Hmmm, the end of summer 2023... Twas' busy that's for sure. I spent most of the summer working wildfire and bouncing around different deployments on different fires. For much of the summer I was working out in the beautiful Chilcotin, between Anahim Lake and Alexis Creek, and getting to know this wild country. The Cariboo might not have had its busiest fire season, but it seemed like wherever the fires were, I was on a crew heading to them. It just worked out that way.
Staring at this page I couldn't decide on an event to focus on. It seems obvious to dive into something from my work, but I just don't feel motivated to write anything about it. Y'know I saw big fires, worked long days, and gained a ton of fire experience. But that's about it. The purpose of this blog feels much more aligned with covering silly exploits with friends, than 21+ hour days on the fireline. So here I go! If this isn't what you came here for, so be it, but if so, tune in to my weekend trips to the Nemiah valley and Esler Bluffs, and Squamish (again)!
A few notable photos from the fire season:
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| Wind-driven column from the air (Alexis Lake) |
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| Intense heat from a burn-off (Alexis Lake) |
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| Big column from the big one (Donnie Creek Wildfire) |
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| Building a machine guard during night ops (Pelican Lake) |
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| Some flare up from a burn-off (Kappan Mtn.) |
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| Getting squirly after working 12 hours with no food/coffee - started at 4 AM 😑 (Alexis Lake) |
Alright, so what did I actually do to end this summer? Well, after a beast of a deployment, working 16s (16 hr shifts) pretty well everyday for the full 14 day deployment, with one or two 18s sprinkled in there, I had the urge to go relax back in the bush. Ideally somewhere that didn't have a hike-in, as I was pretty exhausted. But before I could do so, I had to change my engine oil which was long overdue. As one does, I picked up a jug of oil and a filter from Canadian Tire, which was selected for by their online system after I plugged in the make and model of my truck. I then drove to a gravel pit to ensure there would be no spillage anywhere important (didn't have a garage to do this in), and drained my oil into a pan. Unscrewing my current filter, I took a look at it and immediately realized that the threads of the oil filter I had just bought was far too large a diameter to fit on the bolt that it needed to screw on to. Fuck. I had just drained all the oil from my truck and CT sold me the wrong filter. Through the July heat I had no choice but to hike 45 mins back to CT, where I placed the filter -now covered in oil- that they had sold me onto the counter, and barter for an exchange for the proper filter.
"Sir we can't accept this filter, it's covered in oil."
Well it looks like you're gonna have to cuz that damn machine of yours scammed me. After some back and forth, I eventually got the exchange and filled up the oil and the truck was ready to go.
So, now I am sitting in my hot car in Williams Lake, thinking of where to go. Well I had two objectives:
1. See big, beautiful trees
2. Swim in cold, clean water
Hmmmm, I know. Nemiah valley! What a place this is. I had been once before, and it truly is special. There is a lot of lore around the area, the people, the Xeni Gwet'in, have an incredible history. In 2014, they fought with the Supreme Court of Canada to win title over their land, and succeeded, which is incredibly the first and only (to my knowledge) case of such in Canadian history (https://www.tsilhqotin.ca/declared-title-area/). What this means is that there are no scars of industry in the valley, as the people have remained custodian to the land since time immemorial and have succeeded in repelling attempts to exploit the land. So big trees everywhere! And there sure as hell are some beautiful rivers and lakes everywhere. Off I went.
The valley is about 1 hour west of Williams Lake on highway 20, and then you head 2 hours southwest down a dirt road. I first had plans to drive along the Taseko River, to find somewhere to jump in and chill.
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| Pretty horses along the way |
The road that woulda taken me to a more ideal river spot turned out to be closed, and so I pulled over where it was and started walking down to a smaller river just above the Taseko instead, Beece Creek. I found a nice little spot, and read and swam.
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| The mighty Taseko |
It was a peaceful spot, but I hadn't really satisfied objective #1, and I felt an urge to explore somewhere else. I hiked back up to my truck, and turned around with a rough direction of Elkin lake, which was on the other side of the Chilko river. I drove back to the main dirt road, crossed the Chilko, and headed towards Elkin, hoping for a pretty spot to camp on its water. When I got there I wasn't fully satisfied, it was a nice lake, but there ought to be better ones. So I kept driving past it, further into the bush, and found myself driving up a steep, and rocky mountain road. On this slope I began to see massive doug firs on either side of the road. This could be promising. But the road just kept going up and up, and I started to get worried that the road would get even more rough and I would have to turn around on this tight road, sandwiched between large doug firs on my left, and a steep drop off to my right. Sketchy. But, no use turning around yet. I continued up, and to my fortune eventually reached an upper plateau where the road levelled out. A relief, but with the change to flat ground, all the large firs disappeared, and skinny lodgepole pine filled its place. This area must've been logged a little while ago. Maybe it lay just outside of the Xeni title land? Bummer. I kept on this road, and about 3kms in I stumbled upon signs for a rec site on a lake, Chaunigan Lake. I figured I might as well take a look to see what the lake looks like. I popped out into a healthier and somewhat mature spruce forest, and found myself by the lakeside. It was stunning. This was my destination. At such an elevation, I had an honorable view of the valley's monarch, Mt. Tatlow:
What a find! There was just one other group on this lake, a very friendly older couple who told me about how they had been going to this lake since they were kids, and were in great spirits to see someone like myself stumble upon it. They told me the fishing was excellent, and to feel free to help myself to any of their catch, but urged to me that I need to bring a tin boat next time I come.
A lake like this you just have to play some ditties on. It feels right.
Undeniably my favourite part of playing the harmonica is getting to play it in places like this. Just letting me little tunes reverb across the glassy lake, what a joy. I hung out on the lake, reading and playing, until sunset, and then began dinner. After the last food order for my deployment, there were four steaks that had not been cooked and were leftover, so I brought them along with me. Not having anything else to complement them, and only having a window of about one more day to eat them, I decided to cook em' all. No potatoes, no sauce, and sure as hell no greens: just 4 big slabs of beef. Fuck yah.
Despite both a lack of freshness, and my normal aversion to steak, they tasted incredible.
I woke up early the next morning to catch the sunrise. A moment of stillness. It was so calm on the lake, after my breakfast of burnt perogies I enjoyed a brisk morning dip.
Inspired, I wrote a quick little poem to capture the moment:
Transcript:
Sips of instant coffee
warms my blood
the crunch of burnt perogy
echoes across the glass lake
its stillness only broken
by the call of a loon
and gentle splashing
from a naked man
trying not to hyperventilate
I don't consider myself very poetic, but its fun writing the odd one down. Over the summer I had been reading through a collection of Chinese poetry dating all the way back to 700 B.C. through to 1279 A.D. At first I thought this wouldn't be much of a read. I mean my greatest interest in poetry originates from the ability to relate-to and confide in some of the themes and lyrics used. But how the hell am I gonna relate to poets from a thousand years ago in ancient China? Well it was quite fascinating to learn that there are pretty well no new developments in human sorrow or joy. It's all the same. So much of this ancient poetry is just people expressing how painfully lonely they are without friends or partnership, or how happy they become when drinking wine with a good group of people. I especially love how much more emphasis Chinese poetry has on friendship, as something to yearn for, and something where parting can lead to total devastation. Its topic reoccurs much moreso than writings on romantic relationship, which is pretty refreshing. Just look at this poem written by Li Po in 810 about his friend who was banished ;(
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| continues in top left |
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| after reading |
My goal was to climb all the routes in the slab area, a handful of 5.6/5.8 climbs, before moving somewhere else. I made the long walk around to the top, set up the anchor, and then single strand rappelled down. I romped up 3 of the routes in the area with glee, man I love a good slab. I then moved over to the Obsession Wall, where I threw the rope up around a tree on top of a tasty looking offwidth flake, and a separate finger crack. I started with the finger crack (bold). It consisted of small pods, and a mantle move halfway up. I grunted my way on the thin seam off the ground, barely finding rest to pull slack through, and eventually made it below the mantle. I was pretty pumped, and had a loop of slack that I hadn't pulled through yet, but went for the mantle anyways, feeling eager to reach the ledge for a rest. I pulled myself up, and then before I could correct my hasty imbalance, I peeled off and fell backwards, taking my first ever whip on top rope solo! Twas' exciting for sure, and I scratched up my knees pretty good. But the system caught me well. I then headed up the wide flake, and set up my camera on a time interval shoot to record the climb.
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| Pulling slack through |
After a great little stint on the wall, I camped out, and headed to work the next morning. But after a week of work I found myself off the clock for another weekend! This time I was craving some coastal granite, and to see my friends down in the sea to sky corridor. Off to Squamish!
I met up with my younger sibling and my friend Sam in the smoke bluffs, and got after it right away. Sloane isn't the most avid climber, but they were keen to collect footage and cheer us on.
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| A selfie Sloane took while they were supposed to be photographing me leading |
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| swapping leads with Sam |
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| plugging away |
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| protecting |
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| man i'll miss this rack one day |
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| Getting strong |
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| "Yooo we are on the chief" wahoooo |
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| friggen splittah |
We moseyed on up the hand traverse, and then Rebecca led the second to last pitch, showing off the new multipitch skills. F yah. She ain't in to trad yet, but it was some good ol' slab.
After the warmup, we figured we'd move on to something a little more exciting. It was mid day, and after a long period of debate we decided on heading over to calculus crack, a 6 pitch classic route up the North Apron. On our way over I ran in to my good friend Louis, who was visiting from Pemberton, where he lives while working at the wildfire base. I hadn't seen him since he visited Montreal in October, so it was great to briefly catch up.
We walked up to the base, and found the normally swarming climb devoid of climbers. What a treat. The base of the climb lay under the dense cedar canopy, but as you climbed the first pitch you quickly found yourself above the needles, and at the mercy of strong winds blasting onto the buttress. Communication was pretty well impossible past this point, and to mitigate that, particularly since we were on a longer multipitch with three people, Sam passed out walkie talkies for the leader and rear follower. We had some trouble settling on a station, since many of them were being used by climbers like us on the chief to communicate, but eventually we settled on a seemingly empty one. Just in case something weird happened, I glazed over how if he did 3 rhythmic pulls of the rope from the top of the climb, we would understand that he has set up the anchor, and the next climber was on belay and ready to climb.
With that out of the way, Sam started up the first pitch, which he was gonna link with the second, possible as we now were using two ropes between the three of us rather than just the one we had on rambles. Just as he got above the canopy, we started getting some interference on our radio channel from quite possible the horniest climber partners I'd ever encountered on the wall. "Wildcat," as he was referred to, was obviously leading a pitch somewhere on the apron, while his girlfriend below was belaying. "You look so sexy on that wall Wildcat" "oh my Wildcat! look at your fat ass!" were some of the many comments we bore earwitness to. Not long after, Wildcat asked his partner to take him off belay on the radio, she quickly responded that he's now off belay. Sam, who must've been worried that we thought he sounded like Wildcat and just took him off belay, got on the radio afterwards to say, "Hey Blaise you didn't take me off belay did you?." Quickly I responded on the radio, "Hey Sam can we switch to radio channel 59?" After switching I heard Sam ask on the new channel if I was on. I responded saying I was, and that he was now on belay. But I got no response. He then transmitted again, asking if I was on this channel. Again I responded, but it didn't seem like he could hear me for whatever reason. Knowing that he must think we just stayed on the old channel or gotten a mix up, I toggled back to the channel shared with Wildcat, where I heard Sam again transmit "Hey Blaise. Hey Rebbeca, you on?" we desperately tried to transmit a response back, but it was clear our transmissions weren't getting out. I took a look at the radio battery, and it had dropped quite fast to a single bar, and I wondered if the device now only had enough juice to receive but not transmit signals...
This was a suboptimal situation. We listened to Sam continue to transmit "Hey Blaise... Hey Rebecca am I on belay???" as tones of panic began to sneak in to his voice, increasing with each transmission. All while we are desperately trying to ensure him that he indeed is, but to no avail. It certainly didn't help either, hearing Wildcat and his partner butting in between transmissions of Sam's panic to tell each other how hard they are gonna bang after they finish the climb. I'll never forget those erotic tones in Wildcat's partner's voice as she encouraged him through the crux. Giving up on the radio, me and Rebecca made an effort to pull the rope taught briefly to ensure him that he still was on belay, but it didn't seem like that was clear enough for him to keep climbing.
After a few minute period of the rope not moving, Sam eventually began climbing again. Not long after, the rope fed all the way through to Rebecca's knot, he had reached the end of the rope. We hoped that he had already built an anchor and now he was just pulling up slack, but I had a suspicion that he was still climbing and short of the bolted anchor. 10 minutes later we got a faint, but rhythmic pull of the rope three times, and returned with the same. We waited for another tug, and after getting one, Rebecca started up the climb, confident that she was now on belay. After the same process happened to me, I made the committing move off the ground and soon found myself at a ledge marking the end of the first pitch. From here I looked straight up and saw a splitter crack above a stump with very sparse gear in it. I guess this is the one? About a meter above the ledge was the first piece, a #2, and 5 meters above that was the second piece, a #3. But past that, I noticed that there was about 12m of climbing with no protection in it, until a deep #4 just before the crack petered out. Damn Sam, were you convinced that you weren't on belay and just entered solo-mode? Not opting to place any gear just to go for it? If he fell before that #4 he probably would've decked on the ledge below... I started up the crack, and perfect hands quickly changed to fists, and then at the second piece, hand/fist stacks, and then above... I was in a full on offwidth crack heaving my way up, with my knee wedged and both fists stacked against each other. How the hell did he lead this? With barely any gear in?? This was friggen burly. I was fighting my way up, grunting in effort with one shoulder and knee wedged in the crack, backpack preventing me from fitting all the way in, and my fists above holding most of my weight. I barely make it to the top without falling on top rope, and then traverse over into the twin cracks to the left to meet up with Sam and Rebecca, chilling on a dirty ledge belaying off a cedar tree. "Sam, buddy, that sure was some blue-collar climbing for a so-called family friendly Squamish classic." Well... as you might've guessed, that sure as hell wasn't the start of Calc crack. At the belay is where Sam informed me on everything that had happened from his perspective (paraphrased by me):
Well, I had done St. Vitus Dance the day before with my partner Gabby's uncle, who led the first two pitches, which are shared with Calc Crack. So, when it was my turn to lead these pitches, I just started on up without much thought. And when I reached the ledge atop the first pitch, it didn't require much thought to pick out the second pitch, as this splitter crack was directly in front of where I topped out, above a very weathered stump. I took a quick look at the size of the crack, but it looked pretty reasonably hands-sized, so I started on up. I placed a number two right away, and then not long after placed a 3, and a few meters above that I started to realize, that to my horror, this crack was flaring quite a bit. At this point I tried to place a #4, but even that had become too small for the flaring crack, so I shoved my body into the offwidth and starting shimmying upwards. At this point I begin to freak out. I am fully aware that I am on the wrong route, and I have no idea where this'll lead me. Am I about to start an 11c friction slab? Will the crack get wider? Will it ever end? I have no gear to protect me... With perfect timing, Wildcat hops on the radio to say "off-belay," a woman responds, who sorta sounded like Rebecca, and so I get on to confirm with Blaise and Rebecca that they haven't taken me off belay. No response. "Blaise? Rebecca? Am I on belay?" I'm not getting anything from them. Fuck. All of a sudden the rope gets taught [from me doing the rhythmic tugs to ensure Sam that he's still on], and in my panic I understand that as Rebecca having started climbing and is resting some of her weight on me while doing the first, committing move off the ground. Totally gripped, convinced that Rebecca is climbing below me and understanding that I am full on in the no-fall zone, I wedge my body into the crack for a few minutes, bracing in case she falls and I need to take her weight from my stance. I scream out to them, hoping they can hear me, but being so high above the canopy my voice is just lost in the wind. But in screaming as loud as I can to make contact with them, my voice is completely breaking and I alert a party above me (see audio reenactment), who yell out thinking that I am completely losing my shit, "just calm down buddy, there is spot for your #4 if you can find it, everything will be okay, just breathe." Well now I'm that guy. The dude who seemingly bit off more than they can chew and is now having a melt down on the chief. Well, they were right about the #4. After looking around, I found a spot for it, and went in direct with some slings to settle down and take some much needed rest. I reflect on my situation, and start to ponder what to do with the climbing above me. I can either climb straight up the crack until it peters out and I am forced to climb up a vertical dirt wall, to some trees, or I continue up a couple meters and then make a slabby traverse a few meters left to join what looks like the cracks that are indeed on the route of Calc Crack. Well I'm not going to try to climb a dirt wall. So I gather my nerves, and begin the traverse. Still not certain that I am on belay, I make incredible effort to focus on these few friction moves. I wipe the sweat off, and I go. The brief padding allows me to enter the cracks I shoulda been on the whole time. Soon after, I see the bolted anchors in question, just 5 meters above my head. But before I can get to them, I am held to a halt by the rope. It's clear right away that I must be at the end of the 70m. Fudge. I then have to make a short traverse one more time onto a dirty ledge with a few cedars, and build an anchor to put Rebecca on belay. It felt good to go in direct on that one. Waves of relief. But now I'm feeling real guilty that Rebecca's second ever multipitch is gonna be up a beast of an offwidth. Well, ykno' at least she'll be on belay...
And so that was Sam's side of the climb. He's only been trad climbing for a couple months, and he's already got an offwidth crisis under his belt? A proper 'ard man he is (*british accent).
We swapped leads, and I got on with the next pitch. Twin splittahs led me up this pitch, until they turned into interesting fins that you pinched and footjammed up. On a relatively good step, I set up the gear anchor and belayed my friends up. Not much else to say, just jaw dropping granite, and super fun climbing. Man it feels good thinking about coastal granite aesthetics while writing on my couch in Montreal. I know I'll be back to jam me hands in them rocks again soon.
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| on top of P3 |
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| Mt. Garibaldi in disguise |
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| the sheriff's badge (center) |
Before we knew it Rebecca was on belay, and running up the same crack. I followed, and once at the belay just continued up past, on easy slab, to scamper up to the final ledge. The crew joined not long after, and we began celebrations.
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| TRIUMPH |
Among these trees we talked and complained in solidarity about our sore feet. And then, from the audible distance we hear a couple "whoop whoops" and look up into the sky. Against the backdrop of a setting sun we see a train of base jumpers who had just leapt off of the summit of the chief.
Cleaned up and ready to roll, we got on with the descent. I hadn't walked off the chief before from this point, but Sam had done so the day before so he took the lead. We scrambled up past memorial ledge, and then reached broadway ledge, where we made the exposed traverse in deep cracks across slabby granite. It's hard not to imagine yourself slipping and rolling on down the endless slab, stopping only when you eventually splat, right on Highway 99.
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| the excitement doesn't end with the climb! |
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| pointing out boomstick crack, a very interesting flake |
Off the exposed slab, we enter the refreshing forest. A very nice feeling. Large second-growth cedars and hemlock stand tall on the slope, as the descent turns into friendly limb pulling and rock hopping.
Cedars commonly hollow out as they mature, and this younger but contorted tree provided an example of what that looks like from the inside. Super neat seeing what seeded limbs look like from within. I'd imagine this would've made a wonderful medieval torture device back in the day.
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| C'est fini |
We sleep in our cars at the Squamish Estuary, and are treated to a brilliant night sky and a meteor shower (although I fall asleep before it begins).
The next morning it's hawt, and we're in need of a relaxing day on the river. We first walk out onto the marshy estuary, but the water is much too low, and the long grass is a bit too itchy to lie down comfortably.
After a few hours of reading and stretching and soaking in the sun, we split our ways, and I say goodbye, heading back up to the Cariboo. But my oh my, what a weekend! I feel so lucky to have the adventures I do with these awesome people, till next time! Hopefully Sam comes to visit Montreal again this winter, and Rebecca gains even more stoke for multi-pitch adventures to be had this following Summer.
Booyah.
