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!

The Electric Pepper Grinder

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 6-- the Green Line beckons.

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

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

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.

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!"

The History

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.