Trad is Scawy (>_<)

Avidly checking the weather in Squamish while in Montreal, I eventually decided to delay my flight back to Vancouver from friday to monday as per the nonstop rain forecasted. Although bummed my time in Squamish would be shorter, this freed me up to jion my friends on a climbing trip returning to St. Alphonse Rodriguez! This was extra exciting as it meant I could spend a little more time with Fiona before she graduated and began an exciting and busy life that might prevent us from seeing her for a long long time. Sleepily, Fiona, Daisy, Mica, and I packed in to Troy's van:

After a truly heinous hour long approach through soft but deep snowpack, which we sank through with every step, we arrived to the first crag:

The crew ran up the first few routes with great style:

Mica showing off her acrobatics

So why is trad 'scawy'? Well, let me tell ya about my second ever trad lead. Nearing the end of the day I stared at Troy's nice looking trad rack and felt like I really 'needed' to lead something on gear while I have both his and Mica's expertise to guide me. Particularly since I was heading to Squamish in just a couple days, and my trad leading course had been cancelled because of the rain. I still had only lead once before on trad gear, but feeling pretty eager, I hurriedly racked up and headed over to this 5.9 crack that Mica and Troy had lead earlier. From the bottom Troy instructed me on where all the placements were. A nut here, a yellow cam there, and a bomber blue alien somewhere above that. Seemed straightforward enough. Feeling super chill, I started up the climb. Fumbling about my rack and getting the sizes wrong, I took a long time placing my first two pieces. At this point I start noticing a bit of a pump. You see, the crack was a totally sustained and vertical. No obvious rests to reset, but only rests when you were hanging off some pretty good, but pumpy nonetheless, handjams. This was my first mistake. At the mid section I hurriedly places two quite good pieces, but realized that I was getting super pumped. At this moment things started getting a little serious. The crack steepened and I was getting really tired. I was immediately faced with the decision to either place a piece from a really awkward spot, knowing that I may whip onto my gear below that in the process of placing it, and if not, I'm definitely gonna fall above it, or start running it out, and just climb climb climb to what looked like a good ledge above this overhung bulge above me before I got too tired. Without hesitation I made the call to just start running it out. I was going going going, but wasn't really finding a good spot to rest and protect myself. Once at the bulge I tried to get over it once, but being a pretty bouldery and interesting move in the state of my tunnel vision I couldn't figure out the sequence and dropped back down onto my hands and hanging from the bulge. Feeling like I was about to fall, and knowing that I was high enough above my last piece that decking was a probability, I frantically reached above the bulge and placed the smallest cam in my rack, a blue alien, into a seam. It was not my best placement. With that in, I tried another attempt at getting over the bulge, and despite my effort, I lost my balance on the mantle and peeled off the wall, falling onto this microcam. Thank the heavens, the son of a gun held. If it hadn't... I wasn't high enough for a fatal fall or anything, but deffo a broken leg or two. 

I made a lot of mistakes in this situation. The biggest being my negligence in route assessment and allowance of pressures, like feeling a 'need' to climb something, to get me to jump into something I wasn't ready for. Luckily, I came out totally unscathed, and can be confident that I will become a much more intelligent trad climber having learnt from this. 

Many blessings are endowed to this lucky blue alien (it held Troy on many practice whips the week earlier):

gear works!