Squamish Pt. 3 - Y'know... We might as well just go to the top of this thing

 Boy oh boy, did I get lucky with the weather while I was in Squamish! April in Squamish had been super wet, only a couple days of sunshine the whole month until I arrived. But when I did... I was treated to almost a week of straight sunshine and higher temps. Couldn't ask for better condies. Planning for the final day of this weather window before a week of straight rain that was forecasted, I really wanted to get on the chief. I mean, for years, every time I dropped down towards this little waterfront town on H99 after Murrin Park, this massive granite centrepiece had me in awe. But the thought of actually being on one of its upper walls seemed like a mere fantasy.

Photo cred: Ed Cooper

So the day before this final day of sunshine, I posted on the Squamish rock climbing facebook group explaining my level of experience and my ache to try to do a route on this wonderful granite dome. I got a couple of responses, but the one who stuck out was this dude named Patrick, who was a super strong sport climber (like 5.13s), who had been climbing for 9 years, but never really got into trad and was trying to get some mileage on gear. Stoked, because I felt like with him, if I ever needed to bail on a pitch or was too spooked to do something that looked difficult, I could probably just send him to ropegun the route for me :) 

The next morning we met at the parking lot for the apron (the central lower slab of granite on the chief, partially shrouded by firs in the photo above). We quickly chatted, he seemed super cool, and a hell of a lot more qualified to be on the chief than I. He told me about how all his friends were super intense climbers in Squamish who soloed the routes that we were interested in doing on the Chief, and thus had no interest in spending a whole day with him on an easy route where it was gonna take especially long since he was newish to placing gear and setting up multipitch systems. And therefore he had never actually been on the Chief in all of his 4 or so years of climbing in Squamish. It was interesting how our approaches to climbing couldn't have been more opposite. He spent 9 years climbing super hard and pushing his sport and bouldering grades to really impressive levels, never having played with a trad rack, whereas I was plugging gear just 4 months after learning how to lead climb. Regardless of how we had gotten to that parking lot, in the shared moment we were uber stoked, and so happy to be racking up for an adventure. We settled on doing the apron classic, Diedre - a pretty run out 6 pitch 5.8 trad climb, full of joyous friction slab climbing, laybacking on impressive flakes, and a cheeky boulder problem at the top. 

*taken from squamishrockguides.com

We racked up each with a standard rack from microcams to 2", a rack of nuts, lots of draws, a 63ish meter rope (which Troy graciously lent to me while he drove across the country from Montreal to meet me in Squamish, where he was spending his summer), and a few 120cm -240cm slings. I opted not to bring any water or food of my own, as this was just a 6 pitch route, probably taking 3 hrs or so, and didn't wanna overfill the backpack we were carrying up. Hiking up to the first pitch, we were alone with the most popular route on the chief, what a feeling when gazing at the 50 meters of sexy low angle friction slab that loomed above. 

I opted for this first pitch, which I had a bit of nerves for as the protection is undeniably sparse, but the climbing looked wicked easy. I began, moving up about 10 meters to the flake seen above, where I further went above to the tree growing in the crack, also pictured. I threw a sling around it and clipped in to as my first piece. I love a good bomber tree piece. Feels quite inventive. Once above this, there begins a 20 meter-ish run out on the slab until the next crack system. This didn't get in my head at all however, the climbing felt so secure that I was just having a ton of fun romping up the slab, in disbelief that I was finally climbing on the rock of my dreams. Arriving at the upper crack system, and finding out that it was pretty much just a traverse up these big ledges, I thought about just continuing the runout to the anchor, but rather placed a final "responsibility" piece, and then cruised up to the chains. I threw together the top rope anchor and belayed Patrick up to the ledge. He took on the next, shorter, but unprotected pitch across a slabby traverse. Pretty chill stuff, and I was quickly at the next belay station. From here, I offered him the chance at what was apparently the "money" pitch on the route, as the one he just lead was a little underwhelming. Pitch 3 offered 30 meters of lay backing on this cool dihedral, and then a cool bouldery move over a lip into the upper dihedral. He happily accepted.

stoked to be on the chief

Patrick on the upper section of p3

I followed behind, and once at the top, we both appreciated our bloody fingers from the sharp crack we were laybacking in. Knowing we would have to use them again in the upper cracks, we looked for a bandaid or climbing tape to patch em' up. Having just one bandaid and no tape, Patrick cut it in half to split between us. 

Thanks dude

I then began to soak in my next pitch. I felt great. It was 50 meters of sustained 5.8 laybacking up the corner, which normally might give me fright, knowing there was no ledge above to rest on during the entire climb, should I need to reset if something went wrong, but the climbing was going so well, and I had a lot of confidence. It seemed rightfully so, as I cruised up the crack no problem, having no moments of nerves, just the bliss of exposure being on this massive wall. Man that was a good pitch.

Patrick cruised up the fifth pitch, and left me with the final pitch. Remembering from the guidebook that this pitch was quite run out, and then ending with the crux move of the entire route, I was a little nerved. But then again, je suis un beast so far. F yah dude. I racked up, climbed the unprotected first 20m (EZ), plugged a couple small cams into a pretty meh slot, then climbed another 10m above that until I was right in front of a big bulgy wet rock that guarded bellygood ledge above (the top of the climb). The final boss. Alright buster, let's see what you got. I plugged a bomber #2 in the crack right next to the challenger, and got up in the rock's face. I reached my arms as far as I could over the bulge, and found a cheeky right handjam at the end of my reach, booyah. With my left, I pressed onto a perpendicular rock, and stepped into the wet crack to the right of the bulge. I lifted myself up with the handjam, and then reached for a root with my left hand. Making contact I yanked myself over and was on top! Tahdah! Looking for anchor placements, I felt annoyed that I only had my 120cm sling, as it couldn't fully wrap this thick cedar, so instead I girth hitched the one big one, and then added another girth hitched cedar into the system for redundancy, connecting with a third alpine sling.

Soon thereafter, Patrick was at the top and we were celebrating together. 

It took us about 3 hours, and honestly the difficulty of climbing was a little underwhelming. At the start of the day I had told Patrick that I would have to be back in Vancouver at 1pm for a teeth cleaning appointment that my mom had booked me. But feeling so good on the rock I knew that I just couldn't end the climbing just yet. So instead, halfway up the climb I had quickly asked my mom if she could cancel the appointment, assuring that I would instead get the cleaning done up in Williams Lake. Thankfully she understood that teeth are only sorta important, whereas climbing up the chief... I mean come on, that's something special. So the rest of my day was now freed up to climb more after Diedre. I proposed that we walk off, and then from the bottom do another apron classic, maybe banana peel. But slyly, he asked, "Y'know, we are already this far up... don't you think we might as well just head up to the top of this thing?" Hmmmmmm. Y'know Patrick, that ain't too bad of an idea... After much convincing, I was in. I was definitely intimidated, knowing that we were signing up for at least 8 more pitches, without food or water (he gave me a couple sips of his bottle, and a cliff bar at the top of diedre, but apart from that I was relying on the 4 pieces of pb and jam toast i had that morning at 8am), as well as limited gear (we had a rack up to 2" but some of the pitches above asked for gear up to 4'"), but I knew we could rappel back down to belly good ledge and walk off from there if need-be. Stoked for what lie ahead, we got underway. The journey began with boomstick crack, an epic looking flake with a super fun start. 

I opted to lead the first pitch, and had a blast tip-toeing on this thin flake, following it for a continuous 30 meters. Unfortunately I couldn't protect most of it, as the flake was wide enough off the wall that some bigger pro, or doubles on my 1" and 2" was needed. But I felt comfortable continuing to balance on the flake. We reset at the top, and coiled the rope to prepare for a 15 min hike through patches of forest on the ledges above the apron, leading up to the base of the Squamish buttress, which we would climb to ascend to the summit. It felt really cool to wander through cedars and hemlock, already 250 meters up in the air, to get to our next multipitch. On our way up we ran into a guy named Evan Beatty, who was cleaning up a route somewhere on the northwestern face of the Apron. He had suffered an injury a year ago and was now keen to put up new routes for folks to do while he was grounded. He also had just put up the FA of a cool new 2 pitch route that provides a more direct route up the Squamish Buttress from the lower approach, and then links into Butt Lite. 

Once at the base of the buttress however, we selected the most accessible (easiest) route to get to the summit from here, "Butt Lite," a 6/7 pitch 5.9 which had been established by Sonnie Trotter, Lydia Zamorano, and Ben Moon in 2010. Patrick took up the first pitch, which proved to be quite the rope stretcher because he linked the first two pitches by accident, skipping a tree anchor. In doing so, I had to simul climb with him for about 5 meters before he got to another tree anchor. Luckily he got there just before I had to do a bouldery move over a roof, which I was thankful to not have to do, knowing if I fell while simul climbing I'd likely pull him off the wall and whip our combined weight onto his last piece, if I didn't deck before then. Once anchor was set up I hurried up after him, and we continued on to the next two pitches, which consisted of simple but fun climbing up these flowy cracks, into consecutive shelfs, forming a shoulder to get onto the next ledge where I built a gear anchor to belay from for the final two pitches of real climbing. These next ones were the money pitches. Oh friggen boy. I knew the last pitch was the crux, and after 9 hours of no real sustenance, I offered up that pitch to my semi-pro sport climbing partner, Patrick. But I wasn't in the clear yet. No sir. I had a 5.9 finger crack pitch right in front of my eyes. But my oh my did it look magnificent. I climbed these large broken ledges that built on eachother one after the other, while I stared into the deep void of the south gulley below me. The exposure felt awesome. Because of the non linear climbing, and maybe a few awkward placements I made, the rope made a stiff zig-zag over one ledge, then straight horizontally to the base of the finger crack, creating a lot of rope drag. This did not feel ideal, as I had to change angles of rope movement to straight vertical into the crux of this pitch, that would create a kink to further pull me down towards the void while climbing. The crux looked awesome, a vertical finger crack combined with a flake, that you had to clamber up for 5 meters or so to then traverse with some face climbing on. Being pulled down by the rope drag, I hoisted myself up onto the wall, and sunk a bomber ringlock into the crack, following it up by plugging a bomber .5 at my chest. I found a sweet side pull flake with my right, and bumped to another left ringlock above, where I placed another piece before hoisting myself up to the upper jugs, where a very friendly bolt was placed to offer protection before starting the traverse. I banged that out as well, and continued on to more broken ledges until reaching the belay station. I was super proud of having lead that, and took some time soaking in the beautiful views of the steep and streaked walls on the other side of the south gulley before setting up the anchor.

The south gulley is friggen cool. Tightly packed douglas firs tower above its deep trough, and fill the gulley all the way up until it joins the summit ledges. Such a resilient tree. They sprouted up on any patch of ground it could, and give the chief its characteristic green fur.  

Patrick headed up my pitch, and then we took a moment in silence to appreciate the view, before he got ready for the final test of the chief. Everyone had described it as a pretty stiffly graded 5.9, having a tricky offwidth/chimney section that you had to move through. I wasn't worried at all however, knowing how strong of a climber Patrick was. So when to my surprise, I started hearing him grunting and cursing and sounding exertive, I snapped out of my daydreaming and started shouting motivation. I couldn't see him at this point, cus he was far above me on some incut ledge where the chimney lay, but I tried to encourage him with classic bluepointer's jargon. "You got it dude" "Just breathe" "Trust your feet" "That micronut looks friggen bomber man just keep climbing." He later told me how he had gotten stuck in the chimney, and had no protection directly below him (he had a piece at the base of the chimney, but would probably bounce into the void before his rope tensed up to take his weight, making for an exciting and scary whipper) because he didn't have a big enough piece for the bottom section. So he was kinda freaking out trying not to slip while trying to grab a piece from his harness blindly to then place into the deep crack that he was staring in to. He was looking for a #1 on his harness, but couldn't accurately identify it, and instead grabbed a legendary black totem, with which he shoved deep into the corner crack. Still in gnarly position, he fought to move his arm outside of the chimney to grab onto the slopey face, and threw a drop knee in for some stability, where he found that number 1 and placed it much higher. From here he was able to hoist himself out of the chimney, but mentioned to me that that pitch definitely had him pretty gripped. Even while I was seconding I could tell it was pretty full on. With a backpack on my back I had to wedge into the chimney and then fight to get back out, it was super physical, and such a rewarding way to "finish" the climb. 14 pitches later we were on the upper ledges, but with some class 5 scrambling in front, we continued to use the rope to get up to the final slabs that would take us to the summit. So 16 pitches completed, we were on a saddle somewhere between the first and second chief summit. Now 830pm, with dark approaching, we changed into our shoes, which for me meant my tevas, and started tryna get down. Neither of us had been anywhere but the first summit on the chief, so we figured we would follow what looked like a worn path around the backside of the first summit of the chief to rejoin the main trail. We continued on and on down this trail, moving cautiously down some exposed sections where I had to tug on roots to lower myself down steep terrain, all while cursing my tevas, who were especially useless as I was getting wicked swamp foot (sorry), and my wet feet were sliding all about in the sandals. Eventually we admitted that the trail was nonexistent, as we reached a final 20m cliff that was directly preventing us from rejoining the trail in the forest, where we saw the kind light of headlamps from dogwalkers who were hiking down. Now in the dark, with Patrick having a headlamp but I not (I thought we were just gonna do a quick 6 pitches okay), I knew I wasn't gonna try to downclimb this. So I chucked the rope around a massive cedar, threw my harness on, tied a couple knots, and rappelled down through the night and onto the forest floor. A fitting test for this big day. Once at the bottom I fireman belayed Patrick as he seconded, pulled the rope, and then coiled it ready to get the F back to my truck. Now I was starting to really get thirsty. And delusional. All I could think about my McDonald's order, and the taste of the water that I had in my truck. The sound of Olesen Creek did not help my dehydration. In my delusions, as well as in my lack of headlamp, I kept whipping my head around thinking I saw or heard some great predator lurking in the trees. After an agonizingly long trek down the trail, we arrived at the grand wall parking lot, and then walked along the highway to the apron parking lot. Arriving at my car 12 hours later from when we started (8am - 10pm) i chugged half my 4L water jug, devoured a pepperoni stick and speedily swapped gear with Patrick before saying farewell. 

Haggard

I drove straight to McDonald's, where I spent $25 on a proper feast: Quarter pounder with cheese, medium fries, oreo mcflurry, and two cheeseburgers. I ate it so fast holy cow. 

So pooped, so so pooped, and super sweaty, I collapsed in the back of my truck in the walmart parking lot, feeling like a hero, but sorta lonely. I was getting sentimental about how I wished I had done my first climb up the chief with either of my friends Troy or Mica, who were meeting me in Squamish the next day. I knew that I had to make the most of the weather window before I left Squamish, and that neither of them could have climbed that day, but I felt discontent knowing that I had no one to share the memory of this big burly day with. That is the nature of relying on facebook randoms to climb, as well as the nature of having a schedule of climbing everyday I suppose. My sentiment certainly exposed myself as not someone who was gonna be in the long run of climbing purely for pushing my own limits, or for climbing the burliest of climbs that are out there, but rather someone who revels in adventure shared with people I love to be around; those who I can sit down afterwards with to reflect on why we are now so exhausted. Oh the adventures to be had! Twas' a great first meet with the chief nonetheless.