The Bugaboos-- trip report

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

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

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

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

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

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


here's Lauren on the awesome 3rd pitch.



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

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








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

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


Awesome exposure and cool views:

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




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

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

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

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

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

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!"