The Gota story

It's been two years since The Driller and I put up La Gota Fria. As of this writing, we have the FCA-- first complete ass-- with two pitches (12c ansd 12a?) remaining to be freed. I'm not holding my breath.

After our ascent, a bit of a shit-storm happened on-line. Basically, Napoleon was unhappy that Driller and I had done the First Ass of the route without him. He having done the First Ass of some of the pitches, wanted to be included in the First Ass, but wasn't, and this is why.

When we began the route, in 2008, Napoleon and I started ground-up. We immediately ran into one problem: Napoleon didn't want to show up for work. After the second day on the route, we made plans to work a third, and Napoleon sent in his stead Kasper Podgoski, who nabbed the Fist Ass of P1 and 2 with me (on aid).

After this point, Napoleon would only show up for the occasional day. It became obvious that the route was going to go, and it became equally obvious that, if we wnet at Napoleon's pace (one day per month) we would be retired by the time the FA came around. So I recruited The Driller, who has a ton of aid experience. The Driller, despite having a non-climbing girlfriend (now his wife), a full-time job, and full-time school, ALL AT THE SAME TIME, became a regular feature on the route. I also had a non-climbing girlfriend-- and we have kids-- and a full-time job, so during the doing of this route, both Driller and I gave up quite a few climbing days.

Together we pushed the route -- entirely ground up, via aid-- to the top of P10. Napoleon disagreed with the tactics. For him, ground-up was too dangerous. However, he had not led a single pitch. At this point he proposed that he rap in from the top, so he and our friend Ben hauled a few hundred meters of rope up there and they rapped down and isntalled fixed ropes to the top of P10.

We now had fixed ropes-- as of April 2009-- on the whole route, and it basically came time to clean, log and bolt. This work, while not awful, isn't nearly as fun as actual climbing. You are hanging from aiders or a butt-bag, hacking away at dirt, logs or flakes of rock. Yes, you can shit-talk with your partner, and the views are great, but it's not climbing.

As the route progressed, Napoleon did less and less work, while Driller and I kept at it. Napoleon would send us missives which included JPEGs of the route with suggestions that we "scrub variations" on the route. In the summer of 2009, on several occasions I was on the route, working, while Napoleon would project this or that on the Badge, and yell at us "hey fuckers, you guys should try climbing something!" and so on. Indeed, that summer, Napoleon-- who was working 8 hours per week and not in school-- was climbing five days per week, and came out twice to work on the route.

In March of 2010, Driller and I told Napoleon flat-out that when the first ascent was going to happen, he would not be on it unless he massively upped his work commitment. He responded with "I will be available to work on the route in May and June." Instead, he went to the Valley and we didn't see him for two months.

One week before the first ascent, I ran into Napoleon and his girlfriend in Starbucks. I told him that Driller and I were gunning for the First Complete Ass next weekend. He said "cool" and I said that we would save the two 12+ pitches for him, to which he said "cool."

On July 10, 2010, Driller and I did the F.C.A. of La Gota Fria, freeing all but two of the pitches.

The next day, when I put the topo online, the shitstorm started, with Napoleon name-calling both Driller and I on Squamishclimbing. He was told by the admin that if his comments persisted they would ban him, as he was slandering both of us.

When I added up the days of work on the route, it had taken something like 53 person-days. I had done around 30, Driller 15, and Napoleon 8. Other people like Ian Bennet, Tony McLane, Ben Roy, Paul Cordy and Kasper Podgorski had put in time as well.

Napoleon was angry that he'd been excluded from the F.A. I still have mixed feelings about this. His lack of work-- especially considering that he had no job, no girlfriend, and summers off-- was shocking. At one point in the summer of 2009, I called him to see if he wanted to get out onto the route, and he said "I can't; I've been climbing all week and I am too tired." While he enjoyed a climbing summer, Driller and I hung on ropes and dug mud.

Were we selfish in excluding him from the F.A.? Probably. Were we justified? Dunno, but it felt like it, and still does. If I were as generous as I'd like to be, I might've forgiven him...but that route came at great personal expense, it cost Driller and I many climbing days, and it felt like Napoleon was more into talking about the route than doing the work. Indeed, it became particularly galling when Driller and I would run into acquaintances mutual to us and Napoleon, and hear them say "so Napoleon was talking about your guys' route. How is it going?", when Napoleon would have been months not climbing the route.

In the end, the route forged a much stronger and deeper bond between the Driller and I, who shared some hair-raising moments. It also taught me to aid-climb, to confront fear, and it showed me that small acts of selfishness (like showing up hours late for climbing days, and refusing to work, and assuming your partner will bring all of the stuff you forgot to pack cos you were out partying till 3 A.M. the night before) often portend much bigger ones.

So, yeah. Ya dance with them what brung ya. But not forever.

Alphabet Soup

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.

Day 25

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.

Gestation

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.

Gumbies! In! Creek!

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.

Day 22: Nearer, my Send, to Thee

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

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

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

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

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!

Day 15: The Longest Biener Chain in Squamish

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

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?

Day 12: Solo mission

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!

Day Four: Onward & Upward

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

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)

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!"