Squamish Is… Unpredictable (But Awesome Nonetheless)

First of all, if you don’t recognize the “Squamish is…” reference, then watch this classic Timmy O’Neill video. Or if it’s been too long since you last watched it, watch it again:

Although I spent my whole life before college in the Pacific Northwest, including my formative climbing years when I found my love of trad climbing, I didn’t visit Squamish for the first time until I’d moved to California. I don’t know why. We were willing to drive several hours more to climb chossier rock at Smith Rock, rather than the beautiful, sticky granite of Squamish. Sigh. However, I’ve been doing relatively well making up for lost time. I’ve visited Squamish ever summer since moving to California (I think) and this summer was no exception.

The trip was initially born as an idea for Luke’s Bucknell friends to have a climbing trip together, but life and distance meant that only Jackie and Arthur were able to come. We missed the rest of you! Keep it on your “Places I need to go to climb” list. Seriously. I think it is one of the most beautiful and awesome places I’ve ever climbed, and I’ve climbed in a lot of beautiful and awesome places.

Squamish is very green.

[Day 1]

Maddy and I got up early to catch a ferry and pick up Luke from the airport, before heading north to Canada. After a couple of brief stops, we made it to the border and breezed through the Pacific Highway crossing (I always prefer this one to Peace Arch). Before we knew it we were in Squamish – the widened Sea-to-Sky highway makes the drive go much faster.

We set up camp before heading out to do some cragging at the base of the Grand Wall. We hiked up to the base of Arrowroot and Rutabaga, which we’d heard a lot about. Since we were planning on getting on the Grand Wall the next day, we thought it would be good to get on some 5.10 and 5.11 to re-familiarize ourselves with Squamish granite.

Luke had just finished leading Arrowroot when we heard a scream from the woman who had been leading the 2nd (final) pitch of Rutabaga, the next route over. This was followed by a horrible thud as she fell onto a sloping ledge below the crux at the top of the route. Time seemed to slow down as her belay partner called her name and there was no response. Finally, she started responding (I couldn’t tell you if she was out for 20 seconds or a minute, but it seemed on the longer end of that range) and apologized to her partner for falling and offered to finish the pitch. We all (including her partner) thought that was a bad idea and told her so – we were able to convince her to stay put.

A guide had run over from the base of Exasperator and we let him use our rope to climb up to and past the anchor of Arrowroot to try to rap down to her from above and help her down to the ground. By now we learned that she was bleeding from the ear (if you don’t have wilderness first aid training, this is a potential sign of a head injury). She had also not been wearing a helmet (she told us all a couple times that she was so embarrassed because she had sold her helmet) and had clearly been passed out for at least some time. She flipped upside down when she fell and may have taken much of the impact of the fall on her head.

While the guide was on his way up, she started getting dizzy and nauseous and decided she really just wanted to get down sooner rather than later. Without telling her partner, she built an anchor where she was hanging, untied, pulled the rope, and tied back in. Then she asked her partner to take so she could lower her back to the belay. We were all very worried when she did this because you can’t really trust a potential head injury patient to have actually tied themselves in correctly. We had little control over the situation, however, and luckily her partner safely lowered her to the belay and then to the ground.

Squamish SAR showed up within minutes of the climber reaching the ground and, with the help of her partner, a nurse, stabilized the climber and set up for a helicopter lift (we were never sure why they didn’t just opt to carry her out – the trail is not that rugged, but that’s a whole other post). I haven’t been able to find updates on what happened on the internet (this was on Wednesday, June 23, 2010), but if anyone has read about this, we’d love if you’d share the information. We sincerely hope that the climber is ok. Falls happen and I hope that the major lesson that everyone can take away from this accident is to PLEASE WEAR YOUR HELMET!

This whole incident took a couple hours to play out and we were considerably less excited to get on Rutabaga after this had happened. After retrieving our gear from Arrowroot, we headed over to Seasoned in the Sun, which I had also heard was fun, to get in one more 5.10 pitch for the day. The route was really good, although maybe not quite so epic-ly classic as Exasperator. It was started to rain lightly when I got down from leading the route, so I packed up and headed back to the parking lot while Luke and Maddy climbed the route so I could get a head start on dinner.

When we welcomed Jackie and Arthur to the parking lot a little later that evening, the trip had already deviated from our expectations, but we still wanted to make the best of it. Given the light rain, Luke and I decided to tentatively plan for a late start on the Grand Wall (we were pretty tired and weren’t sure we were psyched for another super early morning) the next day if the weather held.

My rain jacket got some use on this trip...

[Day 2]

On Thursday, we woke up to rain, so it was good we hadn’t planned on an early start for the Grand Wall (we would’ve gotten rained on). We showed Jackie and Arthur some of the boulders in the forest below the Grand Wall, then decided to go check out the Upper Malamute while Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur went to find some dry boulders. This didn’t turn out to be as easy as we thought, and many of the routes we actually managed to find were featureless slab climbs, which weren’t too exciting given the still-moist air. We headed back to the car to meet up with the bouldering crew for lunch.

The weather was starting to look better, so we decided to head to the Smoke Bluffs, which also tend to dry out pretty quickly. I headed to Flying Circus, but Jasmin Caton was being filmed at the base, so we continued up to Penny Lane instead. Luke lead Popeye and the Raven to warm up, then hopped on Yorkshire Gripper, which I’d managed to onsight last summer (Wooo!). He found the low “crux”  hard and misread the sequence(I guess I just managed to do it right first try), but sent on his second try, finding the top a little less scary than I did. We then headed over to Partners in Crime, which was the remaining classic Penny Lane 5.11 crack that we both needed to do.

I was pretty nervous because the route had felt pretty hard when I’d tried to onsight it in 2008, although it had also been very hot and humid. This resulted in me thinking the route would be much harder than it was, and I sent it pretty easily on my first try (2nd time on the route). This maybe shouldn’t have been so surprising, since I’d already done Crime of the Century and Yorkshire Gripper, which are both graded harder. Luke also sent the route first try and we’d officially completed the 5.11s of Penny Lane! I’m not really sure which is my favorite… Crime of the Century is definitely awesome, but I will not be sad if I never do the starting boulder problem ever again; Yorkshire Gripper was good, but the top was scary; Partners wasn’t as hard as I expected, but the crack is definitely a bit awkward. Clearly you just gotta do them all to enjoy the good parts of each one!

We had time and energy for one more pitch, so I recommended the also fun Climb and Punishment, which we both did (Luke lead, I followed, since I’d already sent it last summer). We’d done a good number of decently hard pitches, which was good preparation for the Grand Wall, which we were hoping to do the next day.

[Day 3]

The alarm went off on Friday morning and I was nervous, but ready to go. We ate, racked up, and hiked to the base of the Grand Wall, psyched to find it still deserted. I tried to calm my nerves, mostly unsuccessfully since the perspective from the base of the slabs below the Grand Wall makes it look overhanging (I think it’s only nearly vertical).

Looking up at the Grand Wall from the base of Apron Strings. It looks STEEP!

I started up the first pitch layback of Apron Strings, focusing on moving quickly and not placing too much gear (I knew the crux was near the top, when the pump has accumulated). The top was definitely challenging with my first-route-of-the-day pump, but I made it through, belaying Luke up and then sending the second pitch of Apron Strings to the base of Merci Me. It was then Luke’s turn to take over the sharp end, so he headed up the long runout to the first bolt on Merci Me, linking through to the belay before a traversing section that would get us onto the Grand Wall proper. There was one wet streak on the pitch that had to be stepped across and while following this move, I accidentally wiped my leg through the wet streak, getting mud, moss, and 3 worms on my pants. Gross!

We were psyched to see that the party that had followed us up Apron Strings was rapping back to the ground (we thought they would be following us up the Grand Wall, but I guess they were just getting an early start to their day). Another party was just starting Cruel Shoes (which looks hard!) and a third one was traversing the flake escape ledges to the base of Merci Me. But we were already well ahead of the other parties and had all the belays and pitches to ourselves, which was great.

Luke lead the traversing pitch and short bolt ladder to the base of the Split Pillar, the first of the classic Grand Wall crack pitches. After the first couple of tricky moves before he could get in hand jams, he cruised up the beautiful corner, handling the widening crack and short squeeze chimney with ease. We had brought a haul line for the pack, which was awesome because at this point it still had our approach shoes, 2.5 Liters of water, food, and some extra QDs for the second bolt ladder. I was definitely happy to follow the pitch without the pack. I pretty much got hand jams from the start, but once the crack widened to big #3 Camalots, I switched to laybacking. Laybacking would be a trend throughout this day.

Luke at the belay ledge at the top of the Split Pillar.

The Sword, the next pitch, was supposed to be mine, but I was not feeling very brave, especially after the accident the previous day, so I asked Luke to lead it instead and he did. I ended up doing the crux a little easier than he did (I found a foothold so I could stem), but I found the transition out to the short section on the face to the left of the corner system to be quite reachy and tricky. The upper section of the crack is pumpy, but pretty straightforward – just laybacking (yes, more laybacking) a grey Alien sized crack to chains, which you grab. Luke linked the Sword with the bolt ladder above, bringing us to the base of Perry’s Layback, the second 5.11 pitch. Both bolt ladders were very easy to do with quickdraws and a few slings, so definitely no need to haul aiders and jugs all the way up there.

Lizzy in the squeeze chimney on the upper part of the Split Pillar.

Perry’s Layback is a relatively short pitch involving very strenuous laybacking out a curving crack (too wide for gear, so the entire pitch is bolted). Luke used some grrr-power for the send, while I took once – my forearms were pretty tired from all the laybacking (and all in right-facing corner systems, too). There is a crazy “rest” at the top where, with your feet on a ledge, you can lean back onto a fin of rock that sticks out behind you. It probably wouldn’t work for anyone much shorter than me, though. While it looked like an actual rest for Luke, it was not very restful for me since I had to engage my legs and core (my shoulders only just reached up to the fin behind me).

The next pitch was also supposed to be mine, but I gave it to Luke again and I’m glad I did. It involved some traversing and face climbing, culminating in an extremely reachy move from a ledge. I really just could not reach the handhold you were supposed to use to pull the move, but luckily, there was a bolt right here, so I used the nylon jug and foothold… it’s not like there hadn’t already been lots of aiding on bolts that day, so…

We both looked up at the last pitch, the Sail Flake, and groaned… more laybacking??? This pitch involves climbing a tree off the belay ledge (typical Squamish tactics), then laybacking and underclinging out and around the Sail Flake. Luckily, this pitch actually felt like 5.10 – there were footholds and the flake is very positive. This found us at Bellygood Ledge, from which point one can either continue up via the Roman Chimneys, or traverse off. We were both too tired for the Roman Chimneys, so we stayed roped up and started simuling across Bellygood Ledge. There were actually bolts relatively often, including a fixed hand line, except for the very last part (which was the most exposed part), although this protects decently well with some slung trees and roots. We made it to the woods, changed into our approach shoes, and hiked down the well-marked trail (markers on trees, along with sections of fixed line) to the main Chief hikers’ trail.

We made it to Bellygood Ledge! Nine pitches, no crowds, no epics!

Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur were still at the cars having lunch when we got down (the route took us about 7 hours from the base to the end of Bellygood Ledge). Luke joined them for a bit of bouldering, while I retreated to the tent to read and nap. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Howe Sound Inn & Brewery that night, which was pretty excellent.

[Day 4]

I was still tired by Saturday morning, so we had a luxurious morning of sleeping in. Luke was still psyched to climb, so we decided to do Snake. A moderate multipitch would not challenge us too much, while still allowing us to stretch our sore muscles and get it some classic pitches.

The route definitely “snakes” its way up and around the Apron, linking features in surprising ways. I could definitely tell, however, that the Snake corner system is a major drainage down the Apron. Much of the rock had a black, shiny coating that was luckily much stickier than it looked. The cruxes were often face climbing next to the corner, rather than actually climbing any cracks. Overall, I didn’t feel it was as classic as Diedre, but I do love real crack climbing, so that may just be personal preference. It’s still a very worthy objective on the Apron and a logical next step in difficulty after Banana Peel (5.7) and Diedre (5.8).

Luke on a crimpy slab problem.

As usual, the boulderers were still at the car finishing lunch when we returned, and we joined them for some chilling. We all headed into the forest for the afternoon, although I decided just to take pictures. Even though they hadn’t all been full days of climbing, 4 days on is still a lot for me and I didn’t want to push my tired body and stressed mind too far.

Maddy on a crimpy slab problem.

Jackie on Easy in an Easy Chair

[Day 5]

Sunday was our last day and we woke up to more light rain. We decided to pack up our tents before they got too wet and head into town to find breakfast and showers. After a lot of driving around and a trip to the ATM to get more Canadian money, we were able to all shower. (The pool at Brennan Park Recreation Centre has showers but limited hours, the Gym suggested in the guide book, called Club Flex, no longer offers showers, we ended up at the Squamish Inn on the Water  which has showers for $5 Canadian, cash only)  We then headed to Chef Big D’s Deli for some excellent breakfast (I highly recommend the breakfast wrap – I’ve had it twice now and it is AWESOME). We also did a little browsing at Valhalla Pure, the local climbing shop.

We still had a little time to spare before we needed to get on the road to take Luke back to the airport, so we headed back into the forest to do some bouldering. And by “we”, I mean, Luke, Maddy, Jackie, and Arthur were bouldering and I was taking pictures. They played around on some fun problems, then we returned to the car, said our goodbyes, and headed south for a pretty uneventful drive back to Seattle. We did take a little detour east at the border to the Lynden crossing when we saw that the Pacific Hwy and Peace Arch wait times were both 90+ minutes. This is a good thing to know how to do, especially if you don’t really have the time to spare to wait around in line.

Hehe, just had to throw this one in!

[Epilogue]

As usual, this trip was not quite what I expected it to be. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a serious climbing accident before and it affected my psyche and my mental space pretty strongly. However, the trip was still great (I always love Squamish) and we accomplished some excellent goals. The Grand Wall was awesome, although it’s hard for the experience to live up to the expectations of waiting for years (literally) to be “ready” to climb it. I still need to work on this – not letting my expectations have so much control of my experience.

I had an amazing year for climbing last year – I sent my first two 5.12s (both trad!) and a bunch of 5.11s, so this year has been feeling a little lackluster so far in comparison. But I’m trying to be more realistic with myself… I still onsight 5.10 trad (even if I’m intimidated to do so, it’s not like I’ve fallen much this year… or at all(?)), which is not something I used to do. I’ve still sent two 5.11 trad projects that I would probably have been super proud of if I hadn’t had such an incredible sending year in 2009 (Crack-a-no-go at Smith Rock and Partners in Crime in Squamish). We climbed the Grand Wall, which is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and reaching the point where it was actually pretty straightforward is still a major accomplishment.

Oh, and keep that accident in your mind. There are many variables contributing to climbing accidents, but wearing a helmet is one variable that is 100% in your control. There are so many options out there and I really think there’s never a good reason not to wear a helmet (unless you’re climbing a squeeze chimney that’s so narrow you can’t climb it without a helmet, but I doubt anyone is in that situation particularly often).

Lizzy