We got up early cooked for Stovo and Kim. Stovo has this small dog named Nuggett, who brings out what is either his inner gay man or his inner kindergarten teacher. The dog can high-five, nestle in a lap, sneeze etc at will. No Blicker.
We blasted up toward the Green line. Well, "blast" is probably not a good word since I had to learn how to haul. 3 in 1is easy but slow; straight through is hard but way faster. At the bottom of the dihedral pitch, I got on lead and worked up to the highest bolt. At this point, it was tense: you have to belly-flop onto a grassy ledge, without knocking rocks onto Dilly. I did it, and there I was, laying on my belly, all the crap still hanging over the edge, trying not to disturb anything. A whole lot of shifting and grunting later, I started to drill the anchor. I was crammed into the cave-like ledge, and twisted myself into a Gumbie, reaching up and around over my head with the drill. When the bolts were done, my arm was spaghetti. I brought Dylan up and then it was time to head out.
The Green Line is a horizontal band of what feels like sandstone. It is softer and flakier than granite. You have granite above, then this layer, then granite below. The sandstone erodes faster than the granite, so the ledge is a kind of mini-cave. I drilled the first few bolts about 7 feet aparts. It felt excessive, but I was scared shitless. I had no idea how solid the rock under the grass under our feet was, and a fall during the first bit of the traverse would mean a pendulum into the dihedral (read: many broken bones). And drilling was hard. You have to drill the granite above you, there are no holds on the granite, and so you stand up, push UP under the roof of the ledge with your left hand so you jam your body in, then you reach up over your head with your right hand and drill. Imagine holding a 25 pound cat-- twisting and yowling-- over your head, for 5 minutes, and if you drop it, it WILL tear a serious hole in you. That's what drilling this was like.
After six more bolts, I was fried and our batteries were dead. So we fixed, and Dylan descended into the dihedral to scrub, while I started removing munge from the Green Line. The procedure: you reach down to the bottom of the grass on the ledge lip, you peel up, and you throw the whole thing off. We got about 20 meters cleaned up enough to see that it will be easy (5.4) traversing. Likely it will take one more bolt around a small bulge, then we can walk on the much wider right side to the tree at the base of the diagonal corner.
Meanwhile, Dylan got all but ten feet of the dihedral scrubbed. We were feeling pretty good-- next day will see us to the diagonal, the Green line is mostly clean, the dihedral is done, and we left the gardening tools on the Green Line, so less hauling next time. We are hoping to get out on Wednesday.
Showing posts with label rock climbing.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rock climbing.. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Route info for New Life 5.11b
Today we did not get on the new route. I climbed (thrashed on) New Life with Emilisa Frirdich. Here is the route info.
NEW LIFE (5.11b 5P FA: Trevor Macdonald, Jim Martinello.)
A great route for which I could not find a topo, so here is what I would say. Thanks to Nick Elson for his input. The first 3 pitches are dry even in the rain. If you want to do only P1, 2 and 3 bring 2 60m ropes to rappel.
Rack— 2 camalots from .3 to #3, with extra .75 and #1. Nuts, long slings
Approach: (15-20 min) the route is to the immediate left of Tall Skinny People
Drive between 1 and 1.1 km from where the cement ends and gravel starts on the Mamquam. There is a small pile of stones near the road. The trailhead is past the Angel’s Crest trail.
Walk straight up, following occasional pink and blue flagging. After awhile, you will be on the right side of a white wash-out gully. Just past this, the left side of Zodiac Wall touches down (to your right).
At the corner where the Zodiac Wall meets the forest floor, there is a pink flag hanging. Gear up and leave your pack here. Follow a small ledge which initially descends a few feet, then rises up. Pass one fixed rope, go a bit further and pull up another fixed rope to a boulder at the base of a long white corner. Just to the right of this is the big chasm of Tall Skinny People. Here is a pic of P1.
The route is the corner just to the left of the wide chimney (Tall Skinny People). The pitch goes through the blocky pod, then up and slightly left. P1 ends at a small tree high in the middle of the white face. Just up and left is the layback crack to the 11c pitch.
Climb: P1 5.10a Climb the corner. At or just below the tree, step left into a crack on a ramp. Follow this up past a small tree to a good ledge and a gear belay. A very fine pitch.
P2 5.11b Climb the steep layback/jam crack above, twist through a short chimney, then do some wild stemming and a massive long reach left under the small roof (green Camalot). Belay off the cedar and/or gear. Wild and crazy, burly, but good gear.
P3 5.10c/d depending on your hand size. Fire up the v-slot. At its end, step up and right to a stance and a belay on gear. OR throw in a few long slings (on face and in last pieces at top of V-slot) and link to P4. Burly but good gear and rests.
P4 5.11b Traverse right from the top of the V-slot, doing delicate moves past two pins and some gear placements. Make a cruxy reach right around the arête and belay off two bolts. Tricky. FAs said this one is 10c...quite a sandbag at this grade, or maybe they just climb ridiculously hard, I dunno.
P5 5.10a/b Do a couple of grunty moves up and left of the belay, then step right into a crack. Move up, then make a massive up and sideways reach under the tree, and continue up until you get into the forest. Straightforward.
Descent: You have 3 options
a) If you only want to do P1 and 2, rap from slings on the cedar tree at the top of P2.
b) Walk along to climber’s left along the trail. Keep looking down to your left. When you see a yellow fixed line, descend to that. Hand-descend the fixed nylon line and keep walking to skier’s left (it’s pretty obvious). Drop through a slot, and at a chain you can setup up a rap or if you feel confident just carefully downlcimb through the treed gully. You will eventually find another fixed line to rappel, and at the end of this, walk off 20m to skier’s right back to your pack.
c) Head up and right onto Astro Ledge and do some of the routes there.
NEW LIFE (5.11b 5P FA: Trevor Macdonald, Jim Martinello.)
A great route for which I could not find a topo, so here is what I would say. Thanks to Nick Elson for his input. The first 3 pitches are dry even in the rain. If you want to do only P1, 2 and 3 bring 2 60m ropes to rappel.
Rack— 2 camalots from .3 to #3, with extra .75 and #1. Nuts, long slings
Approach: (15-20 min) the route is to the immediate left of Tall Skinny People
Drive between 1 and 1.1 km from where the cement ends and gravel starts on the Mamquam. There is a small pile of stones near the road. The trailhead is past the Angel’s Crest trail.
Walk straight up, following occasional pink and blue flagging. After awhile, you will be on the right side of a white wash-out gully. Just past this, the left side of Zodiac Wall touches down (to your right).
At the corner where the Zodiac Wall meets the forest floor, there is a pink flag hanging. Gear up and leave your pack here. Follow a small ledge which initially descends a few feet, then rises up. Pass one fixed rope, go a bit further and pull up another fixed rope to a boulder at the base of a long white corner. Just to the right of this is the big chasm of Tall Skinny People. Here is a pic of P1.
The route is the corner just to the left of the wide chimney (Tall Skinny People). The pitch goes through the blocky pod, then up and slightly left. P1 ends at a small tree high in the middle of the white face. Just up and left is the layback crack to the 11c pitch.
Climb: P1 5.10a Climb the corner. At or just below the tree, step left into a crack on a ramp. Follow this up past a small tree to a good ledge and a gear belay. A very fine pitch.
P2 5.11b Climb the steep layback/jam crack above, twist through a short chimney, then do some wild stemming and a massive long reach left under the small roof (green Camalot). Belay off the cedar and/or gear. Wild and crazy, burly, but good gear.
P3 5.10c/d depending on your hand size. Fire up the v-slot. At its end, step up and right to a stance and a belay on gear. OR throw in a few long slings (on face and in last pieces at top of V-slot) and link to P4. Burly but good gear and rests.
P4 5.11b Traverse right from the top of the V-slot, doing delicate moves past two pins and some gear placements. Make a cruxy reach right around the arête and belay off two bolts. Tricky. FAs said this one is 10c...quite a sandbag at this grade, or maybe they just climb ridiculously hard, I dunno.
P5 5.10a/b Do a couple of grunty moves up and left of the belay, then step right into a crack. Move up, then make a massive up and sideways reach under the tree, and continue up until you get into the forest. Straightforward.
Descent: You have 3 options
a) If you only want to do P1 and 2, rap from slings on the cedar tree at the top of P2.
b) Walk along to climber’s left along the trail. Keep looking down to your left. When you see a yellow fixed line, descend to that. Hand-descend the fixed nylon line and keep walking to skier’s left (it’s pretty obvious). Drop through a slot, and at a chain you can setup up a rap or if you feel confident just carefully downlcimb through the treed gully. You will eventually find another fixed line to rappel, and at the end of this, walk off 20m to skier’s right back to your pack.
c) Head up and right onto Astro Ledge and do some of the routes there.
Monday, May 25, 2009
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!"
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!"
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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.
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.
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