears a down jacket and a toque and sits in a beaten lawn-chair.

"Got worked on my proj," says The Beard, crossing his legs as if painfully, rubbing his beard, then glancing at the sky. "Weather looks like shit, too."

His partner nods absently and shifts on his feet.

"Gonna try it again."

"..."

A slightly older couple comes over and says hello to The Beard, sitting in a lawn chair in front of his van, whose open door shows us Rubbermaids bubbling over with gear, a rope-rug, and a collection of empty beer cans. A stove sits on the ground, and soup bubbles. There is some talk and then The Partner says "Come on."

"I gotta gear up," says The Beard

"..."

The Beard rummages through his van. It looks as if he is ready for Indian Creek. Clusters of shiny cams are lowered onto the floor as the Beard throws shoes, harnesses, a rope on the ground. Finally he grabs a harness and two pairs of shoes. He shoves the stove under the van. "Ok," he says, and the two of them approach...the entrance to the climbing gym.

On his first route of the day, The Beard grips an arete-ish series of moves, cussing the top-rope that lies near one of the holds. "Watch me here," he tells The Partner, who is staring at the Cute Underage Blonde across the way.

"Mmm" says the partner, swinging his eyes away from the C.U.B. for half a second.

"I need to focus and breathe here before I commit to the next move," says The Beard, his legs chug-chugging. A few more seconds of power breathing--"hOOOF-HOOF-- PFFFFF"-- and he comes off.

"This," says The Beard, "is really hard for ___.c. Hey, can you tell me what's written on the starting-holds tape?"

The Beard safely swinging, The Partner eyes the C.U.B. and ignores The Beard.

"..."

"HEY!" barks The Beard, massaging his arms.

"Uhh, ___.c" says The Partner.

"No, I need the name of the route-setter!"

The Partner peers at the starting holds. "Uhh, A.D.? No, wait, uhh, E.F." No, hang on. Which route are you doing, the red one?"

"No, this is WAY harder than the red one."

"Uhh, ____.b and A.D."

"___.b, huh? Well, that guy ALWAYS sandbags his routes. This redpoint is really hard."

"..."

"But I think I can get it."

"..."

The C.U.B. and her partner, the Cute Underage Brunette (CUBr) have now moved over to beside The Beard and The Partner. The CUBr starts up the (much easier than ____.b) route beside The Beard, who begins Pranic breathing, and launches back into the crux. He makes it and then finds himself in a bit of a pretzel, all bass-ackwards in the next crux, hoof-HOOF no-longer-Pranic breathing, as the CUBr passes him without even a nod of her head.

Unfortunately, The Beard is not like Will Stanhope, who can confidently climb ass-backwards into 12+ cruxes and send them. The Beard comes off again and this time takes a fairly epic fall. The two feet of slack that The Partner has out send him for what must be a bowel-loosening ride, for he curses at The Partner, who is chatting with the C.U.B., answering her question of "so, have you ever climbed outdoors?"

The Beard is done. He is lowered off and sits in the middle of the gym floor, wincing as he peels his slippers off with oddly stiff fingers. He begins a stretching routine while The Partner continues his discussion with the C.U.B. and the CUBr.

"Yo," says The Beard, "psyched for ____________?"

"..." says The Partner.

The Beard finishes his epic gym sess by clipping all of his gear together and spending the next two hours standing in the middle of the gym, everything draped over his shoulder, chatting up the girls who are working the floor, with detours to whoever has been on his __.c "proj," handing out free beta for all of the moves on the route including those he hasn't done yet. He has a simple set of criteria to determine who he talks to: you must be younger than him, female, or you have to try a minimum of ____.c

My partner and I grin at each other and I get on The Beard's "proj." I have had my ass kicked by this thing (and so has she) but we sent the thing a few weeks ago. As I am tying in, The Beard shifts around from his gym-girl-chatting position and eyes us. I get up his "proj" and then my partner flashes it too. The Beard can't resist.

"Uh, I noticed you went for the ______ hold with your left. I was trying it with my right. Did you find that worked well? And I was thinking, the one after, a cross-through would be the way to do it. How do you feel about the grade?"

We grin at each other.

"Not an easy onsight," I tell him.

"Yeah," he says, "this one is tough. I gotta work it some more."

10 WaysTo Make Your Climbing Gym Suck

2009-10-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Does YOUR climbing gym suck? No? Then read on!

Climbing-gym owners and managers regularly trade information about successful business strategies. There are online discussion groups, trade shows, web pages, yadda yadda. But what does NOT get much discussion is how to make your climbing gym SUCK.

So, in the spirit of public service, for which this blog is becoming hugely famous, "blowed up," as they say, we offer the following tips to owners, managers and belay staff-- those belittled, hard-pressed, often shell-shocked frontline workers-- on how to make your gym suck.

All of the ideas in this post come from Lower Mainland gyms. There are various Cliffhanger locations, the Edge in North Vancouver, Vertical Reality in Surrey, The Hangout in Richmond, etc. But we have also seen a few of these practices elsewhere, lest the B.C. gym owners get too big for their Prana britches.

10) When you upgrade and expand your gym make the new gym have only marginally more actual climbing space than the old one. But raise the rates.

9) If bouldering is what people really want to do, and you are moving to a new space, make the new bouldering space smaller, with sketchier landings that involve swinging onto a wooden railing, and less space to rest. Small spaces also allow you to jam so many problems together that dumm people, like me, have trouble telling the problems apart.

8) Advertise your new space as "a green building" before you move into it. Then, save money by not actually making it green. Make sure that it has paper-towel dispensers in the bathroom that only work when powered by electricity. Use electric fans instead of thinking out natural-air circulation systems to cool it. Use powerful electirc illumination instead of natural light during the day. Also important-- make the new location a good long way from public transit, which encourages people to drive.

7) The smallest space in the gym should be the bouldering cave. The largest should be the area in front of the reception desk.

6) Make the lead climbing areas only available for leading when there is nobody in the gym.

5) For the top-rope routes, make the top-rope anchor a one-point "V", so the climber will have to do the final move into the wedge of the rope. Avoid having a two-point anchor with one draw on the wall and another a foot or two away.

4) Change routes not more than every four months, whether they have all been climbed a thousand times or not. And ensure that tape which falls off problems or routes is not replaced.

3) If you are belay staff, make sure that, while working, your Facebook status remains updated, your Farmville crops monitored, and your tweets frequent. Please also ensure that you stay on top of your text messages, and remain on the floor to talk with your client friends. Your friends will appreciate your efforts and focus.

2) Musical special events are an excellent way to make your clientelle uncomfortable. Try an All Taylor Swift Evening. For this, all you need are six songs rotating through the MP3 player of your employee's choice. Or perhaps pick a local heavy-rock FM station and play it loudly enough that the climbers must use sign language to communicate with their belayers. This will make your clients in muscle shirts and backwards baseball hats-- and they are legion-- love you.

1) Massively mis-grade routes and problems, preferably by sandbagging. This allows the setters to feel the way nine-year olds do when watching special-needs children poop their pants, and it's good practice for more serious later spray sessions: "Yeah, I don't really know if that's 10a or 11c-- it's been a long time since I've climbed those grades."

3.5 More days (2): The Patient Ass

2009-10-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Ian and I pulled into the Apron Lot giving thanks for the last dry Monday, and promptly ran into one Julian and his lovely partner Reschelle.

"Hey," said Julian, "are you guys the Gumbies On Crack?" to which we obviously responded with "hells yea" and some embarassed fidgeting, and Ian high-tailing it to the shitter. Julian appeared grateful that this blog has managed to distract him from his cubicular dreariness, and I was tickled pink. We all know that we aren't actually trying to climb the route-- we are trying to (a) meet women (Napoleon), (b) perfect epic hungover aid leads (Driller) and (c) learn to blog (me). But today we would find out that Ian also has a goal...

"So," said Julian, "are you guys and Napoleon ACTUALLY FRIENDS?" and we started giggling like 13 year olds looking at Jonas Brothers baby pictures, and we said "OF COURSE! We just like to shit-talk" and at this point Julian said-- and I am not making this up-- "yeah, I've seen that guy in the Bluffs, he climbs fucking hard." Right on, Napoleon!

So we got to the route and today Ian was gonna try to send P1-- the new improved crack version. He missed the onsight, falling off where Napoleon and I had, in the V-slot-- but what followed was one of the finest moments I have seen in climbing.

Ian fired the V second try, worked his way up to the small roof, and then launched into the layback. It was wet. It was muddy. One of his pieces had a lobe up against a root. You do bizarre armbars. Nothing feels secure. You place gear blind. Think "Apron Strings" but colder, wetter, dirtier. Ian skated, cussed, err-hemmed and grunted, and sent! I fell seconding the damn thing-- it was because I was wearing a crowbar instead of my Kaukulators, obviously-- and we decided that 5.11 a or b was it. We also decided that, like a murderer or adulterer in the middle ages, or a hipster girl after too many PBRs and some unprotected, sweaty, fixie-bike sex, our first pitch would need a Plan B in case of water on the pitch, or in case climbers smarter (and weaker) than Ian (and I) try it. So we will fix our original bolted line and you can all decide for yourself how you want it; hard like Ian or soft, like me.

Ian led the traverse and confirmed, 5.9 is about right.

Turns out that Napoleon, Paul Cordy and John Effa had done a great job on P2, 3 and 4. I fell-- AFTER the crux-- on P3, which will go at 11b or 11c. Here's Ian following:

And here he is busting a gut. The man's posing skills exceed even mine!

Props to you boys! And then it was time to mess with the dihedral. Well...let's just say, this thing will take every nubbin-pinching, crystal-stemming, high-stepping, sequence-remembering trick in your internal matrix of moves to send. I managed the first two bolts; Ian the 3rd, 4th and 5th, and then darkness came.

Well we rapped off our project pitch rap station, and then the rope got stuck. here's us finally having retrieved stuff, ready to go home. Thsi is what your hands and figertips will look like, if you are as lucky as we are!

So Ian's goal was obviously to climb, and he did it. I'll leave it to Napoleon, Dylan and the hit-counter I can't figure out to let you all know how the rest of us are doing, heh heh.

So...back to calculus class...a half-day of work on P1...and it will be ready to go...Lord, Thy patient Ass awaits Thy command...

3.5 More Days (1): They Also Serve...

2009-10-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

In calculus, about which I know nothing, they talk about how a curve can slowly flatten out-- how the rate of change changes-- infintitely, never quite reaching flatness. Such is our route. Now as Ian and I drove up on Saturday, we were naturally not able to talk about calculus as a metaphor for our route, for two reasons. (a) Ian is a University dropout, and I am not very bright, and (b) Napoleon wasn't there, so obviously it was time to shit-talk him.

Speaking of Napoleon, I was somewhat shocked to NOT find him working on the route. Shocking, I know, but the man's work ethic, like a fine bottle of wine, or the smell in my climbing shoes, is ripening and maturing. Where was he? Well, the V.O.C., who are famous for doing things like putting ten parties on simultaneously ten topropes at Burgers and Fries, was running its Long Walk. Now, this is not, as you and I might suspect, an epic Napoleon-led trek bewteen the two Starbucks in Squamish. No, rather it is a kind of smorgasbord intro to various outdoor activities for new members. Gumbies. Except these gumbies are not like me (in one resapect): they do dumb shit because they don't know any better, while I do dumb shit after ten years of climbing because I'm, well, dumb. Not only was Napoleon selflessly volunteering his time to the noble cause of decreasing the net amount of gumbiehood in the Universe, he had also told me he was in fact going to work on the route-- with Two Unknown Guys-- on Sunday. This all SHOULD have prevented us from shit-talking him, the shit-talk rsising to an almost sexual crescendo when we rounded the corner past Murrin and saw The Chief, but no...we gossiped the way, well, the way Ian and Napoloen gossip about ME when they climb together. Quite the threesome.

Anyway, after a brief hello-in-passing to the gumbie-taxiing Napoleon, we headed up. Our objective was to finish the bolt ladder, add bolts to P8, scrub the dihedral and handcrack, and maybe try to climb the dihedral.

Well now I thought that jugging 200 meters would warm me up, but no. I was wearing my gym capris. The Pradaguccia Climbing Pants I got from M.E.C. (a) chafed my crotch and (b) a beige colour that as soon as I got them out into the light made me look like a middle manager for an insurance company. Now, I can stand my ball hairs getting a rub, but I would clearly not be able to pose properly if I looked like my S.U.V. and my 2.5 children were waiting for me outside the mall, so back to the capris it was. And what was worse, I forgot to attach my gym pass to my harness, so I looked like a mutant mix between an aid climber and a gym gumbie. This was clearly going to be a very bad day for photography, and also a bad dwy for crotchal warmth. The fine cold wind massaged my privates and the fine random edges of rock and gear massaged my calves.

Well, I launched up the white rope and busted out the drill. After six more bolts, the ladder was finished. At I believe 22 bolts, it is now the longest bolt ladder in Squamish. Take THAT, Peeeter Croft, Sonnie Troooter, Will Stanhooope and all you other trad hardmen! HA! If for no other reason, my readers should climb the route because, well, where ELSE-- other than the Forgotten Wall at Chek, or Red Tail in Skaha-- are you going to see that many bolts in one place?

After the bolt ladder, I launched up into P8-- this is a 20m pitch which has a 5.10+ bolted right-hand version (to which I added 3 bolts) and a 5.11- gear lefthand path. The bolts are there because

#1-- the first gear placement up off the belay station (at the top of the 12b/c Wet Liek Your Wife pitch/botl ladder) is BELOW the level of the station,and a fall would fire you off into space...read: tough times getting back on.

#2: You are supposed to climb this pitch by using the trees. But the trees will eventually get destroyed, so the second bolt will giver us backup. There was in fact a nice crack and flake right beside my second bolt, and I had aided up it ont he first ascent, but when I pounded it with the crowbar, it gave that widow-making, Napoleon-scaring, Perry Beckham-killing hollow THUUUNK, so that was that-- bolt.

#3: is up over the lip, and makes it so that you can avoid looking as retarded as me the first time I led that pitch: I fell, screaming like a corporate-bonding-party top-roper in a gym (though a few feet further, and much louder, in my case).

Now while all this was happening, young Ian was regaling me with Hellen Keller jokes while he scrubbed the dihedral. E.g.:

Q: Hey, did you hear that Hellen Keller got a new dress?
A: Neither did she!

and

Q: Why did Hellen Keller's dog commit suicide?
A: You would too if your name was MMMNNNAAUUUGHHH.

So after the bolts were drilled, I hauled the fixed ropes down to where Ian was, and we started on the handcrack. You gotta hand it to young Bennet, the fucker can scrub. First, he inherited his Dad's considerable balls (his Dad, FYI, is one of the guys who put up The Grim Reaper, which is basically a 25 years ahead-of-its-time "whaddya got?" glove throw-down to people who think bolts make climbing stress-free, and to people from Canmore). Second-- and more importantly-- he interited his Dad's Stubais.

Now think: artificial protection. Unleashed tools. The end of straight-shafts and the arival of bent shafts. Bareback ascents. You would think this was some kind of new sexual practice that The Filth has engineered in his ongoing beery quest to mix heavy anal sex, me, and climbing, but no, it's mixed climbing. And the Stubai Straight Shaft is to mixed climbing what the fixie bike is to to titanium-framed, Ultegra-equipped, Racelite-clad fancy-assed road bikes: a back to the future trip. At least for us.

It turns out that with a used and unfashionable ice tool, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff, like threaten to penetrate your partner's skull, or ward off robbers, or rip cedar trees bodily from their crackish root system, which is what Ian did, while I hung below him, filkling the cracks in my helmet with the dirt from the crack in front of him. At one point, hanging away from the wall, eyes gummed with dirt, ears clogged, I felt like Hellen Keller, with Ian my Annie Sullivan.

Anyway, after endless cleaning and a feww final trundles, we retreated...and then it was Napoleon's turn.

Day 22: Nearer, my Send, to Thee

2009-10-04T22:16:00.001-07:00

Today, like it usually is for Bill and Ted, was excellent!

Young Napoleon-- fresh from an encounter with a cougar that he and Ian and John E. ran into in the Bluffs, the kind that wants to sink her claws into these scrumptious young viragos-- was somehow energised, and was merely seven minutes late this morning. Seven minutes late in Napoleon time is basically early-- EXCELLENT!

Napoleon decided he would send P1 and, after getting three feet off the ground, began to thrash in the V-groove. So I was asked to "spot" him by which he meant "hold up your hands and grab my ass," which I did. For Napoleon, EXCELLENT!

Napoleon aided his way up to the top of P1, citing dirt as a send-preventative factor, and I followed, laden with drill, bolts and pack. We climbed P2-- which will need a mild scrub-- and decided it would be 5.10-. This is my first free ascent ever-- EXCELLENT! Here's what it looks like:

The travserse is clean and done; here's Napoleon on it.

I then hganded the gear over and fired into P3. Well let's just say that my crack-skills, fingers, courage, and determination (and probably other things) are weak, so I moved and hung my way through the crux into the hand section. This will go at 5.11- or so and is an EXCELLENT pitch-- straight in fingers and hand for 30 meters. Napoleon followed:

I led P4 which is probably 10c or d and then brought Napoleon, who wasn't feeling too hot, up. I was pretty happy that he was along despite feeling somewhat out of it-- EXCELLENT work, Napoleon. Here Napoleon is, topping out at the place where the Leaning Pillar of Death used to be.

I then jugged up to start the Longest Bolt Ladder in Squamish and drilled until the battery died while Napoleon sat at the base of the dihedral and shivered and we trash-talked each other. Well actually Napoleon trash-talked my girlfriend ("beware, my Lord, of jealousy...") and my Mom (who was climbing 5.10 trad 20 years before Napoleon was even a ripple in the nut-sack..."beware, my Lord..."), and I trash-talked him. The bolts are about a sling's length apart, so it will be fast and easy to use the ladder. The "wet like your wife" pitch seeped and hung there silently while Napoleon dreamed of warm, sunny belays surrounded by nubile women in tight shorts and tank tops, and the drill chattered and whirred.

We retreated at 5 and drove to get some coffee. We figure three man-days now: we must scrub P1 and the bottom of P2, give the handcrack and dihedral another once-over, finish the ladder, add a bolt to P8, and get the ropes off. We have good weather through Saturday, so I am hoping Nap[oleon, Ian and I can get it done next weekend. If I never see a drill, a crowbar or a wire-brush ever again, it will be too soon. Here I am finishing a climbing route, and I will have to re-learn how to climb!

Day 21: You Can't Always Get What You Want

2009-09-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

We chattered like monkeys. We gangsta-rap texted each other. We whooped and hollered. And, five feet off the ground, arm-barred into the v-slot on Pitch One, feet skating, fingers scratching at a muddy crack, Dilly gently urging me on, I knew that the fabled send was not going to happen today.

Last weekend, Napoleon and I had pounded, drilled and cussed our way around P2. What had started as a hand traverse became a footledge; trees were felled, and above all, Napoleon sweated, something he usually avoids unless he is two feet above his last three cams. Anyway we fantasised ourselves into thinking that we were ready roll.

So the email shit-talking started, plans were made, and then on Friday night emails from Driller came. Now Driller, who is moving up in the world of accounting, has a new Friday night ritual-- getting pissed with his bosses. This is actually much like his old Friday night ritual, except now he isn't sitting outside an Atco in the middle of a seismic line, swilling Coors Light with Randy the Cokehead and getting ready for twelve hours on the drill. No, now he goes to Global in Yaletown with his shi-shi bosses and gets plastered on drinks with at least seven ingredients.

I told him "See you at 7!" and the first late-night email from Driller was this:

Ok sounds good, I'm half fucked at the moment. Had a
Patttner / bad ass junior drink off meeting. Will be reasyvdor tomorrow. -d

Then came the second email: Yo hope your ready to lead cause I'm half driunk from a good night of corporate bonding that needed to happen -d

And finally: Maybe let's leave at 8 -d

So of course I didn't actually GET these till Sunday. So The Driller appeared, woozy on his feet, at 7 AM, his neighbours cursing my Singng And Sending Excitement, which was shared by the crows and swallows in the trees.

The Driller was much, much worse for the wear, even after an injection of McDonald's and coffee directly into his veins. But then, it occurred to us that on this day, the big send was very much in the tradition of The Filth, whose epic drinking engagements have led to more than one woozy tie-in. In Fact, the Driller was so out of it that he was rocking the Euro Shorts Look.

Here is a word from our sponsors, without which there would be no sending. Well actually that's misleading-- we havn't sent anything yet, and, well, we actually paythem, which as nearly as I can tell is how sponsorship is not supposed to work...but we will pretend that these corporations are in fact all supporting us.

Napoleon and Ian today had instructions to clean the fixed ropes off the top of the route. Napoleon-- who does not read emails, despite havng his CrackBerry surgically grafted to his hand-- and I argued over how to clean the ropes off the traverse. I finaly trusted that Neil would be able to figure this out. Driller and I walked to the base, put on an almost normal climbing outfit (with drill and bolts in a pack) and I fired into the V-slot.

Well it quickly became obvious-- well, for non-smart people like me-- that when you spend an entire day dumping rocks and dirt off one pitch and onto another, the lower pitch will be dirty. So I hung on a nut, thrashed higher, and then moved into the bolted crux that Napoleon and I had cleaned two weeks before. There was only one problem...the slabby crux was the last place to dry out, the bolts were in the wrong spot, and the moves were very hard. So I climbed to the top of the pitch, brought up the Driller, and we used what limited brainpower we had for Plan B.

Well Plan B was what Plan A should have been-- ten feet to the right of our cleaned line and th bolts that Napeloen had placed was a crack!

A base jumper drifted past, then some twigs, then some screams, and then a whistling rushing sounds just like in the movies, and finally a tree-smashing crash of rocks. Napoleon and Ian were cleaning. I was a bit worried-- Napoleon, Driller and I had tried to kill Perry Beckahm a few times with rocks (and failed); now it was obviously my turn. But the boys missed us. So we hacked, tore, stomped and scrubbed, and by day's end we had a 35m crack pitch with a very nice layback finish ready to go.

We left with Ian and Napoleon dinking around on the Shit Pillar...which is basically a "get the f**k out of here!" move, considering the thing weighs probably 40 tons and will when it finally falls off make it all the way out to the Mamquam. What was really funny was imaginign hwo much Napoleon would whine abotu having to walk the 1.5km up to the Grand Wall lot to retrieve hsi car, heh heh. Anyway, I got Ian's report of the day. Now I also got Napoleon's...and comparing the two goes to show that, if you go to University (which Napoleon has done, and Ian not) you will un-learn writing skills. So here's Ian's story of their day.

As I sit here typing away on probably the last nice climbing-weather morning of the summer season, I wonder "What the fuck is wrong with me? Why don't I go climbing??" Similar thoughts ran through my head as I rolled up to Epic Napoleon's house Saturday morning, only having partially satiated my subconscious with a whopping 4 hours sleep the night before. I think it's a necessary requirement to be slightly drugged by lack of sleep to go up and work on this project, seeing as our two main "heroes" don't shut the fuck up about each other and it's nice to be able to sorta tune them out, drifting off and fantasizing about the reason for my nocturnal woes... Epic informs me that he is similarly challenged and I think that maybe I'm in luck and he'll be too tired to whine and complain about Chris today: "Teacher teacher! That bully pulled my hair on the playground!"

Well you can't win 'em all.

Just as we're pulling together gear from the melee of Epic's trunk to start our way up the Backside trail, a car full of American girls pulls up and gets real friendly-like real fast. I'm somewhat of a Cassa-novice, but before you can say, "Hey Epic are you making me carry the rope up again?" he's recruited them to hike the trail with us, maybe hoping to slap his way up another backside or two. It's always funny to listen to Epic's synopsis of female encounters. It never really matters to him if I'm interested in a girl or not, cause "Dude she liked you, you shoulda moved in!" is the standard Epic response. He kind of assumes that everybody is as stoked as he is to have the biggest Little Black Book on the planet. [We are all going to be VERY curious to see Epic Napoleon's little Crack book...the man is a s secretive as Stalin's secret police about his love life].

So anywho, we get to the top of "The Deputy" - as I am trying to christen the wall that the project is on - and put on a bit of a show for our entourage as we begin our rappel down the face with the objective of removing the fixed lines. It was pretty mellow for the most part rapping down my climbing rope, unfixing gear, ropes, and pounding out the odd piton bashed in 90 degrees to the uhh.... wrong way. Good thing the gumbies theme has already been covered in this blog. The only minor clusterfuck was on the traverse pitches as you might be able to imagine. If not, well .... rappelling sideways = suckfest.

Nonetheless we made it to the steep part of the wall and Epic informed me we need to warm up for the Wet-Like-Your-Wife [second crux] pitch so we did a TR of the one above [P10] in our approach shoes. Damn is that gonna be a fine pitch. Wow. The only thing I didn't like refers to something I've learned over the years of climbing; when you grab a hold, especially a big one, it shouldn't make any noise.

Oh right, this is still a project.

"Uh Epic?"

"What? [I'm pimping bitches on my Crackberry; Leave me alone!]"

"Make sure your helmet's on tight, this thing might go for a bit of a ride!"

"Oh shit......"

Now I'm sure he was emotionally returned to the initial days of this project, when he was belaying Chris aiding up and releasing buckets of rock and dirt, when the first rocks I let loose sailed past his face, but it was nothing compared to the 40 lb block that came off. I set it against a tree not really knowing what to do with all that widow-making power [Epic Napoleon is married??], and lowered off. Epic didn't really have to think very hard when he got to the top; he made his way along the little ledge and took the block for its first and last flight lesson as I screamed warnings to Chris, Dylan and potentially even Perry Beckham. And I must say: trundling, though inadvisable in most normal circumstances, IS REALLY FREAKING SWEET! I got about 15 years younger as that thing crashed down in a blast of erosional fury.

But it was back to work for me as I explored and cleaned the overhanging left-leaning Wet-Like-Your-Wife pitch of 5.12 madness, so named because of its perpetual seep. [This would be Napleon's wife, since he has such sexual prowess that women-- and not just his wife-- need fresh udnerwear after even the mnere thought of him] I doubt the seep will be the crux of the pitch, and once you're through it you are WAY stoked because the rest is far too cool with some pretty wild moves on it. However, if this sounds like something you feel compelled to avoid (don't let the name scare you off) this pitch is on the block to get bypassed with a very large bolt ladder.

That was it for us that day, Epic needed to get down so we blasted down the remaining fixed lines and caught various rides back to the car, one of which involving a second-person extrication of Epic from his sardine-like predicament.

Ok folks-- on Sunday the 4thof Oct, Napoleon and I are hoping to free the first half of the route. The send is, uhh, nigher...

Day 20: The Send Is Nigh

2009-09-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Our dear readers know that this blog has some recurrent motifs-- Napoleon not being organised, things taking forever, talking shit, and people posing on routes way above (or below) their limits, and of course the old question-- To Bolt Or Not To Bolt. I am proud to report that on Sunday, ALL of our recurrent themes were played out.

First, Napoleon did not show up at the appointed hour ready to go. We'd divided the jobs the evening before: I would buy the 20 bolts necessary for the ladder, and Napoleon would buy the two-foot socket wrench necessary for bolt chopping. So after the usual hour-long delay, we set off up the trail, putting up our now-standard "stay away; Gumbies On Crack will kill you" warnings, and we marveled at how wet the approach was. Indeed at one point we walked through a shower. Late-- check.

When we arrived Napoleon announced that "the community" did not approve of the idea of the bolt ladder I proposed for bypassing our second crux pitch. We won't name names of those members of "the community" but I found it funny-- most people, even with binoculars, can't see the pitch in question...and Napoleon has not even been ON the pitch in question! I was reminded of how the religious right freaks out about movies that they don't like, usually without seeing them, or how recently an African-Canadian (or black, whatever you're suppsoed to say) family in Ontario wanted to censor To Kill A Mockingbird...even though the book is anti-racist! Anyway, whatever. Talking smack-- check.

So then Napoleon climbed up P1 and I started upt he project pitch rope. So naturally we had an Aid Race and I must say Napoleon is stilla bit ahead of me in the jugging game. Here is us hanging and cleaning, err, I mean, posing.
I was expecting an hour's work and then up to the bolt ladder...but we ended up spending the entire day cleaning P2. Which was slow but kind of fun-- we knocked some absolutely massive rocks off. Napoleon also used a handsaw to cut down a surprsingly thick tree, and then he had to jug down to dislodge the thing from the crack it had wedged itself into. Meanwhile, I excavated the P2 traverse, which is now MUCH safer (3 bolts) and easier (most of it can be walked). I thought we would have a hand-traverse, which is what happened when I aided the pitch the first time...but you cut out a cedar shrub, you rip on the roots, and boom!, a block comes off, and now you have a ledge. Things taking longer than expected-- check.

Here we have young Napoleon getting antsy. After all, it has been about four hours since he last set foot in Starbucks.

Now when lowering Napoleon off the traverse, our young hero was not too happy...so I videotaped him cussing away. Those who have not aid climbed (or whatever it is that Napoleon, Driller and I do) will wonder, gee, what are all those ROPES for? Well clearly they are for bondage (of Napoleon) and domination (of our fears).

We finally rapped down the project pitch and installed a rap station 25 meters down, so you can now get off the route if it rains, or if your significant other calls and decides that you should Pick Up Arugula Right Now! which obviously takes precedence over The Climb, because Michelle Obama does it.

On returning, I got an email from The Yankee, a man with whom I have been talking trash for a number of years. The Yankee and Napoleon are quite adept at snipping away at each other, which is kind of entertaining, but would be better if they were ever in the same room to do so. Or maybe that would explode the fabric of space time, or be like Tyler Durden and Jack sharing space-- chaos! Anyway, The Yankee proposed that instead of making a bolt ladder, we install gym holds. Which would look something like this. I know, it sounds ridiculous...but how bad would it really be? You pull and stand on holds instead of bolts, and every third bolt has a hanger on it. "You call it A0," said The Yankee, "and then some sick fuck will free it at 5.19C and then, well, then you take the holds off and you have a totally free route." Which might work...except at that point, standards, even for gumbies like me, will have risen so high that the pitch the ladder bypasses will be a mere walk in the park at wet 5.12b.

Anyway, we will likely be stymied not by ethics, aesthetics, or a sense of tradition....but rather by cheapness and laziness. Imagine hauling a hundred pounds of plastic up there! I am too lazy, and Napoleon would certainly rather be in Starbucks, and Driller, well, Driller I am guessing would not be a fan.

But ANYWAY...next weekend it is High Noon for the bolt ladder. I'm going in with a drill, 20 bolts and maybe even a rock rack. Stay tuned...the send is nigh!

Day 19: Mystery Solved and The Return of Napoleon

2009-09-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Those following this creation epic know that God (me) both manages (climbs) and despairs (Naploeon) at His creation (the route). Now, while I am a God, I am much more like one of the ancient Greek gods (or a Soprano)-- vengeful, petulant, flawed, ambitious, magnificent-- than a Judeo-Christian abstract-perfect-type Deity. So as the route unfolds, as we create the world which more and more demands all of our attention, We watch with some trepidation and more delight as the World takes shape, and Napoleon less quickly. (I get to use the Royal We, which Mark Twain said should be used only by kings, editors, people with tapeworms and first ascentionists).

So today Driller and I heard rumours of Napoleon and one Ian Bennet going up and cleaning the route. Driller and I set up at the crack of 9:35, after I forgot matches for my smokes in Napoleonic style. If there is one thing that passes time at aid belays, it is smoking, a Thomas Pynchon novel, and an MP3 player. Well, three things the first two of which I had. Driller laughed as I crammed Against The Day into my pack-- at 1100 pages the heaviest thing, outside of maybe Proust, you could bring on a route. But then Mr Pynchon, like a good aid pitch, demands slow and meticulous attention, and provides less than obvious rewards (although at the en dof both, a beer or two are certainly in order).

Long story short (unlike Pynchon's), we jugged to the top of P10, I cleaned and put another bolt into P11 (this is the shittiest pitch on the route but it iwll be fast and easy) and then Driller and I had a gander at the o/w pitch 12. This pitch needs one #5 Camalot and two #6, so we installed two bolts. YOu will be able to do it with one #5-- OK, it's lamer than cramming two 6s in there, but hwo many 5.11 climbers do YOU know who have a quiver of #6s?

At the top of P12 Driller set off up the fixed rope to see what Mystery Pitch 13 would be like. Napoleon and I had rapped down it, but weren't sure the route woudl go where the fixed line was. Drillerjugged up six meters, smacked a couple of loose flakes with the crowbar, and anounced that it would be "easy." And for once this turned out not to be just wishful thinking-- we installed three bolts, and we figure there will be one or two 10a moves on this, and what looks like a bomber crack (which we bolted)...because both flakes beside are resoundlingly hollow, at least when you have Leroy The Friendly Crowbar to help you out. (Leroy is NOT so friendly when the IRA, or the Hell's Angels, hire him for persuasive purposes). After this, Driller added a last bolt to the traverse pitch. You could live without it...but if you fell, you would saw your rope over a sharp edge, and you would swing smack into blocks. Then we retreated, and extended Napleon's precious 200 meters of ninety-pound static line down to the top of P7, from which we hung the white static line, and from which we will try to clean the second 5.12 pitch, and drill the bypass bolt ladder.

Now while all this was happening there woudl be the occasional cloud of power and shower of pebbles from above. Could it be? Was it possible? Was Napoleon off his ass and doing work? I had heard rumours, but Napoleon, he who is addicted to his Crackberry, had not replied. But on returning to the normal world, I got the following from Napoleon. Napoleon worked the route with Ian Bennet, the son of Neil Bennet, author of The Grim Reaper (seriously sick Squamish slab...fifty meter pitches with one bolt; pussies need not apply). Ian is becoming a pretty awesome climber in his own right and, mroe to the point-- he can shit-talk with the best of them, having suggested that I name our route "The Jerry Springer Show" because both Napoleon and I complain about each other so much). Here is Napoleon's email, with comments, most likely sent by Napoleon from his car, while driving:

The day according to Napoleon:

"Uh, Napoleon?"
"Yes Ian what's up?"
"What did I get myself into?"
"Work, lots of work, but it'll be fun and by the end of the day you'll
be a dreamer".

This summarizes the overall sentiments of the day in addition to the pleasure
of not having to deal with a whining 12 year old trapped in a 40 year old's body [or of having to deal with a whining eight-year-old trapped in a twenty-six year old's...].
The sun was out with a slight breeze and I got a little excited thinking about
[Chris' girlfriend's] body [you know you're a Facebook creepr when...] sort of like the Lonely Island's song when he greets the cashier in the grocery store except in this case she was applying the moisturizing agent all over her face ["Beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green eye'd monster that mocks the meat on which it doth feed"]

The hike up the chief: The Blackberry went off as usual [you know you're an incipient yuppie cunt when...] and I figured it was
a) Chris bitching about something on the route b) Chris bitching about if we were
on the route or c) Chris bitching that we should actually be doing work on the route. [Napoleon, like a small child, has not internalised essential basic climbign behaviours, such as getting on the route with your body, rather than staring at a digital photo and fantasising lines] I'm happy to report that I did not answer the phone and left the crying sob to his own mess at some pitch somewhere on the wall; hopefully he was getting covered in dirt/moss [Yes I was; that's what happpens when you work]. Driller [and Chris] did an amazing job, we later discovered, of drilling the mystery pitch at 5.11- [that Napoleon, who sprays of his Zombie Roof attempts, shoudl find this 11-, is weird].

Ian's first reaction to the route from the top-down was "this is going to be a great fucking route!" was excited to bring him along for the mission and equally excited when I found out he was enjoying the experience. Ian set off to scrub out the rest of the V slot and make it climbable and I did the same on the undercling traverse [Napoleon as you may now see is OCD...the pitch needs to be cleaner than his ass, and a guy who takes twenty mineutes to take a dump has most certainly got a whistle-clean anus] These top two pitches are now ready to go. We rapped then next pitch and gave it a once-over with the wire brush and our recommendation was the following: there needs to be another bolt on this pitch as the climbing would be run out otherwise with no pro [we will see about that].

Likewise, the bolt at the top of the V slot should be relocated such that it is on the big ledge on the right, making an easy exit [so are you going to do it, or just talk about it?].

The 3rd last pitch needs a fixed rope during a free ascent along the terrace as it is loose and dangerous [no, it needs one bolt; fixed ropes rot].

Part of the way down i could hear Chris yelling out my name and I couldn't figure out whether this was just a natural reaction to being on the route or he actually knew I was there [or because Napoleon was trying to kill us with bombing from above?]. In any case it was another usual day on the route with
Chris being perpetually disatisfied by something and letting everyone know how he felt [this from the man who insisted we bolt a crack so that his fears of death-by-bombing be allayed].

The 4th last pitch looked great and the loose flakes at the start of the pitch need to get removed.

The offwidth and 5.12- variation look excellent as well. I'm not sure if I agree with the position of the bolts but they will do the trick [read: "I could do this thing with nly one #4, I am such a hardman"].

I rapped down to the top of pitch 9 to discover that some idiot had taken the remaining section of 200m rope out of the bag when i told him specifically to leave it up there and fixed it at lower level. When will this dumb fuck ever learn to listen to instructions? [How did Napoleon plan on cleaning the second 5.12 pitch? Having led not one pitch on the route so far, despite (Namedrop) Having Taken An Aid-Climbing Course With Matt Maddaloni one wonders why he complains about hanging a fixed rope off it].

The rest of the day proved uneventful and we applied a once over with the brush on the pitches. Ian had some ideas of including some variations along the length of the climb and I think he has some great ideas. He attempted to climb the Shit Pillar while on a grigri and it didn't move! Maybe this is a possibility but a scary one. He is also psyched to attempt the Project pitch after a 2 hour cleaning Session!

All in all a great day! Chris is like the divorced wife I have never had [you can't have a "divorced wife"-- you can have either a wife, or a divorce] and sooner or later we're going to rope up and Free this thing!

Day 18: The Janitors and the Advisor

2009-09-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

You all know that we really have two projects on the go here-- one is the route, the other is Napoleon. The first is self-explanatory; the second, well, much like a certain kind of student, young Napoleon is working on skills such as being organised, being on time, actually showing up to work, working rather than chasing women, and prioritising spending. This last, well, you know how it is with kids-- you give them two bucks and they tear off to 7-11 and buy 40 pieces of candy which are gone in sixty seconds, after which they want mooooore. So it is with Napoleon: if there is a Starbucks within two kilometers, he will find his way there, like lemmings to the sea or hipsters to ironic t-shirts.

So I am pleased to announce Napoleon's report card so far: he gets C for showing up, a B for being on-time (significant progress), a C for working rather than chasing women (this is a guy who has so many women in his sights that it makes all the blood rush to the wrong part of one's body) and an A for having a desire to put upa new route. Note that desire does not equal work, or, as DOA put it, talk - action = zero. OK, he comes out to a B- overall but that's progress compared to last year, when the only thing worse than his punctuality was his cardio.

Anyway our last mission was janitorial: we wanted to clean three pitches and so being the civil thoughtful guys we are, we started with an argument: do we approach pitches 9,10 and 11 from ground up or top-down? Fixed ropes all the way-- you could get a pretty decent jugging workout on our route-- which was faster? Well it takes 20 min to approach and about 1 hour to jug to the top of P9, which I did; young Napoleon decided, fuck that, he would hike to the top of the Chief and then do some rapping. Fair play to you, Napoleon-- but you have to haul a rope to rap the last 2 pitches, then you have endles fiddling with the short fixing ont he way down...I beat Napoeon to it by an hour and fifteen, and Napoleon scared me shitless by dislodging something that crashed into the ledge atop P9 and sent dirt and pebbles cascading down on me.

But work got done. P9 was scrubbed; the off-width/layback/whatever pitch is now clean; we have clearted the brush from P10 and installed one bolt on it, and moved the P9 anchor. This is the shittiest pitch on the route-- scrambling up mossy blocks-- but it's fast and easy. P10 also looks like it has an alternative, an 11- or so tips dihedral which Driller and I will clean next time out. Napoleon hurt a rib and so sat around for awhile.

We finally rapped off, and as I was sliding down the ropes, it hit me: this thing is turning into a route! it used to be, we would go out, aid up, clean, drill, etc. But after 18 days on the wall, we now have an end in sight. We know where all but one of the pitches go; we are cleaned except for P2, we are drilled except for bits of P2 and a bolt ladder...the end is nigh!

Afterward we ran into Jeremy Frimer and his pal Matt McComb (sorry if I spelled those wrong) at Starbucks, where Napoleon, after drinking enough coffee to wake a horse, fell asleep right when the conversation got interesting. Frimer has put up some pretty cool routes (e.g. Optimus Prime on the Squaw)) and has become one of the go-to guys in Squamish when it comes to cleaning and restoration. Frimer made three points worth putting out there regarding our route. things that had been talked about a bit on Squamishclimbing:

a) Make it accessible to stop the moss. The easier the grade, the more traffic, which means less re-growth, the bane of routes in Squamish. You can aid our first 5.12 pitch (the dihedral); we might build a bolt-ladder bypass for the second 5.12 pitch because it's often wet, it's hard to aid (undercling) and a bypass would not interfere with the pitch itself. Plus, doing this would make the grade 5.11 A0 rather than 5.12, so more folks would try it.

b) Make the crap easy. If your route has crappy pitches, make it so that the shit isn't hard or stressful, because that is what people will remember. If you are having a wild, adrenlin-filled climb on a perfect splitter, that's one thing...but having a bowel-loosening epic on run-out or wet choss is quite another. You'll go back for the first, but run screaming from the second. Frimer pointed out that he bolted the first five meters of Right Wing (even though you can put gear in) because that section is so frequently wet that it will shut may parties down...and so the rest of the route then won't get done. Frimer says he's had no objections to this bit of bolting. When he talked to first ascentionist Fred Beckey about the route, Beckey said "well when we climbed it, it was really HOT! Can't recall any water on it" which Frimer rightly took as a "son, you have my blessings." So with that in mind I will add a few bolts to P10 (shittiest pitch on the route) so people will be able to blast through it and not dig for gear in moss.

c) Think carefuly about required gear. P11 is an (easy-- 5.10-, we think) offwidth (or easy layback, or au-cheval thrutch). You would need one or two #5s and one #6 Camalot to do this. Now...how much big gear do folks own, or want to haul? Not that many have the big stuff. And considering that you need a rack of doubles t 4" for our route, throwing a #5 and 6 on there might be off-putting...so we may add one bolt to that pitch so only 1 #5 is required.

The real question here is ego. If you want to be purist/hardcore/elitist/ whatever, then no bolt ladder, no bolt on o/w and no bolts on shit pitch. Big ego = small #s climbing your route = regrowth. If you make options, however, you get more people on route.At this point, I am frankly inclined to go for mass, not moss, popularity. We, like the Jews and then Jesus in the desert, will have had forty man-days at work, and it would be cool if those days turned into something the rest of Squamish could enjoy n years to come. Thanks, Jeremy, for the discussion!

The Drop Zone

2009-08-31T20:28:00.001-07:00

The following is a picture of Middle Caramba Terrace where we are working. If you are planning on crossing this terrace to go to Ultimate Everything or Upper Echelon, beware of rockfall on work days. Better to approach via Apron or South Gully routes. We will put cleaning advosories physically in the Apron parking lot, at the Badge trailhead, and online on and on .

Days 16 & 17: Bolts, Bombs and Bottle Rockets

2009-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

The weekend's theme, it would turn out later, would be idiocy. We, being idiots, did not know this as we set off with a thousand pounds of water and gear to the top of the Chief.

After explaning to about fifteen parties of hikers the purpose of the massive gardening shears and crowbar attached to my pack, like an itinerant tinker's last-minute must-sells, we staggered to the top and suited up. This basically meant taking most of that thousand pounds out of the pack and strapping it to one's harness. Driller and I then rapped into the V-slot, past the undercling and to the top of what we called (for now) The Munge Pitch, so named because, well, it is a mass of shit that is more suited to planting a garden or meditating in than climbing. I rapped off that and onto the Top Traverse, and started clearing the top traverse. Driller hung on the Munge Pitch and began cleaning.

It was at this point that a voice floated out at us from climber's left warning us that we were bombing the ground. Now, we had been under the impression that nobody (except Perry Beckham, once in May, when sending his newest project) used our access trail. There are no routes in or under our line. So we have not worried about rockfall. But this fellow seemed concerned, so we laid off the trundling and got back to drilling chopping and scrubbing.

This is the undercling pre-cleaning in evening light.

The day ended up being rewarding despite our sudden feeling of "oh shit we could have kileld somebody." We got the munge pitch 1/3 cleaned and it actually looks cool-- it will be gear and a sporty bolted finish at 5.10+. I got the top traverse walkable, and we ended up on the slab traverse, which we cleaned and to which we added two bolts. This one will have cool sideways move son friction and small incuts, with a bit of heady exposure-- you are traversing over a roof 300m off the deck! Here's Driller on the traverse.

So we jugged back out as the hazy ari turned smoky orange and then purple, and on the top of the Chief we guzzled water, whiskey and then curries and dals. We got drunk enough that i decided, wooo-hoo, let's make the whiskey bottle full of gas and Molotov-cocktail the fucker off the wall, which proposal the Driller ixnayed tout de suite. We then set up our five bottle rockets. One of them made it off the wall, two fizzled, one backfired into my pack, and one-- even after I soaked it in gas-- refused to light. So the evening's idiocy ended. We called Jewels, who put up a "warning-- rockfall" sign on the Badge trail and on squamishclimbing.com for us, and then we found sleeping places and passed out.

On Sunday we did more of the same: the V-slot was my job.
Four hours got the V done, then I headed over to the undercling and scrubbed that. Driller finished off the Munge Pitch, whihc is no longer full of crap-- it has 3 bolts finishing off a layback/stem crack and it will be pretty decent. With that we jugged out and walked off. On the way down, I stopped to wet my hair in the stream, and ended up falling in, much to my delight. Twenty-eight degrees and stoopid hyoomid, and I made a good show for the couple who were marvelling at how cold the water seemed...which to me felt like a warm bath.

Here's the Driller, meditating at the awesomeness of our line and the beauty of Squamish, slowly turning into a resort town for yuppies like me but also richer than me!

Today I spoke with Napoleon, who tells me that we have to be more careful regarding trundling: our access trail is apparently being used by guides taking clients to do The Ultimate Everything. So from now on we will post more warnings, online and physically, to make sure others are safe.

As of today, we have what I imagine will be six man-days left. We have to clean P2 and P9 (easy), clean the bottom of P11 and possibly install one bolt (if it's wider than 6"), clean the Munge Traverse (P10) and then remains the Mystery Pitch: P11. Napoleon and my fixed lines bypass this, so Driller and I will head up with a lead line and do this one ground-up. Plus the fixed ropes need to come off.

So, a good few days, a cautionary warning to us, and ever-closer to actually going climbing!

Day 15: The Longest Biener Chain in Squamish

2009-08-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Today's question: where are we going to PUT things? Where will our line go? Will it go where we think it will? Do we have enough ropes etc? But first...

Ihe Apron parking lot, at 9AM sharp, was the scene of may weirdnesses.

First, Tony McLane was there...in a new item of clothing. A bright pink hoody. Wearing-- err, I mean, "rocking," this with one of his usual Valley-Dirtbag-Circa-1977 headbands (today's coloured orange-- McLane may be poor, but the man has a quiver of bandanas ready to deploy at a moment's notice). I have never seent his man with anything not second hand. So I thought perhaps he'd been seduced by the dark side of a climbing sponsorship, or maybe Gotten A Girlfriend, or perhaps been abducted by (and replaced with) an Alien (the creature, not the cam). But no, apparently his Mother took an interest--let's not speculate on the reasons-- in her son's usual melange of cotton, polyester and duct-tape, and got him this stylish hoodie.

Second, there were NO CLIMBERS on this perfect bluebird of a day.

Third, Napoleon was on time. And he had already had breakfast, lunch, water, coffee, yadda. This occurence is usually about as likely as, say, my psycho ex girlfriend being civilised, or the moon turning green, or all the hipsters suddenly disappearing from Main Street as their fixie bikes all mysteriously catch a deadly infection at the same moment.

So after taking it all in, we loaded up and started the hike up the Chief. Today's mission: rap the route from the top, clear away brush and boulders, and connect to Driller and my high point.

So as we "hiked" we passed the usual clusters of tourists, and were passed by one trail runner, adn then we ran smack into the ass-end of a Lady Train: two English of a certain age, and their twentysomethign offspring. Of course Napoleon and I moved immediately into flirt-with-stranger mode. My tactic which is not rally a tactic, since it's the only thign I know how to do, was to shit-talk. Since Miss Offspring was a kinesiology student from Toronto, I asked her why she was walking so slowly, my impression being that Kinesiology grads were basically ex-jocks who when not lifting weights were busy training for triathlons. When she said "hey, you guys are climbers, you should be fit, move faster!" I told her to run ahead, I was about to take my shirt off, and I didn't want any woman chaos. I got a few giggles for that.

Napoleon tried an older strategy: "Oh, you're from Toronto TOO?" He didn't get a giggle but he got the usual exchange of what-did-you-study. Then Miss offspring turned on her inner deer and bounded up the trail, giving us a clear view of her tail. Now it could be because my girlfriend is not only the hottest woman I have ever been with (and smart too, well, smarter than me at any rate) but because she also has the finest ass in the Universe (yes, Angelina Jolie, you are a distant second; suck it up, Pitt) but Miss Offspring's butt didn't do much for me. Napoleon on the other hand was convinced that not only was she flirting with him, but that her assets were in fact of finest quality. Well, she was aiming for the first, second AND third summits, one of which we would reach, and so, said Napoloeon, he would work his angle later and see if she could be invited out for a beer. Obviously I am not on the market, but if I were, dear Readers, who would have a better chance with the young lady? Post a comment and let us know!

OK, back to climbing.

Here is Napoleon rapping off the very top.

What followed was basically the construction of the world's longest biener chain. With a few chunks of fixed rope added. We rapped the V-slot and the right side looks STUNNING-- it will be a perfect large-hands crack, in a cool position, in a really interesting feature.

Under the v-slot is a leftward undercling under a massive roof. Under THAT we got into serious gardening and rock trundling, with a freaking-out Napoloen bellowing about short-fixes while I blithely sailed off into thickets and snags. It didn't help that cutting one too many big branches finally destroyed my beloved pruning shears, and so for the rest of the day we thrashed downward, making intermittent progress, like a Platonist in a conference of post-Modernism, or like a stoned dirtbag in the candy aisle at 7-11. We also had about 200m too much static line-- which weighs a fucking TON-- so there was a lot of clusterfucking with ropes, yadda.

Here is Pitch 11-- removing two bushes and about ten feet of moss will make a cool 5.10+ o/w pitch (well a layback really).

The exploration ended with an epic thrash through brush to Driller and my high point.
Napoleon looked like a stoned racoon with dirt and sweat rings around his eyes. I looked like a prisoner of war loaded with a thousand pounds of gear and the route looked like a massive gardening project.

So finally we had the answer to the first question: where is our line? The route is now more-or-less set, with just a few things to figure out on 2 pitches. We have 90% of our bolting done. What will emerge is an 18-pitch free route that goes to the very top of the Chief, with some 5.12 on it, a huge variety of climbing, some serious exposure in parts, and you could potentially lengthen our route by adding a few others to it.

Here's me and Young Napoleon ready to shop for some Work Wear

Much like Mexican machistas, who at cantinas keep the evening's beer and brandy bottles on the table to not only help the server keep track of the tab but also to show the rest of the cantina how manly they are for drinking so much, Napoleon keeps all of his Starbucks garbage IN HIS CAR just in case anybody fails to see how much he REALLY likes Starbucks. And HERE was the end of our day...we knew where the route would go, but where was I supposed to put my goddamned feet?

Day 14: clusterf**king made Easy, or, How I Learned To Solo-Aid

2009-08-26T09:46:00.001-07:00

The Filth, as you may recall, is my ass-eating, shit-talking, dirt-living, philosophising, beer-drinking economically unproductive (the highest compliments I can pay to any man) friend who si travelling with his wife-- yes, ladies, wife-- The Filth is married, happily-- in Africa. As you may recall, the Filth has been pestering me for YEARS for certain things. First, he wants to fight me. Usually, he gets into this after say ten or twelve beers and then starting to try to twist my nipples, so I asusme he really wants to have sex with me, in the way that Eminem really wants a piece of Moby's ass. I have yet to submit to the considerable temptation that The Filth provides. The OTHER thing The Filth wants is for me to go aid climbing with him.

Now obviously aid climbing and rough dirtbag gay anal sex (or whatever it is The Filth theoretically wants from me and my deliciously tight white ass) have a few similarities. Filth, and The Filth. Beer. Sweat. Pain disguised as pleasure, or maybe the reverse. Gloves. Dubious rewards. And while I love The Filth, in the way that the OTHER half of the Academy loved their Socratic interlocutors, I was not about to get into anything with him without some firsthand knowledge. So obviously Driller and I have been slowly breaking my aid cherry...but my OTHER cherry has not been broken...the solo-aid one. And since Napoleon was off not working on the route, yesterday I set out do get it all over with.

Basically in solo aid, you tie the rope to the anchor, feed it through your gri-gri, and then you aid normally: set piece, bounce test, clip aiders and daisies onto piece, step onto it, move up, repeat, and when moving onto second (and subsequent) pieces you unclip your aiders fromt he lower pieces and clip the rope into the lower piece, so that if you fall, you aren't falling onto static daises.

My pitch was easy: all A1 placements (A1 is the aid-climbing equivalent of condoms plus fundamentalist Christian sexual ethics, plus birth control pills plus having a conrete barrier between you and your lover, i.e., totally safe. Well perhaps the Mormon ethics might fuck up, but basically the odds of anything spicy are pretty minimal).

So I cammed and tree-slung my way up and right, and when I got to a foot-ledge, I fired in a bolt, moved upa nd more right to the top of the flake, added a high bolt, and then proceeded over to the anchor at the bottom of P2. I rapped to the ground, ditched the drill and rack, and set off up the fixed lines with only the gardening tools. I thought the sexu-- err, I mean, aid-climbing part was done. No more pain, sweat, spicy danger or the vaguely louche thrill of tooling around on the mountain while normal folk worked. But I was wrong...

First, I had to pound in Napoleon's shitty bolt, using only a crowbar. This at the end of many minutes of hammering left me panting and exhausted, but quite satisfied-- P1 could now be sent...if it weren't, heh heh, for the enticing but shamefully dirty crack that lures you onto it. I moved higher and began clipping and crow-barring my way up P2. At the second tree, I rigged an elabvorate set-up and began sawing at, and manically jumping up and down on, branches of an odd pair of trees, a cedar and a hemlock, which were intertwined like lovers. As I stepped up tot he foot-ledge, I thought, "gee let's see if this is solid" and one crowbard yank later I realsied that the lack of danger, like condoms, lube and Christian sexual ethics, were gone, like a Republican's free market in banking, and I was standing on a pair of blocks the size of a fridge. Well I nearly killed myself and all potential spectators getting the fuckers off, and when I did they boomed and crashed through the trees. I could see the forest shaking as the blocks knocked trunk after trunk down toward the Mamquam. At this point I hoped Napoleon hadn't decided to make a late entrance.

I made it off the mountain and ended the day with my otherwise awesome girlfriend having an epic freak-out on the phone, so you could well say I'd lost my cherry but saved it in the end: The mountain hadn't quite had its way with me and I aimed for Woman. I cancelled dinner plans with another of my and The Filth's male friends, and headed home to deal with the domestic issue. Of course things at home were FINE...dinner was waiting...woman in bed...what HAD I been thinking up on the wall?

Random and AWESOME!

2009-08-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

The "Indian Monkey King" climber...one of the coolest thing I have seen in ages!

Day 13

2009-08-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't think one bit about possible bad luck this morning as I raced up to Squamish to meet-- wait for it-- Napoleon! The man has finally learned a few things about priorities. He spent yesterday pos-- err, I mean, climbing, on The Opal, which would be a great route to pose on except only people climbing Rock On can see you, and they are usually busy doing things like fighting with their significant other who is also (unfortunately) their climbing partner, or dealing with serious rope drag, or freaking out cos the end of the crux pitch is wet. (I have been involved in all of these activities and a few more). So Napoleon's posing strategy failed. Well, not quite, his buddy Neil saw him take a big one...raising the question of what exactly Neil was doing on Rock On, he having neither climbing-partner-girlfriend, rope-drag issues or fear of water...was he perhaps having a thoroughly enjoyable time of it? Hmmm...

Really you want to pose at, say, Zombie Roof (5.13a) which has become the new must-do route in Squamish, now that hard gear climbing, thanks to Sonny T and Will S and that Scottish cunt, is cool again after taking a 20-year bolt-induced vacation. It must suck to be a sport climber these days (who is Dave Graham again?) cos seriously, what is cooler-- 5.14 with 50 foot whippers onto ripping stacks of shaky blue Aliens, or 5.14 with "take" hissed at the camera? See, at Zombie Roof, you can breathe in the vapour trail of Peter Croft (50 this year and still putting up 12+ routes ground up), shred your fingers, grunt massively as you try to be a combination of Dean Potter, Spiderman and Captain Kirk from Star Trek 3 (?) with the free-solo-El-Cap-safely-in-gravity-boots, and, best of all, YOU CAN TRY TO IMPRRESS ALL THE GUMBIE CHICKS ON THEIR WAY TO BELAY THEIR BOYFRIENDS ON MOSQUITO. Or you could be Katy Holm and impress all the gumbie boys going to belay/impress their girlfriends on Mosquito (and you could do this either with your mad climbing skillz, or your amazing arms...but only if you were Katy). You sit there, suck-- err, I mean, massaging bloody knuckles, saying "yea feels soft for 13a" or perhaps "I used too much gear on that burn, maybe I'll just use the one fixed nut when I send." And the women, well, "da bitches go nutz when I walk in da room" or on the Roof as the case may be.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, Napoleon. So Napoleon got the first part of his posing out of the way Friday, the same day that I did some posing, err, climbing of my own at Nightmare Rock, with Jewels the Chick, of the famous Jewelz and Fergie, uhh, fame. Anyway I WANTED to pose but I was so soft, weak and timid-- like a plastic fork in piping hot pie, or icecream on a baking summer day-- that I couldn't manage anything like a decent pose, especially after watching some hardman throw himself at a 13c while being videotaped. No, I was a model climber-- scared, shaky and hanging off every piece and bolt I could find; you couldn't have taken a decent photo of me doing anything other than attentively belaying Jewels.

(Speaking of filming climbing, has anybody noticed how people being filmed while climbing don't swear? The work is all "sh*t!f*ck!c*unt-*ssed motherf*cker!" then on video it's all "ujm, urgh, HUNH! gosh, I really need to, you know, focus my fifth chakra's energy" Hindu yadda yadda rama rama harihari...at least Chris Sharma is smrt, oops, I mean, SMART enough to include himself cracking up while making one of his Mystical Reflections On Climbing in the DVD extras section of "King Lines") So like I said, I was a green toy made of Plasticene that you could have (and Squamish did) drape over a chair like a blanket or one of those idiotic Dali watches.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Napoleon. Napoleon has arrangments to Take A Girl CLimbing on Sunday, so today he deigned to help do some gardening. So we hung off P1, and of course everything fucked up. Napoleon fucked up one bolt, so we now have a total of FOUR of our own bolts we need to chop on this route. You know you're a gumbie when... Then I nearly killed Napoleon with a rock. Then at day's end we discovered that jugging on my rope had worn through the sheath: bye bye, oddly bland blue-grey 70. At day's end, thanks to Napoleon, and Tony McLane in May, we have 90% of P1 cleaned, 1.5 bolts drilled, and plans to go and work on the top of the Chief-- we will try to hang that 200m static line off the right end of the High Ledge and then connect to Driller and my high point. If we do a really good job, we should have a spectacular place to pose near the tourist chicks...and a good view of Zombie Roof.

Day 12: Solo mission

2009-08-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday it was 30 degrees in Squampton, so after gong to Starbucks and loudly yabbering on about the gear necessary for Zombie Roof and how easy the 11c pitch on Alaska Highway felt, I headed up solo to do something more in line with my real mad skillz; gardening.

I jugged to our high point, grabbed the gardening tools, and as I put myself on rap, I felt this weird sensation. It took me awhile to figure it out-- it was fear. Not that I am a bold and fearless climber (hells no, I have handed off my share of the sharp end, thanks Jones and Janez) but because well I was 250m above ground, in an untraveleld part of the Chief, alone.

After a fairly sketchy session of removing the fixed rope from the Green Line traverse, I got to the top of the dihedral, and started shoveling dirt and rocks off it. This might seem unnecessary...but believe me, when you top out of the dihedral (and its cruxes are at the beginnign and the end), you want to not be pawing at munge.

After I removed allt he dirt from the top, I then removed it all from the middle of the pitch, and then I cleaned it all out of the handcrack pitch. So basically I moved the same load of crap three times. But anyway let's put it this way-- the dihedral pitch is now as clean as a stripper's ass, and the handcrack, well, it's a dirty-assed ho, but you can sink your mitts in and not pull buckets of gunge out.

So tomorrow-- and I know you all will not believe this-- the elusive Napoleon is comign out and we are going to do P1 and maybe P2. Yes folks Napoleon theoretically exists and I will see him bright and early tomorrow at 8!

The Bugaboos-- trip report

2009-08-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

Well sometimes a gumbie wants to not just clean cracks but also climb them, so I headed off to the Bugaboos. Both of my partners bailed-- Bones' wife is at the tail end of cancer (she's winning); Rich trashed his ankle. So I went in on my own, carrying two ropes, far too many Sesame Snaps and a distinct lack of proper socks.

Now if you have never been to the "Bugs," you must prepare to have your mind stop when you arrive. There are oh, EIGHT Stawamus Chiefs, minus the lineups on Deirdre of course, sticking out of a vast mostly flat icefield, the effect being that somebody spread billions of free pieces of rock-climbing candy out ona big white blanket and you get to PIG OUT, weather permitting.

I had heard tell of an Austrian hardman looking for partners, and on arriving in Applebee found said Austrian, Gerhardt, who along with his girlfriend Alex was wearing a neon orange pumpkin jacket and shit-talking with a bunch of Greeks. Greeks? Now what Greeks were doing in the Bugs...hmmm...no bolts here, it's cold...oh, right. Adventure! A minute after meeting Gerhard, we had plans. Then I met one Lauren Evanson and had next day plans, and that was that, partner worries gone.

As I walked up through Applebee my eyes recovering from the G-A neon jacket collection show, my eyes lighted on a MASSIVE PILE OF CRAP which on closer inspection turned out to be a nearly wrecked tent covered in a tattered green tarpaulin of Word War Two vintage. Now there could be only two possible explanations for this. A) Somebody had died and the wardens were keeping their stuff dry till relatives came to gather it or B) Tony McLane, dirtbag, was in the house. Of course it WAS McLane, thank God, but he was away in East Creek, which is where hardmen (or the mentally lacking) go to bivvy befrore trying hard things like Becky-Chouinard or All Along the Watchtower. Anyway McLane was alive and well, and the campground was full of fit skinny people talking in a salad of languages about tomorrow's plans, waving fingers, hands and ice-axes at rock walls, and fiddling with small flickering stoves in the dying light.

I put my tent right beside another tent in the only flat spot I could find, and soon found I'd barged in on the privacy of a Vancouver couple, who were as cold and unfriendly as humanly possible, even when I told them that it was my wont, before retiring, to drink a 26er and gobble a handful of sleeping pills. These are of course not true-- my girfriend always bemoans my uncanny ability to pass out at 11 PM sharp and never wake-- I guess they felt their fuck-fest was over, as the next morning when I woke up....they'd moved...to Gravel Central, a larger flat gravel spot in the middle of upper Applebee which in the morning light was full of the yabber of Spaniards who'd had too much coffee and too little climbing and so were hyperactive, and madly gesticulating with the Greeks and, just for the hell of it, with a couple of Quebeckers, in a three-language creole. The cold bitchy Vancouver climbers beside me had been replaced by two Canmorians, who we'll call Major Hottie (there should be laws about what women can wear...oh wait, there are, in Afghanistan) and Strong & Silent. Their plan was to do a one-day assault on the Becky-Chouinard.

Lauren Evanson and I wandered up to do Paddle Flake Direct and I got to lead the whole thing, Lauren calling herself more of an alpinist than a rock-climber. Man, as soon as I sank my mitts into that granite, I was in heaven. Perfect rock, loooong cracks, short cruxes, yadda yadda. Anyway we did the route, complete with the patented alpine "Make Your Own Ending!" ending, where I closed my eyes and randonly threw a piece of chalk upward into the wind, and climbed whatever crack it first touched. The evening was full of the usual stuff: shit talk about routes, wriggling to find a comfy way to lie flat on the gravel, and intermittent random dirtbags walking by saying things like "Uhh can I borrow a #5 tomorrow?" or "Uhh does anybody have any oil?" I was awoken at 3 AM by Major Hottie and S&S who were giggling as they boiled bloatmeal and tea. I pissed and wished them "good luck" and they scampered off across the talus.

here's Lauren on the awesome 3rd pitch.

The day after it was time to get serious, so Gerhard and I marched up to do Sunshine Cracks, which you really could call Verbal Fucking Irony Cracks since there's not a ray of sun on it and I knelt in prayer giving thanks to God for the long underwear I had actually remembered. Now the Snowpatch-Bugaboo col is basically a shooting gallery this season and I was shitting myself as we minced our way across it. Now, you kmay be asking, why does Butch want to climb with a Kraut? Well the obvious answer is, cos the Kraut is a hardman, unlike Butch. And while this would be true, it is insufficient. The real reason you want to climb with the Kraut is that the Kraut can speak impeccable Hinglish. And as we all know, there is only so much of the usual "gee, THAT was a nice/hard/tedious pitch"- type talk that two men can have, so shit-talk in faux Hindi it was. "Vat you are doing?" he asks as I grunt at the 5" crack. "Actually, we are being bamboozled, this is not four inches, yaar" I say, and on it goes.

The route turned out to be one of the finest of my life. Long impeccable bomber granite pitches, varied moves and superb position-- thanks Alex Lowe!
I led the 5.10 offwidth and Gerhard led the 5.11- roof. We arrived at the bottom of the last pitch to find a random collection of five dirtbags and one baguette in various stages of ascent and descent, and I got to lead the amazing looong final pitch where we finally got sun.

That evening I met The Ladies, Fergie and Jewels, who were set to do battle with Sunshine. I fell asleep, and at 3 AM, exactly 24 hours after they left, I heard Major Hottie and S&S return. I wriggled out of bed 5 minutes later, still unwilling to piss in either of my bottles, and found Major Hottie passed out in the gravel, while S&S fiddle with a stove. The next day at 10 AM they, and all their crap, was still strewn about the camp, with no regard for rodents, thieves or rain. Long day.

We get a crack-of-noon start to race Alex and her partner Todd Nichols up Surf's Up, on which Gerhard wants to take photos. We catch them after an enduro-blast interrupts our sunny, lazy, coffee-filled morning, and I promptly irritate the shit out of newbie Alex by suggesting that she use hands, not a glacier axe, on rock. But after that little drama we get on the route, which IMHO is crappy. As we duck missiles on the col, we see The Ladies yo-yoing in icy winds up and off of the offwidth crux on Sunshine. On our route, three shit pitches lead to three nice 5.7 pitches and the ridge-line.

Awesome exposure and cool views:

Great views and pics for Gerhard, and then we get scared shitless by a storm, during which our teeth and rack throb and buzz, and sheets of energy whip and crack around us in the fog and wind. The rap at one point had EIGHT people on one station as we ducked rockfire on the col.

On Monday I had too little food, too many blisters, and it was threatening rain. They say when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, in climbing, it's more like, when the going THREATENS to get tough...half the camp eyes the sky and mutter about foiled big-day plans, while the smart ones gear up and go cragging. So I walked my 70m rope down the mountain and went to Invermere for supplies, and felt totally out of place among the swarms of fat RV people. I walked back into Applebee in the pissing rain and found Todd, who said "uhh your spot might be in a river tomorrow," so I moved my tent.

Tuesday was pissing rain. So I stayed in my tent and read until two, when the rain stopped. This proved good enough for the pair of Newfies camped beside me, so we all crawled into their tent and finished our two bottles of whiskey. By 3:00 I was staggering around Applebee howling medicine-man summonses at the reticent sun, which summonses actually worked-- by evening we were drying gear and fantasising about actually climbing! The bitchy Vancouver couple emerged from their tent, which was in a massive mud puddle which must have looked great when dry-- ahh, soft and flat, honey, let's fuck, but quietly!-- and they and the Spaniards, also marroned in a small sea of mud, decided to pack up and bail. The Spaniards wanted to do Slesse. "Why?" I asked, "you're here and the weather looks good!" But the Bitchy Vancouver Couple had clearly infected them and so nos despidimos.

The next day I went climbing on Edwards-Neufeld with one Janez Ales, the Slovenian ("it's NOT a Romance language-- we have a third number category for count nouns!") mathematician who sounds liek a combination of Tony McLane (lives in car, climbs a lot, works very little) and rich fucker (PhD, consultant, works very little). Actually, as Fergie put it, Tony was "making it work on the lesser end of the social spectrum" while the smarty-pants Janez was doing the same ont he other end. Good route name, huh? "Making it work on..." Janez had climbed with some of the Canaidan greats-- Guy Edwards, whose route we were about to do-- and some well-known long-timers liek Mike Spagnut, with whom I'd had the chance to tie in. And Janez on the approach scared me shitless telling first-ascent stories about these guys, making me realise AGAIN what a total wuss I am. "And then I got to the belay, and Guy had two RPs behind a crystal...")

So we did Edwards-neufeld and you coudl immediately see what a hardman the legendary "Fast Eddy" had been: not a bolt in sight, and you know that they didn't bring triples to 6" when they put THIS one up. Anyway, aside from me freaking out on one pitch, and Janez having to hand over the lead cos he'd forgotten to bring water and his hands were therefore frozen from lack of circulation, the route went well. It was hard, it was tricky and it was awesome. While not as aesthetic as mcTech (on which there seem to be 8 parties at any one time) it is more challenging and totally worth it.

I hiked out the next day, wondering if Blicker had gotten on our new route (he had), if my girlfriend still wanted to see me (she did, thank God), and if rodents had eaten my brake cables (nope!). Overall, wow, can't wait to go back.

ब्लिक्कर दोएस वर्क

2009-08-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

For some reason the computer will only let me title this post in Hindi. So the title above is "Napoleon's 5th Day." As you know we see the end of our route, the so-called "V slot" and months ago Blicker and Ben hiked up a fixed line. While Napoleon is into top-down and rap bolting, Dilly and I are into grounfd up, so our compromise is that Napoleon can deal with the top pitch and Driller and I will work the bottom of the route.

After media reports of an unusual decline in business at the Squamish Starbucks, it was reported that Napoleon got his ass out of bed and did some actual work on our route. The following is his report on the day's activities. My only question is, if you guys are carrying only harnesses, a crowbar and a drill, why do you both have 50 pound packs? Anyway good on you, Napoleon, and here's Napoleon's entry:

Exploring the V Slot
First this post is about climbing and not about Butch's girlfriend so if you were expecting something mildly entertaining and perverse [when have I ever written about my girlfriend?], then you have overestimated my ability to exaggerate and i'll leave that to Butch' future posts. The first thing that was working against us at the beginning of the day became immediately obvious in the morning: the weather. There was an early realization that we may need to abseil fixed lines in a torrential downpour. My friend Mike had heard about the route and was keen to get out, bringing a lot of experience from his developments out in the Hope, BC area. A slow start to the day, entirely my fault and supporting Chris' claim to my preparedness, and we were hiking up the chief yet again with 40-50 pound packs.

Slow and steady wins the race. A group of city slickers, boasting about their hiking accomplishments, meadered their way around our slow footwork and looked back with skepticism, a sign of their lack of confidence that we would never make it to the top with that amount of weight. An hour from the start, we summited our class 2 adventure and moved toward the start of the fixed lines.

Anyone who has ever route cleaned will agree that logistics and efficiency are what will determine success. A previous trip had seen our fixed lines at the right end point before the slot but needed to be rearranged such that the line was a more direct descent to the anchor. I rapped the first fixed line while Mike rapped the new direct line and unfixed the lower section. I jugged out with the gear and rapped down the new fixed line.

We cleaned up the ledge adjacent to the station and proceeded to our main objective: to rap the V slot and start cleaning it. An objective hazard was discovered to be a series of death blocks precariously perched on a small ledge 1/3 of the way down from the top. Armed with a crowbar i rapped off the fixed line, while getting a back up belay and making certain that any rope did not hang below my feet. It will suffice to say that the hazard is now gone and the corner crack is looking amazing and will go at 5.9+ or 5.10a. An anchor was installed at its base and I rapped down further to scope things out.

The irony of the situation was this: Butch is insistent on creating a ground up route and as you all know, this is extremely dangerous both for the belayer and for the leader as there is too much debris that can be loose and does come off. An earlier post by Butch denotes a fearful me hiding below a roof and it certainly was an evolutionary reaction for self preservation as a huge rock was coming my way. Back to the point: we would need to rap down to... do a ground up back out, as the face overhangs slight with no apparent features. A diagonal crack at the base goes up and left to the base of some very good looking cracks and provides the potential to traverse in to the right to the base of the V slot.

The rains started and Mike and I proceed to jug 100 meters (or 1/10th of El cap). After this sweaty and wet affair, our workout continued as we hiked own the backside of the chief and were immediately greeted with beers by some friends in the parking lot. Having no access to water on the way down (as we stashed some up there) we were getting hammered fast and proceeded to the Brew Pub. It rained briefly on Sunday but I somehow got out of bed and actually climbed something. As a side note, if you have never been to 'the farm' for bouldering, big up to all the FA's who put that area together as the lines were immaculate. Did i forget to mention flat landings?

Summary: a lot of cleaning to do still. Butch's shit talking will continue. Stay tuned.

The professionals review our route.

2009-07-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

As you all know, the Squamish Mountain Festival is coming up and a few of the legendary climbers who will be presenting and/or teaching clinics have already started trickling into town. And, by a remarkable coincidence, a few other legends have been around at the same time. Many of them have heard of our route and have come out to look at it and thrash on top-rope.

Here are what the world-famous have to say about our line.

Peter Croft: "Wow! I can't wait to free this! it is definitely going to be one of those routes that lives in your dreams! I am gonna drink three litres of Peet's Coffee before I try anything as crazy as THIS line!"

Lynn Hill: "If I weren't so damned busy with my new teach-yuppies-to-climb business, i would commit to a few months on this monster, which inspires me even more than trying to free the Nose did."

Simon Yates: "Ranks up there with my own routes as among the hardest, most dangerous and of course most committing in the world. Hopefully neither of the FAs will have to cut the other loose when it finally goes"

Derrick Hersey: "I was in the pub when I saw this line. I would have done it before this pair of cunts, but I had me pint and me fish and chips to eat first, right? And now I'm fucking dead. More's the pity."

Will Stanhope: "Anybody can climb 5.14 on gear. The new frontier, really, is going to be low 5.12. Especially bolted 5.12. The line looks totally amazing!"

John Bachar: "Well I'm fucking dead too now, aren't I? But if I weren't you can damn well bet I would be onsight soloing this thing. But for all the people in the world who aren't me, well, good for these guys, this route looks awesome and at least they are doing it ground up."

Sonnie Trotter: "I did seven hours of yoga, three hours of coffee drinking, and had ten hours of sleep, and I STILL couldn't get up the nerve to try this route, it looks so hardcore. I need to lower my fitness level from 5.14+ to 5.12-- not an easy feat, let me tell you-- to be able to do this route."

Will Gadd: "Ok, now, everybody knows I am the greatest climber in the entire world. And not even *I* could climb a route like this. Next year I am giving up ice and mixed climbing, my family, my sponsorhips, my flying and indeed all of my material possessions to train 25/8 for this route. Yea!"

So the route should be pretty good, if all of these world-class types are raving the way they are. All we have to do now is finish it.

Pitch info etc as of July 28

2009-07-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Grades and lengths are guesses.

Aborted/delayed P1&P2 (55m) Aided & fallen off of by Chris. Partly drilled by Chris & Napoleon.

P1 25m 5.9? Aided by Chris & Kasper. Cleaned partly by Tony McLane.
P2 30m 5.10a FA Chris, cleaned (somewhat) by Chris & Kasper.
P3 30m 5.10D/5.11a? Aided by Chris, cleaned Chris, Dylan Connelly
P4 30m 5.10a (?) Aided by Chris, cleaned by Chris
P5 35m 5.12a? Aided/drilled & cleaned Dylan Connelly
P6 30m, 5.7? Cleaned & drilled by Chris
P7 20m 5.12a? Aided by Dylan, cleaned (somewhat) by Chris
P8 15m 5.10a or 5.10c? Aided by Chris & Dylan, cleaned by Chris
P9 30m 5.9? Aided & drilled Dylan

Day 9 &10:

2009-07-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

After the nut and the cam ripped, and I fell backward 8 meters into space, the stove-sized flake I'd been standing on cracked and tumbled toward me.

* * *

Dilly and I arrived at the route Saturday in Napoleonic style: neither of us had had coffee, water or breakfast that morning, so thank God for McDonalds, with whom we are in negotiations for sponsorship. We are, by the way, selling sponsorships on the route. Basically, the harder the pitch, the more money we want. McDonalds wants the 12- dihedral so that will obviously be Open Big Mac. Dolce & Gabana are interested in the long crack so that will be the Damn I look Hot! pitch etc.

Here is a picture of the Shit Pillar, a death-waiting-to-happen semi-detached feature that thank God we don't have to climb past. Dilly is jugging up and is praying that the Shit doesn't come down on him.

This is a view down the route. Here, Dylan is about 10 meters below the start of the dihedral pitch. The bushes up and left are on the Green Line Ledge.

This is aid climbing...clusterf**king with wads of gear.

Anyway we sweltered up to the base then jugged to the trees, finisahed the water, then I set off on lead. I wore 1 trad rack, 1 drill, a shitload of bolts, yadda. Basically, leading on aid is to regular climbing what being in the Army and doing a forced 50 nmile training march (with full gear) is to going for a nice 10k.

I swung like a spastic, sluggish moneky through two trees, at which point above me came into view a massive knife-blade hanging flake. So I aided around it along the steep, overhanging left-trending v-slot. At its top I put in an A1 #2, then reached out and slotted a cam behind the top of the death flake, and then a nut and a cam higher. After I bounced them, I climbed free over the edge and found myself standing ona small shelf. Then my foot slipped and I tumbled backward toward the trees. When I stopped, the highest nut and cam I had placed were at my waist. I looked at Dylan through the tree branches.

"Hey," he said, putting down the binoculars, "those people over there on that other route, they are watching you. They just saw your awesome fall! Oh, and are you ok?"

I climbed back up, and tried slotting the nut and cam back in. Weirdly, they were too small for the crack where I'd placed them. So I pulled two bigger ones, stuck them in, and mantled over the lip again. I drilled, then pounded in a bolt. As I reached for the hanger, my foot slipped. I fell backward off the lip. And as I fell, I heard the nut and cam rip, and when I stopped, I heard a crack, and the stove-sized block above me blew and tumbled down.

Aid falls, I would realise later, are either no big deal, or deadly. You don't have time to be scared cos, unlike trad leads, you have no idea your pieces or feet are going to blow. And so you just fall-- no anticipation-- and either it's ok, or you get hurt. The huge block whooshed two feet from me and when it hit the wall 50 meters down, our position trembled. I asked Dilly to take over, then said "fuck it" and went back up-- the danger was over. And the irony was, the cam that had held two hug e ones was...the cam behind the death flake!

I finished the bolt, clipped, breathed, and headed up. eight feet up, I slotted in another cam, moved past it, and fell AGAIN. The cam ripped but thank God for the bolt. I handed the lead off to Dilly and belayed, dazed, stunned.

Dilly did a couple of dicey hook moves and then drilled a belay at the base of a loooong beautiful corner. We stashed our gear and rapped as a sick yellow light and odd swirly wind whooshed sround us. When we got to the car, a curtain of water ripped across the road and we headed for the pub.

On Sunday, we awoke to sweltering humidity and in true dirtbag style cooked brekkie at the base of the Grand while a series of climbers pulled up, glanced at the wall, and bailed when they saw the insanity of last night's rainstorm still coating the walls.

I jugged to our high point-- ah, only water and drill to haul today!-- but poor Dilly had left a jug on top, so he was humping with one jug and a gri-gri. No fun if you have a pack. At the high point, I discovered that Dilly had forgotten to anchor his jug and the hammer...now think about my massive block-ripping fall from yesterday. I hadn't noticed the crack widening. Dilly forgot to tie his gear down. I put it down to dehydration. No food, no water = dumb climbers.

At this point we had to decide-- up the dirty corner, with possibility of poor/no pro (read: slow and loads of drilling) or up the handcrack stuffed with loose flakes. We opted for the corner, which looked like this.

I know, it doesn't look awesome...but that's cos it's filthy. You wait till you climb it...you will be very pleasantly surprised.

Dilly set off up the dirty but beautiful corner while the gri-gri belayed him and I hung on my pitch from the day before, ripping out blocks and scrubbing. At day's end, I jugged up to the patch of forest where Dilly had built an anchor, and saw that he'd led upa magnificent corner that will go at 5.9 or so when it's had a scrub. We couldn't see a damned thing from the forest and we had the ladies waiting for their menfolk, so we stashed the aid rack and hardware, and sailed down.

Here's a pic of the dihedral, pre-cleaning, from our current high point.

Now, thanks again to Kevin McLane-- we will need his photo to see where we go next. I am hoping to get some climbing in in the Bugaboos, then back on he route mid-Aug. Blicker has said he will get on it soon, good, we need P1 and P2 cleaned, and...yea. We are nine, count 'em, NINE, pitches up! When this is done, we will have a 12-15 pitch 12- (or 11-A0) free route on an unclimbed part of the Chief. How cool is THAT?

The Electric Pepper Grinder

2009-07-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so...I am lying on my belly on the Green Line. Around my neck are a trad rack, a drill, and what feels like 50 other things. I am crammed into the last 20 feet of the Green Line and I can't move. And all I can think about is...Stovo's electric pepper grinder.

At breakfast, Stovo-- who remains fodder for all of our status-envy yuppie-cunt jokes-- busted out an electric pepper grinder. It whines, it grinds, it looks like a sex toy, and of course he got a really good deal on it, otherwise he would never have bought the damn thing. As I am lying on the ledge, I want an electric pepper grinder to clean the masses of bush and munge that are clawign at my waist. I want this to be quick and easy but instead I have Dilly laughing as I crawl thrash and snip.

"Hey are you sleeping there or what? How's that nice comfy ledge?" as he plays with his new iPhone. Fuck, they should make an iCleaner that deals with iLedges. Here's the view.

I took the rack off, hung it on a bolt, and thrashed forward. Looking back this is the Green Line munge-fest.

After a buttload of snipping, I fired in an anchorand brought Dilly over. It looked
something like this. Come to Papa, Dilly-boy! Yea baby. WORK that cave!

Dilly then started up the next pitch, the left-trneding overhanging hand crack. Whiel he led, the gri-gri belayed him and I clean the Green Line. There is a pleasant rhythm to the day-- you scrub, heave, trash-talk your partner, swig water, repeat. It's not the adrenal thrill of sending, but it's engaging. As Dilly neared the top of his pitch, I looked back, and the Green Line was clean. Satisfying. Good necessary work done.

Dilly fixed the newest static which belongs to The Filth, Dilly's brother in law. The Filth is currently travelling with his wife (hard to believe but this wonderful woman married him) in Nepal. The Filth's Patagonia organic hemp static line twanged down to Dilly as he pendulumed back and forth trying to get to the dihedral belay. I jugged an A1 probably 5.11+/12- pitch which other than a wee bit of moss is basically ready to climb.

At the belay I craned my head back as far as I could and saw only possibilities...up and left into a long corner? Up over an overlap into blocky cracks? The great joy of ground-up is that every day is new discovery. We could be doing this top down, but then it would just be filling in the obvious blanks. Colouring inside the lines. Following a blueprint. This way feels like we are going somewhere new.

Finally here is Dilly on rap at the middle of the 50m handcrack.

We rapped down and packed up. How awesome a feeling-- a traverse pitch drileld and cleaned, a new pithc led, mostly cleaned, and fixed. We now need only 3 loooong jugs to our high point, we have probably 2 mid 10 pitches to easier ground, and then it's wonly traversing to the V-slot. Stay tuned-- more on July 25th and 26th.

Day 7-- They had me standing on the Green Line

2009-06-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

We got up early cooked for Stovo and Kim. Stovo has this small dog named Nuggett, who brings out what is either his inner gay man or his inner kindergarten teacher. The dog can high-five, nestle in a lap, sneeze etc at will. No Blicker.

We blasted up toward the Green line. Well, "blast" is probably not a good word since I had to learn how to haul. 3 in 1is easy but slow; straight through is hard but way faster. At the bottom of the dihedral pitch, I got on lead and worked up to the highest bolt. At this point, it was tense: you have to belly-flop onto a grassy ledge, without knocking rocks onto Dilly. I did it, and there I was, laying on my belly, all the crap still hanging over the edge, trying not to disturb anything. A whole lot of shifting and grunting later, I started to drill the anchor. I was crammed into the cave-like ledge, and twisted myself into a Gumbie, reaching up and around over my head with the drill. When the bolts were done, my arm was spaghetti. I brought Dylan up and then it was time to head out.

The Green Line is a horizontal band of what feels like sandstone. It is softer and flakier than granite. You have granite above, then this layer, then granite below. The sandstone erodes faster than the granite, so the ledge is a kind of mini-cave. I drilled the first few bolts about 7 feet aparts. It felt excessive, but I was scared shitless. I had no idea how solid the rock under the grass under our feet was, and a fall during the first bit of the traverse would mean a pendulum into the dihedral (read: many broken bones). And drilling was hard. You have to drill the granite above you, there are no holds on the granite, and so you stand up, push UP under the roof of the ledge with your left hand so you jam your body in, then you reach up over your head with your right hand and drill. Imagine holding a 25 pound cat-- twisting and yowling-- over your head, for 5 minutes, and if you drop it, it WILL tear a serious hole in you. That's what drilling this was like.

After six more bolts, I was fried and our batteries were dead. So we fixed, and Dylan descended into the dihedral to scrub, while I started removing munge from the Green Line. The procedure: you reach down to the bottom of the grass on the ledge lip, you peel up, and you throw the whole thing off. We got about 20 meters cleaned up enough to see that it will be easy (5.4) traversing. Likely it will take one more bolt around a small bulge, then we can walk on the much wider right side to the tree at the base of the diagonal corner.

Meanwhile, Dylan got all but ten feet of the dihedral scrubbed. We were feeling pretty good-- next day will see us to the diagonal, the Green line is mostly clean, the dihedral is done, and we left the gardening tools on the Green Line, so less hauling next time. We are hoping to get out on Wednesday.

Day 6-- the Green Line beckons.

2009-06-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

The weekend appeared with the womenfolk working and Napoleon socialising. So Dylan and I did what Real Men do...we went gardening. Vertical gardening. Napoleon said he wanted to rap the entire route on Sudnay, but I told him that, since we had Dylan onboard for that day, we should all work the bottom of the route-- the first two pitches need cleaning and gardening. But Napoleon bailed.

On Saturday we took our newly charged new battery and way too much crap up the route. The 55m (likely) 5.11a pitch I think we will split into two. There is a stance about halfway up.

Drillin' Connelly set off up the dihedral while I did some more gardening on our 3rd and 4th pitches. This pitch has no crack to put gear in, so Dylan would drill a tiny bat-hook hole, put a hook in it, attach aiders, stand up, and then drill higher. He installed I believe 8 bolts on that pitch while I dug out a few more roots and some more dirt, and when that was doen I sat on the ledge while the Gri-gri belayed Dylan and I read my book, a history of international organised crime after the fall of Communism.

As we worked, well, as Dylan worked and I shouted up encouragement, we heard yelling coming from a route in our vicinity. "Heyyyy....get to wooooork....lazy fuuuuuckers" Yes folks, it was the elusive Napoleon shit-talking me from the nearest adjacent route. I didn't have a quick witty response, so I merely told him to tongue my balls and wondered why he would rather talk about the route than work on it.

At three the rains came to Whistler and the clouds started moving in. We got super excited: Dylan's highest bolt allowed him to finally SEE the Green Line Ledge. He yelled "it's a cave!" and then I lowered him. I went up to his high point on TR and tried the dihedral moves. I got a few of them. The last 2/3 will be 11+, the first 1/3 seems impossible right now. It will be a blend of full-on friction, stemming and weird body contortions. At the high point, I got a look, and yes, the Green Line is in fact a "recessed" ledge-- the granite above comes down, then there is an incut of about 3 feet into the rock and 3 feet deep, then the granite comes out. Kind of like a letter "C" or better yet a square racket like this: ].

The rains came, so we bailed and then headed off to our friends place. But first, hardware. We were out of bolts nuts washers and hangers. Since Valhalla didn't have any, we went to that other source of climbing gear-- Canadian Tire, where we loaded up on bolts and clippers.

We had been prepared to eat A&W for dinner and then sleep under a rock but instead we were fed a fine dinner at our pal Stovo's place and then after showers we crashed in luxury in actual beds. I dreamed of the Green Line.

Ready to roll...again

2009-06-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Well I must apologise for no news for 2 weeks now. First, the fun stuff, namely, shit-talking Napoleon, heh heh. No, just kidding, Napoleon has actually been doing real work instead of the usual (propping up Starbucks and chasing women). He and Ben Roy hiked 250m of static line to the top of the (potential) route yesterday. They rapped the v-slot, say it will go at 5.8 or 5.9. They would have actualy hung the 250m of static line on the route, but Napoleon heard that Starbucks was closing and so they haightailed it out of there ;-)

Dylan Connelly and I were set last Sat then of course it pissed on us so we abandoned, then of course itwas lovely that afternoon. This week we have acquired a new battery for the drill so hopefully we can get more than 2.5 holes out of the damn thing. Dilly and I are heading up Sat and Sun to work on it. Napoleon is allegedly coming out on Sunday. Hopefully he can finish what Tony McLane started-- our first 2 pitches need some logging, some crow-barring, and some gardening.

Day 5: Drillin' Connelly

2009-06-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

Fresh from India and Nepal, and newly moved into the world of corporate finance, The Driller was rabid to get on our route today. I was pretty psyched...Dylan has done loads of aid climbing (loads more than me, anyway). Napoleon was nowhere to be seen but the immense lineup at Starbucks (which you can see from our route) suggested that he was probably there getting his 35th coffee of the morning.

Anyway, Driller and I were a bit late getting started due to nearly running out of gas but up we went. We made it to our high point after I stepped in some shit and we sweated through the oddly humid but thankfully not 32 degree weather.

Dylan jugged quickly, and when we got to the ledge at our high point, he launched into aid. Blicker called this one right-- the dihedral we are now climbing will be harder than I'd thought (11+?) likely with no gear. Here's Dylan on the dihedral pitch:

Drillin' Connelly bathooked and 1/8"'d his way up while I slid down the fixed line and did some serious gardening, which basically meant throwing rocks at the ground and ripping out handfuls of dirt. When the first battery died-- after a mere 2.5 holes-- I lowered the Driller to the belay, and when he started to change batteries, I think I gave him a moment of slack. In any case, the battery fell down, smacked my shoulder, and then fell 200m down the face of the cliff into the talus. FUCK! So with drilling activities over for the day, we turned our attention to P3 and the loose rock and dirt.

I managed to kill the huge pain-in-the-ass tree, while showering Driller (now Digger) with many cubic meters of dirt. The horrifying loose blocks that had scared Blicker were stller there, but no match for the Digger.

So we hacked and grunted and got rid of it. Only problem was, we now have off-width sections on our crack, ha. Oh well, we'll manage. At the end of the day, were pretty satisfied. Here's a pic of the crack, cleaned:

Here's a last photo of Dylan rapping at day's end.

At the base we found the dropped battery, plugged it in...and it worked! A bit more scrubbing, a few more bathook and copperhead moves, and we will have P3 and P4 ready to climb, and then we start either traversing the Green Line, or heading up the black & white flake.

Photo porn

2009-06-04T12:19:00.001-07:00

Today I must thank Kevin McLane for his help. The good Mr McLane has made a magnificent very high-res digital picture of where our route might go. We can see the end. We can see the start. All we need is to connect the two. We need this pic because...on Sunday, The Driller and I are going to try to do P4 while Napoleon goes and pose-- err, I mean, socialises elsewhere. If we make it to Green Line Ledge, we have options. We will be able to see which cracks are climbable, but we won't be able to see what goes where. So armed with the photo, we will be able to pick a line that is both climbable AND headed ot the top.

I got the pic yesterday and then spent the whole day planning and dreaming. But we have to keep our dreams in check-- until rubber meets rock, you really have no idea where you can go. I am happy to have Driller onboard. First, because he doesn't try to get chicks through climbing, and more importantly because he has loads of aid experience. Also he has balls. And he has been trained by The Filth himself in the fine art of talking shit and drinking beer, without which as we all know there is no climbing.

And no, I'm NOT posting a pic of the route ;-)

Route info for New Life 5.11b

2009-05-30T23:06:00.001-07:00

Today we did not get on the new route. I climbed (thrashed on) New Life with Emilisa Frirdich. Here is the route info.

NEW LIFE (5.11b 5P FA: Trevor Macdonald, Jim Martinello.)

A great route for which I could not find a topo, so here is what I would say. Thanks to Nick Elson for his input. The first 3 pitches are dry even in the rain. If you want to do only P1, 2 and 3 bring 2 60m ropes to rappel.

Rack— 2 camalots from .3 to #3, with extra .75 and #1. Nuts, long slings

Approach: (15-20 min) the route is to the immediate left of Tall Skinny People
Drive between 1 and 1.1 km from where the cement ends and gravel starts on the Mamquam. There is a small pile of stones near the road. The trailhead is past the Angel’s Crest trail.

Walk straight up, following occasional pink and blue flagging. After awhile, you will be on the right side of a white wash-out gully. Just past this, the left side of Zodiac Wall touches down (to your right).

At the corner where the Zodiac Wall meets the forest floor, there is a pink flag hanging. Gear up and leave your pack here. Follow a small ledge which initially descends a few feet, then rises up. Pass one fixed rope, go a bit further and pull up another fixed rope to a boulder at the base of a long white corner. Just to the right of this is the big chasm of Tall Skinny People. Here is a pic of P1.

The route is the corner just to the left of the wide chimney (Tall Skinny People). The pitch goes through the blocky pod, then up and slightly left. P1 ends at a small tree high in the middle of the white face. Just up and left is the layback crack to the 11c pitch.

Climb: P1 5.10a Climb the corner. At or just below the tree, step left into a crack on a ramp. Follow this up past a small tree to a good ledge and a gear belay. A very fine pitch.

P2 5.11b Climb the steep layback/jam crack above, twist through a short chimney, then do some wild stemming and a massive long reach left under the small roof (green Camalot). Belay off the cedar and/or gear. Wild and crazy, burly, but good gear.

P3 5.10c/d depending on your hand size. Fire up the v-slot. At its end, step up and right to a stance and a belay on gear. OR throw in a few long slings (on face and in last pieces at top of V-slot) and link to P4. Burly but good gear and rests.

P4 5.11b Traverse right from the top of the V-slot, doing delicate moves past two pins and some gear placements. Make a cruxy reach right around the arête and belay off two bolts. Tricky. FAs said this one is 10c...quite a sandbag at this grade, or maybe they just climb ridiculously hard, I dunno.

P5 5.10a/b Do a couple of grunty moves up and left of the belay, then step right into a crack. Move up, then make a massive up and sideways reach under the tree, and continue up until you get into the forest. Straightforward.

Descent: You have 3 options

a) If you only want to do P1 and 2, rap from slings on the cedar tree at the top of P2.

b) Walk along to climber’s left along the trail. Keep looking down to your left. When you see a yellow fixed line, descend to that. Hand-descend the fixed nylon line and keep walking to skier’s left (it’s pretty obvious). Drop through a slot, and at a chain you can setup up a rap or if you feel confident just carefully downlcimb through the treed gully. You will eventually find another fixed line to rappel, and at the end of this, walk off 20m to skier’s right back to your pack.

c) Head up and right onto Astro Ledge and do some of the routes there.

Day Four: Onward & Upward

2009-05-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

OK Day 4 was surprising because...Napoleon was almost on time and he actually had his stuff ready. Today we also had the pleasure of a new team member, one Tony McLane.

Now if you don't know Tony, you really must meet him. He comes from a wonderful lineage of climbers. His father, Kevin, a Brit, arrived in Canada in 1973, after a summer in the Valley, and never left. Tony put up his first route at age 10 or so. When I met him, he wore a shredded brown corduroys, a headband, and had long hair. His rack was a bunch of ancient Aliens most likely stolen from Dad. He rocked Yosemite 1977. I see Tony every winter in the U.S. He is generally unemployed, filthy, and broke...making his father very proud. Like a monk, the man has dedicated his life not to women, wine or work, but to climbing. He currently lives in a car in the yard of a tire shop.

Anyway Tony showed up on his bike and we hacked our way up to the route. Tony agreed to clean our alternative first pitch and jumped on the fixed blue lines, while Napoleon and I jugged up to our former high point. When Napoleon arrived at the tree to which I'd anchored the rope, he freaked. CEdars are generally deep-rooted and solid but Napoleon was NOT happy. So we argued for awhile. I was OK with the cedar but Blicker pointed out that there was no way we were going to be able to move up-- any rockfall woudl drop directly onto the tree. He was right, and we were therefore forced to drill two bolts off to the side of the crack to get the belayer out of the way of the inevitable bombing.

We thrashed around between the tree and the bolts for awhile, Napoleon sternly warning me not to drop big bombs on him. I moved up the final eight or so meters of crack, which were again oddly clean. At the ledge, I reached up to grab a small pillar...and the entire thing shifted. I stepped back down into my aiders. I had to move up and sideways, bypassing this potential 9 foot 500 pound missile which was about to obliterate first me and then Napoleon, who even from 30 feet away I could tell was sweating. I pawed at a couple of crimps, stood up on the ledge...and then realised I'd forgotten to unclip from my aiders. Now I had to down-climb four feet past the Leaning Pillar of Death. The LEPOD groaned as I pinched and squirmed myself into a pretzel shape, unclipped my aiders, and basically jumped sideways onto the muddy shelf. I fired in one bolt and breathed out. The ledge was good-- two feet wide, a comfy stance, you could sit, and the belayer would be out of the line of fire for the next pitch.

"I'm getting the fuck OUT of here!" yelled Napoleon. Although sympathetic to his cause, I thought that we had better get the LEPOD out of the way otherwise we would have to do the same thing next time. So we bickered a bit and then Napoleon jugged up.

When he arrived we started to reef on the LEPOD which shifted and ground ominously. Then some folks walked by and I, panicking, yelled "get the fuck out of the way!" to which they yelled "shut the fuck up and stop for a minute!" which was exactly what rude me deserved.

When the LEPOD finally came off-- it is odd how you can use a nut-tool to shift a 500-pound rock-- it blasted past the fixed lines and thundered down the face. We could feel its progress through our feet and the rope. The 150 meters of cliff shook and the smell of crushed rock wafter up along with Tony's "HOLY FUUUUUUUUCK!"

The real joy however was in seeing the next pitch. You climb about ten feet up and left along our ledge, then it is a shallow slabby dihedral that leads up to the Green Line ledge. Clean, smooth. It will make for some friction climbing and stemming, with possibly gear in its final third. All we need are a 1/4" drill and some of those aid devices that go in rivet holes. The next pitch, we will install one bolt at the lefthand top of our ledge. The we will stand on the bolt (or rock), drill a 1/4" rivet, clip that, move up, and drill antoher bolt. The 1/4" holes will be filled in with epoxy.

We fixed and retreated. Next weekend hopefully Napoleon and Tony will do P5. One person leads and drills, the other is on jugs and is cleaning P4. And then it's decision time...many options for moving up. Lots of cracks up there; we just need to make sure we are on the right one. Anyway thanks Tony for joining the team and stay tuned, folks. More cracks to come.

Day 3: The Horrid and Fabulous Truth

2009-05-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

April 2009.

This day we were set to make some big progress. Our ropes had been hanging for eight months in the rain from the top of (putative) P1. We had good weather, dry rock, and two charged batteries. The only thing slowing us down was Napoleon's addiction to Starbucks.

Napoleon got on the fixed ropes and started drilling above the shin-ripper bolt. He drilled four more bolts, screwed around with a few gear placements, then jugged up to the anchor. He put me on and I tried to do the moves on toprope. First problem was, the rock bombing that Kasper and I had done in Fall when we had moved to install the first belay had obliterated the holds at the first bolt. So that was impossible. Above that, the moves were insanely hard-- micro pinches, big reaches, very steep, and little rest. We are clearly going to have to call in a rope gun to send this one. I flopped and cussed my way up to Napoleon, hauled up the pack, and then set off on lead into the crack. Here's what it looks like:

Now if you are new routing on aid, you will know the mix of frustration ("I could free this!") and doubt ("How the f**k are we going to get around THIS?"). The crack is magnificent. .4 Camalots and medium nuts, mostly clean but with occasional wads of dirt. The aid system started to finally make sense and I pressed upward. In an hour I was at what had looked like a big loose block, and found it was actually solid. Above it, however, the crack widened to off-hands and the angle eased off, and there I minced my way through flakes and chunks of random rock, while Napoleon cowered in the meager shade of six overhanging inches of rock and I did my best to kill him with rock missiles. This is an experience you don't get much in Squamish-- the rock is clean and solid, and most of the routes have been climbed loads of times, so you dont' get to try to kill your partner too often. I felt like I was leading on Yamnuska, where people belay with gri-gris. In case the second gets whacked with rockfall, the gri-gril will hold the leader.

I finally got to the small pseudo-roof, aided as high as I could, and started to dig through the mud below the tree. I thrashed directly into the cedar tree, fixed the rope, and eyed the crack and dihedral above. There would be about ten more meters of handcrack, an easy mantel onto a solid belay ledge, and above that a shallow blank dihedral (not vertical) of what would be face and friction climbing that led to a big green ledge-- the Green Line. I put myself on and rapped down to a Napoleon who had long since fled the bomb zone for the safety of the forest.

Cheating Is Where It's At (Day Two)

2009-05-25T12:08:00.001-07:00

I called Napoleon a couple of weeks after my shin-ripper, and the answer was "Can't. I'm taking this girl out climbing." Which raises a number of questions best left unanswered. However, being the consumate social animal that he is, Napoleon hooked me up with one Kasper Podgorski, a more recent Ontario transplant.

I picked up Kasper, along with his micro-rack and bloated Southern Ontario vowels, and drove up to Squamish. The poor fucker had been nicely misled by Napoleon into believing that he was actually going crack climbing on clean impeccable Squamish granite. Heh heh heh...

After our thrash to the base of the route, I realised that tactics wussier and uglier than ground-up would be required. When the going gets tough, the tough hook and nail, but I jug other folks' ropes. The original plan had been to hook our way up the first pitch to the base of the handcrack, drilling bolts along the way. But it was harder and way steeper than we originally had thought. So, we would approach from the side.

We snuck down to the fixed blue ropes that are about 20 meters away from out first batch of bolts and started to jug. We made it to the first set of anchors on these ropes and I realised that this would be a good 5.9 pitch. I then led up and right, through a tree, past a layback flake, and up onto a ledge. I brought tree-cussing Kasper up, and then began delicately, or so I hoped, moving out right along a mass of ledges and choss. In reality it was more like a roped elephant trying to tiptoe through a potter's studio. The only thing louder than my screams and whimpers of fear were the crashes of 200-pound boulders and flakes bombing the forest below. The aim was to get to where the direct version of our route would end its first pitch, at the base of a long and amazing handcrack.

I hooked and hammered in a few pieces, and then got to the base of the handcrack. It was about fifty meters straight down to the deck. I put in one bolt and clipped into it. Then I started peeling off flaky outer rock so I could drill a decent second bolt for our station. I felt a rumble, and then heard a deep CRAAAAAACK. In front of me was a piece of rock about the size of me. It toppled about three inches forward and I lurched in, and found myself with about 500 pounds of rock pressed against my chest. I had myself attached toa bolt on my right with a sling, a seven-foot, 500-pound boulder balanced on me, and the rope going from my harnes off to Kasper on my left. If the boulder peeled, it would rip the rope in half and leave me hanging fifty meters up with no rope. I maneuvered one hand off the rock, flicked the rope over top of the boulder, took a deep breath, and jumped up. The rock kaCHUNKED where my feet had been, and blasted down the mountain. I breathed out and drileld a second bolt.

Kasper came over, dislodged a few hundred more pounds of stone, and we installed an old rope to be our fixed line. Before leaving we looked up...to see an impeccable finger and hand crack, a loooong pitch. The crack started out as surprisingly clean fingers, then passed an odd block and became hands, disappeared from view into a corner, and then broke through a micro-roof and into a tree. I was sweaty, tired and frustrated with the slow pace of things, but this one view reconfirmed that we had a cool project on the go.

We rapped down and tried a few of the would-be direct start moves on top-rope. I couldn't do most of them even minus the drill and the aid rack. The thing was impossible. But we now had a fixed line to the top of the first pitch. And the handcrack beckoned.

"Is ALL of Squamish like this?" asked Kasper, wiping dirt off his clothes and rock dust from his hair, "I'm fried! Climbing is really HARD here!"

Day One

2009-05-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

After our April 2008 walk, we kept dreaming but stopped doing. I met an amazing woman, and suddenly there was more to do on weekends than climb. Napoleon continued his relentless quest to climb all of the 11+ routes in Squamish. We tried Freeway (5.11c) together. Very hard, very sustained climbing well above gear, plus us being out of shape, plus cruxes being wet, added up to a massive ass-kicking. I went to Colombia for two months. Napoloen was in grad school. And so the line loomed in our minds.

Napoleon-- I will name him this, since he seems intent on conquering every trad route in Squamish, plus he is short, and very stubborn-- has been climbing for I am guess about five years now. He is from Ontario and come out West to do his M.Sc., from which he bailed for the greener pastures of commerce. Napoleon has climbed some 5.12 on gear, has done an aid-climbing course, and is rabidly enthusiastic.

I have been climbing for about 10 years. When I am in shape, I climb 5.12 on bolts and 5.11+ on gear. I ice climb and boulder a bit. In other words, I am at the very low end of climbing's middle class.

Anyway, we finally got on the damned route in Sept of 2008. I had borrowed a drill and aid gear. I had never aid climbed. We thrashed back up to the start of our route. It took me six hours to install four bolts. I had aiders clipped to my rack, my rack clipped to my shoes, and my head up my ass. I looked like a climbing scarecrow, with random tools attached to random parts of my body in wasy designed to frighten climbing-sentient beings. As I moved upward, I started to realise that the route was going to be much harder than we'd thought. We were aiming for a 5.11 pitch of face climbing to get us to what looked like a fine handcrack...but it was steeper, with smaller holds, and much weirder moves than we'd expected.

At around four in the afternoon, with Napoleon scrubbing below me and belaying me on a Gri-gri, my hooks blew, and I tumbled. A very very hard something smashed my shin, and when I came to rest, howling like a disappointed Canucks fan, there was a massive hole in my shin. Something like this:

Luckily I had some very fine goodies in my medical kit. I gulped a couple of tabs of morphine sulphate for the pain and a couple of Ibuprofens for the swelling. We collected our gear and hobbled back down to the car.

"You need to go to Emergency," said Napoleon. Visions of four-hour waits. We went off to the Starbucks to get coffee food and newspapers for the long wait. The bikers preening over their chrome machines and the baristas fiddling with steam knobs turned white when they saw me limping and dripping blood.

At the Emergency, I waited only two hours for the doctor to deal with two ATV rollover accidents, one bad trampoline landing, and what sounded like somebody with something very inappropriate jammed up their ass. When the virry nice Suth Efrican doctor dealt with me, he remarked on the relative safety of rock-climbing and asked my opinion on French Immersion for his kids, and shot me full of something that made me drowsy.

I drove home pretty miserable. Lala was in Romania, I could barely sleep, and the next day, despite gobbling a handful of morphine pills with my morning coffee, I could barely walk for the pain. And my back was killing me.

"You WHAT?" shrieked Lala when she saw the pictures (same as above) on Facebook. Her boyfriend was NOT supposed to come back with injuries. I got a staggering number of comments on these photos, and then Facebook itself weighed in by deleting them, citing inappropriate content. Well you can post links to videos of Iraqis being waterboarded, but you can't show a cut...hmm. Anyway I spent the next 3 weeks being 79 years old, hobbling around on a cane, out of my head on painkillers, the world soft cotton balls and groggy whispers away from my head.

But things healed up, Lala got home and was horrified when the stitches dripped pus and I pulled them out with tweezers, and two weeks later, I had the urge to get back on the horse.

The History

2009-05-24T21:38:00.001-07:00

This is the online record of the creation of my first ever rock climbing route.

One year ago, Napoleon and I went for a walk in Squamish to look at an area that we noticed had (a) lots of climbable-looking features and (b) no routes in the guidebook. In May of 2008, we thrashed up to where we thought we'd start (just under the Sheriff's Badge, on the Stawamus Chief, in Squamish, BC)...and found some fixed ropes. So we jugged up the ropes and arrived in the middle of a slabby, treed, kinda boring place. It was wet and humid. It was not very good climbing. It felt like a waste of a day.

But on the way down, Napoleon noticed something off to our right. And we wandered over to check it out. And so was born a dream.