For easter weekend, a massive crew quickly formed to head out to do some crag hunting in the Laurentides, Quebec, all around the MOC house in Prevost. We were on the search for some epic granite around the area and had a blast. Again, I am writing this a month later, and really want to start writing about my current adventures in Squamish (I am currently writing this in the Squamish A&W after a long day of sport climbing in Chek canyon which I am much more keen to talk about), so much will be left out and this will probably not be my greatest work FYI.
We began our hunt bright and early in Weir, where we were quickly greeted with some wicked cold conditions. It must've been something like negative two celsius, but in the shade of the trees and at the mercy of 50km gusts we were freezing. I belayed Troy on a lead, and then followed on top rope, which took me probably 30 minutes, as half the time was dedicated to stuffing my fingers down my pants to try to get some bloodflow back in them. It was pretty gnarly, felt like we should've been there to ice climb. 
Realizing that we were only gonna last 30 more minutes before we had to go back to the car because of the cold, we quickly headed over to the southeast facing wall in the crag, hoping for unobstructed sunshine. Fortunately it was beautiful:
With stoke high, we started throwing shoes on and setting up ropes! I took on my first lead on outdoor rock with a tricky 10b. It felt funny admitting to some of my friends there that I had never lead outside yet on rock (but had on ice!). Aleix made an impressive flash of the route after on top rope:
Ben made some cool moves on this route with one aid section to get past the crux, that dropped the grade from 12a to 5.9 that Troy threw together:
To finish off I convinced Troy to rope gun me up a three pitch trad route called Adagio, which had an epic traverse under this icy roof:
cool rappel too
The next day we went to Montagne Tranchant!
en route
Troy showing Jihan how to lead belay properly (this positioning gave him the best angle of the climber)
Racking up for my first lead on trad gear! Went very well - I had top rope soloed it earlier and placed gear as I went for practice, with Troy then scrutinizing all my placements.
The next day, Isey, Greg, Jamie, Sonya, Lea, and Simone joined us for a day of climbing at Montagne d'Argent!
I went for another trad lead but right away I pulled out a big block that was going to be my foothold, and in combination to the pretty poor protection above, I advised against it, downclimbing off to the side instead.
The highlight was a multi pitch called l'Arete de Urubus, which we packed 6 people on! Twas a great time on the party ledge:
The second pitch was a beautifully exposed slabby arete that I got to run up just before sunset :)
Feeling sentimental that Fiona was leaving us in a month we snapped a quick sunset selfie on the walk back to the van:
Final day! St. Alphonse Rodriguez.
I'm getting tired, im just gonna throw some photos up.
Troy feeding Aleix belayer while I romp up Le Revenant
Simone showing off her monster pump after a trip up Le Revenant
To finish our tour, we stopped at A&W, where I handed out coupons from my coupon book like an auction official. "Who wants a Mozza? going once, going twice... SOLD to the lucky devil in the back"
The dogs needed to breathe i suppose
That's a lot of savings right there.
My favourite part of coming back from any outdoor trip, walking through the Montreal Plateau draped in gear, and basking in my spectacle to the onlooking pedestrians (I particularly enjoy the gawking when im carrying ice axes):
No comments:
Post a Comment