Squamish Chief; 'the Yosemite of Canada'.
Squamish Chief; 'the Yosemite of Canada'.
June, 1997
High noon, June 9th, 1997. Four pitches up the Squamish Apron, on the Banana Peel route, the rain begins and Alex and I spend little time deciding to rap off. Three months ago, with a perfect forecast and decent skies, Alex and I were caught by what can only be called a freak snowstorm, also here on the Apron. I've had enough epics...let's split -- and let's split before it really pours! However....as I flake the ropes for the rappel (this time, we brought two!) Alex notices some breaks in the cloud cover. "Hey, Cameron, what do you think?" he says, pointing at a blue patch some miles away. I stop with the ropes and look up, then at the damp rock, then at Alex. "Yeah, OK. I don't want to bail this early, either." A few minutes later I was headed up the 5.7 slab pitch, making some hairy moves with my pack tilting me away from a bulge of stone. The rain had indeed tapered off, a light breeze came up, and the rain Alex and I had listened to all night, camping at the base of the wall, began to steam off the acres of exposed, tilted granite. At the top of the pitch, as we switched leads, we decided to continue with the original plan for today: to link Banana Peel (6 pitches, one pitch of 5.7 with mostly 5.5 slab climbing) with the Broomstick Crack (one 5.4 pitch) to take us off Broadway, the large ledge at the top of the Apron and towards the Upper Squamish Buttress, where we would begin the Squamish Buttress route. This route was 6-8 pitches, with two bits of 5.8, one 5.10c crack (that's A1 for me, thank you) and a lot of easier roped climbing. We'd started at noon today, so I was a bit concerned that we move quickly: neither of us had been up the Apron before, and the Buttress route had some route-finding... Alex led some rather run-out slab pitches, I led some easier-than-easy grooves, and Alex topped us out onto Broadway in brilliant sunshine. I climbed up to his perch with a wide grin on my face: the granite, the sun, the easy but cool climbing all reminded me a lot of the Royal Arches, in Yosemmite, which Chiu and I had climbed several years ago. I led a final bit of slab to the real Broadway, where I tied in to a large tree, called 'Off belay' and took off the gear rack while reeling in the rope as Alex raced up the easy pitch. "This is the highest I've been on a climb!" said Alex as he arrived and took off his pack. He was really excited to be 6 pitches up, and I was excited for him to be breaking his personal record. We sat on the sandy ledge and looked over the route description. We must be pretty close to Broomstick Crack...I turned around, looked up at the rock and there it was. The sky was about 40-50% white clouds, the sun was baking, there was just a little breeze, and it was about 2pm. Banana Peel had gone in about 2 hours, now we had about five hours till it would start getting dark. Above us, the Broomstick pitch, then 6 to 8 pitches, with the A1 pitch next to last, followed by a 5.8 leading to the summit. Easy climbing, but a lot to do, and we had some routefinding on our hands as well. We looked up at the buttress, then down at the granite spread of the Apron, and below that, little colored rectangles - cars - speeding along the black ribbon of road. Broadway was an excellent hang-out... SO, do we go for it or not? I was sick of bail-outs, Alex was psyched for the route as much as I was, so off we went. The first move onto the Broomstick is wierd and I gave Alex a GI-Joe type shoulder-stand to get onto the crack. After that he was on his way, winging up the 5.4 flake (it is a WIERD pitch which traverses a big flake; easy but strange climbing!), saying "I wish we hadn't left that big cam back at the truck...". A few quiet minutes as Alex tied in above...A whisper of wind, a pine needle scratching at me through my socks, the sand crunching under my shoes as I shifted my position. The rope snaked away...I snapped on the pack...the rope tugged at my harness. 'CLIMBING!' '---climb on---' I heaved strangely up the first move, the pack once again making balance wierd...Once on the flake, though, it goes as a straight-forward pitch, and I removed Alex's sparse gear quickly and easily. I was glad to see, today, that he was learning to place gear more reliably (no more buried cams!) and more frequently. Alex was strong, and I knew he could keep his head together, but he was just getting into multi-pitch climbing, so I was a little wary of his methods. Occasionally I still had to mention that he might want a sling on a piece of gear, to keep it from tilting out, or to prevent rope drag later on in his lead, but overall Alex was doing a great job. I arrived at Alex's belay and we quickly switched the gear. I raced up an easy slab into some trees, tied off to a pine and started hoisting up rope in a mountaineer's hip-belay. Bang, another two pitches closer to the summit. Now Alex and I were in a small forest on giant ledges below the final Buttress headwall. We coiled the rope as for glacier travel and weaved a crooked path through the trees. We saw occasional traces of trails, but generally kept on our own course...who knows where those trails led? We ascended and moved right, headed for the Vulcan's Artery, a gigantic slash of dripping greenery which cuts across the upper face of the Grand Wall. Our climb was supposed to begin just about where the Artery intersected with the forested terraces we were currently moving through. After a while we reached a massive headwall...time to start the traverse towards the end of the Artery...We cut rightwards, still roped up. Strange maneuvers - between gaps in the trees I could see a thousand-foot drop to the talus at the base of the wall. On we went, traversing rightwards, always looking up through the foliage for a bolt, our signal that we would be on the first 5.8 pitch of the Squamish Buttress... Half an hour later I edged my way carefully across steep terrain, rightwards into some bushes, my shoes squashing water from sodden mosses in the shade...I moved a bit more...there was no other sign of human activity here...I leaned on a rotting log and pushed my head through the bush to see nothing but thousand feet of air below me...I slowly retreaded from my little port-hole out of the bushes...suddenly, a horrrific CRUNCCHCCCCHHHHHh...the log was crumbling under my hand and I tilted forward towards the abyss, leaning into the springy bushes... 'T-t-t-tension.." I said weakly, but I doubt Alex heard it, and anyway, of course we were roped up and I was actully in no danger, but it did get the heart pumping. Well, we realized that we were way too far up the Artery, so it was time to turn back and see if we'd missed a bolt, the beginning of our climb... Sure enough, we found a bolt twenty feet up a rocky buttress, WAY back from our position in the Artery. Well, whatever. Alex fired off the pitch (he was getting all the good ones today!) and hesitated just a moment at the balancy crux...Then he was over, and headed up and right, getting good pro by slinging a tree, something we'd been doing a lot today. 4pm. Maybe five, six or seven pitches to go. "This is where we get our speed,' I said to Alex as I racked up for the next pitch. "I'll just keep going till I'm out of rope." The guide said the next four pitches were 'easy', which was fine with me, but I wanted them done quickly to have time for routefinding, leg-crushed-by-rock, epileptic fit, bee attack: whatEVER. I have spent enough time in the mountains to know that when you have easy terrain, you BURN IT UP by moving as fast as possible, so as to save time for unforseen complications later on... Off I went, slinging trees, groping bushes, tension-traversing, anything required to move upwards and to the left in an overgrown arch that might go as an undercling if all the life dried up and blew away and someone scrubbed out the mossy, muddy corner. Let's hope that never happens, it is an interesting and adventurous lead. At one point I was standing in a sling around a branch with a cloud of pollen in my sweaty face, a branch poking me in the ear and my right hand making a conspicuous SQUISH as it tried to grip some mushrooming plant life deep under the thick leaves and bushes. 'It doesn't get wetter than this,' I thought. It was such an unusual situation that I took a precious moment to look down at the rope, Alex, down there, fiddling with his belay plate, and the forest below him, and the granite apron below the forest, and the cars, and the miniature town and the toy railroad track and the still waters of Howe Sound creeping between giant buttresses of pine-forested mountains which reached right to the water. Amazing. BACK TO WORK! I made a tension-traverse to the left from a tree, came to a small ledge, and gingerly moved a large rock off to the side so as not to kill Alex! I kept moving, a steep bit here, then a boulder move, another slung tree...then around a corner to a giant ledge. "TEN FEET" yelled Alex. I tied in to a tree and shouted down "OFF BELAY" and started reeling in rope. Alex swarmed up the pitch, hanging on slings, trees, bushes, whatever. I was glad to see he had no compunctions about 'aid' (I laugh so hard when I hear people worry about hanging on gear, on a real climb...), and that he was enjoying the 'Indiana Jones' pitch with rock moves, lush vegetation, pine needles, sap, loose rock, tension traverse, aid; it was all there! At the ledge Alex wanted to stop for a drink of water, but I cracked the whip as he chugged from our little one-liter bottle "I'm goin up!" I said, "just gimme a hip belay". Alex did this, and I thought maybe he felt I was being a little picky, but I wanted no part of routefinding difficulties, etc. I like to go fast. I can drink when I'm up top, right now it is TIME TO GO! So I went, knocking off the next pitch of 'easy' which had a step or two of not-so-easy which required a bit of thought. This was a rock pitch, ascending a pretty steep set of parallel grooves. I got in a good Camalot, then fired the rest of the pitch to yet another sandy ledge with a perfect belay tree. Click, tie in, 'OFF BELAY' and start reeling. We sawp leads and move continually upwards....pitches three, four, five... We arrive below the headwall which stands silent like a large tombstone above us. It is split with vertical cracks. With only this pitch, and the 5.8 following it, between us and the summit, I finally feel we can relax for a moment. I know the A1 pitch will go easily and that the final 5.8 will be no sweat. The sun is sinking a bit, getting towards those hills to the West, but we're OK. Alex and I decide to eat the last of our food and have a drink of water. For food we've brought four packets of GU, each 100 calories in the form of a flavorful paste which you suck down like an astronaut and follow with a swig of water. The package says 'Best on an empty stomach.' and we are perfectly qualified. I suck down the GU and rack up... I'm on the pitch...A1 on stoppers, tri-cams and small cams, occasionally a nice large piece. The pitch is easy, but I wish I had the power to free it...Must get to the gym next semester...Well, whatever, for now, for me, it is an A1, and up I go, near the top clipping an ancient fixed pin and noticing another one, ugly with a smashed clip-in hole. If I do the route again I'll carry a hammer to clean the bad, broken pin, it detracts from the clean white granite it is driven into. Three moves to the top...Alex is getting a bit apprehensive as dark clouds roll in...the sun had dropped beneath the hills, and though it's still plenty light, you can tell evening is coming on. Alex tells me he can see the shadow of the mountains creeping up the giant granite wall to our left, from which we are separated by a thousand-foot chasm. The feeling of this place is strikingly similar to that you get in the Cathedral gully in Yosemite...Several times today I have thought of Yosemite, how much I want to get back there, what adventures I've had in that amazing place...
BACK TO WORK! I test, clip, step up and then hoist myself onto a perfect ledge, five by twenty, which drops off to the left into the chasm. An amazing place. I set up the belay and start bringing up Alex, who climbs the pitch by hanging from one piece of gear to the next, feet on the rock. The sky is darker now, a wind chills me in my sweaty pile jacket -- my mood changes just a bit...I want to be sure we are on route...could we have taken the wrong crack?...This ledge seems to lead no-where...Alex heads off, slightly nervous...We really do not want to be hunting for a way off this thing... Alex makes some delicate mantles...a zig...a zag. He places some gear...rope drag almost brings him to a stop...another mantle move, he's wigged out on this one 'HERE I GO MAN WATCH ME TIGHT!' and suddenly the rope pays out quickly and he's up, clipping to a tree. "THAT's IT, MAN, COME ON UP!!!" I race up the pitch, the pack tilting me away and towards the chasm, the sky darker, a single drop of rain on my hand, thinking 'We did it!' and happy with the day and our climb. Some scrambling and then an easy walk to the true summit. 7:30pm. We shoot some summit photos, happy we did not bail down there on the Banana Peel, and glad we made it up without incident. It has been a long 7 hours. We've gained 600 meters, nearly 2,000 feet, through rock, forest, foliage...cracks, slabs...grooves...flakes...shoulder-stands...It has been a truly 'adventurous' route, great for Alex's first successful multi-pitch climb
and we have both enjoyed it immensely.'WE ARE MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS,' I proclaim in a loud, official voice, to myself, to Alex, to no-one?...'We have climbed a mountain. What we do is this: WE CLIMB MOUNTAINS'.
We laugh, I feel great, the climb is no less than any one of a hundred other adventures I've had...it is equal to any icy colouir, as satisfying as a desert route, a Yosemite wall...as fulfilling as Mount Rainier or Mount Hood...A great day of life. I will climb till I die!!! *** We hike down in gathering darkness, on a prepared trail. Chains are placed to help you on water-polished slabs...aluminum ladders drop down steep sections. Off the bald, rock domes and into the forest...Out comes the headlamp. It is pitch dark, our toes are killing from all day confinement in our rock shoes. But that matters little, all I am attuned to is the electric buzz of happiness, the wild, unseen river crashing down the canyon to our left, the immense trees around us...We continue, down, down, down, finally seeing lights through the trees...it's the highway...We arrive on the blacktop and sit to put on sneakers and relieve our feet. A short walk to the car, dinner at the all-night place in Squamish, and then we drive back to Vancouver. I drop off Alex, then head up Burnaby Mountain to Simon Fraser. At 2am I finally park in my slot, kill the lights and the engine, and just sit there for a moment, trying to make it last just a little bit longer...
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