Photos

Here's some photos from the day that Mom, Cher and the Kids came up to visit us in Squamish as well as a few from our last day of climbing.


Hiking at Shannon Falls

Mom and Cher

Mom and Nelson playing

Shy and Christolla

Christolla was up for the first climb of the day and did awesome despite never climbing cracks before!

Nelson was up next and also made easy work of the climb!

The Second climb of the day was a chimney system that proved to be a challenge!

Nelson trying the other (easier) side of the Chimney

Rappelling can be pretty scary some times and at first Nelson was really struggling with trusting the rope to get lowered. However, by the last climb he figured it all out and even was comfortable enough to show off his "pizza legs" skills for the camera.


Hanging out at the Lake


Swimming in Brome Lake

We got one last climb in before we packed everything up and came back to Calgary. Shy working the fist crack on pitch one of St. Vitus Dance

Paul on the second pitch... before the off width thrutching began

Season's coming to a close...

We are Thrilled to announce that we both were hired at Strathcona Park Lodge as outdoor instructors for this Fall season!! Our start date is Aug 30, so that means that our time here in Squamish is pretty much done. We are planning on heading back to Calgary to get organized this Saturday, take some time to rest and relax then head out to the Island. It really couldn't have happened at a better time; just this afternoon Paul and I were talking about how we seem to be getting burnt out from the summers worth of playing, camping and continually being outdoors. Its time for a change of pace and scenery. We're really looking forward to seeing friends and family!!


In other exciting news, its been a busy week with both my good friend Paul Adamiak and my mom, the kids and Cher coming out to see us! Paul was out for a few days and we managed to squeeze in climbing at the Bluffs, a few things a the Malamute and then a hike to the 3rd and 2nd summit of the Chief (Paul if you send me photos I will put them up!!). The rest of the crew came out for the day on Wednesday and we got a lot done! We started with a hike up to Shannon Falls from the climbers campground - lots of going up steep stairs, beautiful waterfalls and the wonderful cedar forest. Then we were off to Brome Lake to have a picnic and do some swimming in the freezing lake water. Between the wind and the water we didn't last long in there. To wrap up the day we went down to the Smoke Bluffs and set up some ropes for the kids - they did so good!! I was very impressed by thier crack climbing skills; they are naturals! Foot jams, laybacks... those kids are going to be my rope guns in no time!!

Cannabis Wall

Wow, it feels like ages since we wrote last and we’ve been up to a lot!

Over the long weekend it was “Logger Days” here in Squamish; a neat festival for the towns #1 industry. There were events going all weekend and we managed to take in the chair making competition. It was pretty impressive how detailed and exact they could be with a chain saw! Noisy, but neat!

The next day we decided to try to escape the long weekend crowds and do a climb that sees less traffic. The “North North Arete” goes at 10a, 7 pitches and boasted having “more interesting climbing” than the popular (and heavily climbed) Angles Crest (which is one arete over) and its trial head was literally just across the forestry road from our casa! As we found out, “interesting” evidently means dirty and chossy... there was certainly was a great variety of climbing but it was badly in need of some love (and cleaning). It felt like we were alpine climbing in the Rockies; rambling over huge boulders, fighting with tree over growth... but all in all a super fun day! It would be phenomenal if it was all cleaned up. The guide book also was a little vague on how to get off the route once you got to the top. We easily spent a few hours on the Zodiac summit wandering back and forth on a trail that ended in either direction at an impossibly steep rock face that dropped down hundreds of metres to the gully bottom. We found the way off by sheer luck (and desperation as a thunder storm was roaring just up the sound) and hurried off the backside trails, through the climbers’ campground and back to the tent in a wonderful (and surprisingly big) 12 hour loop.

Lowell and Heather woke us up the next morning and took us to Chekamus, a sport climbing area where we failed about for a while and sent some interesting stuff. Paul even ticked off an "11b" lead.

After a few days rest, we got it in our heads that we should take a whirl at “Strange Brew” a link up of “Cannabis Wall” and “Breakfast Run”, two fairly substantial and committing aid climbs up the impressive Tantalus Wall. The route description informed us that most beginners (ie: us) would need two days to complete Cannabis Wall and a third to finish up Breakfast Run, which seemed a little crazy since the whole climb is a total of only 9 pitches but as we found out, Aid climbing time is seriously fucked up.

Spending multiple days on the cliff side meant that we would need to devise some way to sleep up there. Being far too poor to afford a Portaledge (literally a metal framed ledge that you haul up the mountain behind you) and none available to rent, we took Dan’s (the climbing shop owner) half-joking advice and tracked down some hammocks. Then there is the issue of hauling all the food & water, plus other important items (ie: sleeping bags, clothing layers) that you will need... no small amount. Also not being able to afford a haul bag (durable, large, build to drag up rock faces) we stuff our day packs till they bulged at the seams, fastened them together and called it good enough.

We got our typical late start on the first day, slogged our stuffed packs and every piece of gear that we own (save one 3 inch and two 4 inch cams – the Big stuff) up the mercifully short approach trail. The Tantalus Wall starts off as a steep slab (about 60 degrees) and at about a third of the way up veers up to vertical with some slightly overhanging sections. It is an incredibly impressive looking wall.

Paul was up for the first pitch. A few hard hook moves off the ground gained a position in a tall but narrow flake arch which flexed visibly when you weighted the gear you placed in behind it. It was a relief when Paul reached the bolt line above, however the safety of bolts was short lived and ended with a contrived pendulum.

Starting the pendulum run...

At the highest point in the pendulum arch Paul had to try to place a hook before he was sent swinging back in the other direction. Silly.

Then I was up for my first ever outdoor Aid lead. With so much to deal with as far as the 20 pounds of gear, finding placements, etires getting tangled... etc. I was surprisingly too distracted to be nervous and slowly plugged my way up the left arching corner crack system. About half way up I took a moderate fall when the piece I was standing on popped to teach me that I need to more vigorously bounce test my gear before I trust them (Bounce testing has to be my least favourite part; wiggle and progressively weight and finally bounce on the gear that you just placed to see if it will hold you... it doesn’t always). About 3.5 or 4 hours later I was finally done and the sun was down behind the mountain across the sound.

A whole afternoons worth of climbing, only 2 pitches up and pretty hungry we decided to fix our ropes (Tie them off at one end to a secure point) and rappel, get pizza and a good night sleep and start off early the next morning.

We were back up at the top of pitch 2 at about 8am the next morning, and Paul was up for the third pitch – another left leaning corner crack with a neat move over a small ceiling to gain some vertical face climbing. Just as he got going it started to rain.

Nearly at the hanging belay.

Being good turn takers, I was up for pitch 4, an extremely thin crack system that ate up only the smallest of our small gear – nothing bigger then a 0.3 inch cam.

Graded as one of the easier pitches on the climb(at C1+) this pitch taught us that the Aid grading system really doesn't mean a thing - its all hard.

Pitch 5 was amazingly long and followed several different crack systems and varied substantially from tiny thin cracks to flakes and big fist sized (or larger) gaps, complete with a ledge traverse. Paul placed the majority of the gear and all of the 23+ slings & draws that we brought with us. By the time I had cleaned up all the gear and made it to the chossy dirty mound at the top of pitch five I was using my headlamp to see what I was doing. A whole days worth of climbing and only 3 pitches higher.

Sadly, there was no good place to string up a hammock nor lay or sit very comfortably. We tried to rest the best we could, but by 3 am we realized that we were not going to get any more rested and it would probably be better to try to get moving. Facing 1 more pitch to complete Cannabis Wall and 4 more pitches to finish up Breakfast run we realized we would be up there for two more days if we tried to continue on. If we had not already been utterly exhausted from the last two days of climbing, the fact that we were on our last few litres of water and the food we had packed had not kept well in the heat would have made us come to the same conclusion; we had to get off that wall.

Paul made a good attempt at pitch 6, but the daunting, descending, over a foot wide, chossy crack we were suppose to follow was just too much for us both. So, we set up a rappel line off of pitch 5 and bailed from there. By 8am we were back in the tent and incredibly thrilled to be able to sleep on our new air mattress.

We really got worked up there. We are both physically spent and will need several days to recover. However, it was an amazing experience and a great challenge.

Back in Squamish

After two great weeks on Vancouver Island, we arrived back in Squamish on the 27th. After catching an early ferry across, and running a few errands in Vancouver, we were back in town with enough time to do some late afternoon climbing. We were happy to find that none of the things that were left in the tent went missing while we were away, and there was not a large family of raccoons living in there, as my brother suggested there might be!

Since getting back we've been trying to push up the grades that we are climbing at. So far that has been going well; most notably, yesterday evening Ashley onsighted (climbed to the top, on the first try, without sitting on the rope or pulling on any gear) a climb called "The Zip". This is a classic Squamish climb at the grade of 5.10a. Earlier that day I managed to work my way up a 5.10b climb called "Slap and Tickle", also an onsight.

Other than that it's pretty much back to the normal routine. It is still really hot here, and our campsite in the shade makes sleeping in far too easy.

Ashley grinding her way up a short squeeze chimney.

The leopard spots are coming back!
It took me a while to figure out where these were coming from; they are Camelot bruises from where my gear bumps or get pressed against my thigh while climbing. Ah, its good to be back in Squamish!

Elkhorn

When we first were planning our trip to Strathcona Park we thought that we may be able to climb a few peaks in the 4 days that we had in the area. We had been scouring over the “Island Alpine” guidebook and decided to start up the Elk River Trail for the first few days and set up a base camp from which we could explore the surrounding peaks. We had heard that the conditions were unusually snowy still for this time of the year but even with that considered there seemed to be more things to do then we could possibly tackle in one trip.

As we were getting ready to set off we quickly realized that we hadn’t really planned for backpacking/serious mountaineering when we left Calgary in June; we only brought small day packs, a Canadian Tire two man tent and Paul’s sleeping bag couldn’t pack down into a manageable size. We had solved the issues of only having a single pair of crampons, one ice axe and my mountaineering boots badly needing to be replaced in our little excursion to Vancouver, but it would have been unreasonable/ expensive to buy the backpacking gear we already owned. We would make do with what we had.

With 3 packs between the two of us, gear hanging off and sticking out of our daypacks in an unruly manner and wearing climbing harnesses, we must have looked like a pair of crazies (or novices) when we started up the trail. We had rock gear, ice/snow gear, camping gear, and 2.5 days worth of food, our Island Alpine bible, a map and various clothing layers and our standard first aid & emergency kits. We were totally oblivastoked. At about the 2km mark on the Elk River Trail we branched off, crossed a raging river via log-jam and put our faith in to the vibrant flagging tape to lead us through the brush. The goal for the day was a campsite on the North West ridge of Mt. Elkhorn that the book described as “nice, with a good view and water”. What more could we ask for?

3800ft of elevation gain in 6000ft of horizontal travel and 8 hours later, we poured over the map in our tent in the NW ridge of Elkhorn awakened to the reality that this mountain was much bigger (and steeper) than the book had made it seem; We had known we were in for a solid hike but we hadn’t expected vertical tree root climbing, soggy fixed ropes over seeping mossy rock walls and sections of “hiking” that had us gaining a foot of elevation for every two feet traveled. It was a hell of a grind.

Base camp with a the summit of Elkhorn (pointy and slightly left leaning) peaking out behind first of the 3 smaller crests that we would have to go over to get to it.

The photo from the book showing the NW ridge route. This is only about half of what we still had left to do from base camp.

We had another 3320ft of elevation still to gain, the water at the campsite was either a snow pile or the slum puddle from the snow pile melt-off, and we had much more technical terrain ahead of us. We decided that we needed scout the route, check out the avalanche danger and see if we were in over our heads. This would mean an additional day and a half on the mountain if decided we could do it, and therefore we would have to do some serious food rationing and snow-melting to get us through.

Our scouting mission, our first encounter with snow!

This is taken 30min out of base camp at about 5000ft. Out of curiosity we surfed the net and found photos from other peoples trips up this route and this section is a snow-free boulder field.

Paul pondering the feasibility of reaching the summit.

At the end of our scouting mission, after meandering our way over snow fields that hid both our trail and trail markers and taking a look at the mountain we decided that we shouldn’t do it; too much snow (and therefore a potential avalanche risk in the 30 degree heat), we only brought a 20m rope, and it would be hard to make the food thing work.

However, come the morning of day three we just couldn’t walk away, the summit called us and so at 10am we decided to “go take a look” ...just to see if it would go.

A snow arch framing part of the sun-cupped Elkhorn Glacier

Looking out to the snow-capped mainland peaks visible along the horizon from the col. We are only another 20min to the start of the climbing section.

The final push. The route we took is the right leaning line that you can see over Paul's right shoulder, then we traversed leftward to the upper glacier where it wraps itself around a tower.

This photo gives a bit of a better perspective.

Once we got to the upper glacier we crawled into the bergschrund (the gap between the glacier and the rock face). We followed its path around the rock tower till the gap became too small and we were forced to climb the rock (with some aid from the snow) to gain higher ground. After a bit of rock traversing we got to rappel back into an even deeper (4-5m) section of the bergschrund and finally exit out onto the final section of scrambling.

5:30pm and we were on the summit. Turns out it wasn’t bad as we thought it might be- we could easily navigate around any sections that we were unsure about, the snow pack was solid (though there was lots of it) and the climbing was a breeze even with a short rope. It was some of the most interesting mountaineering terrain that we could get all in one package and the view from the summit was amazing!!! Sadly, there is no rest for the wicked and after a peanut butter and honey warp and a look around we descended via the West couloir down a steep snow field to regain the NW ridge and retrace our steps to our base camp by 9:30pm.

We are so glad that we decided to “go take a look”, it was a great experience! We’ve both learnt a lot and are really excited to try some of the other mountains in the area when we can make it back this way.

Back in Nanaimo, we have a day to kill before we can catch the cheaper ferry back to the mainland. It will be nice to take it easy!

Ucluelet

We have had a wonderful past few days. It is truly beautiful out on the west coast of Vancouver Island! However, its also colder than we have become accustom too since the mid-thirties weather in Squamish... toques, down jackets and fuzzy socks are all requirements for most of the day and especially at night. That hasn't gotten us down though; we've still been hiking, checking out the local beaches and even doing a little surfing!

We met up with Bonnie and her Padres two days ago and took in the sights between Ucluelet and Tofino looking for a good hike, eventually find the pleasant jaunt down to Halfmoon Bay. Yesterday we decided to try out the "Wild Pacific Trail" that turned out to be less wild and more of a tour through the developing commercial yuppie residential zone. Nice once you were far enough way from houses or bulldozed lots, but not what we were expecting from the name. Then we rented some surfboards and wet suites, picked up Bonnie and were off to Wick beach for some evening surfing. Paul did great for his first time out and didnt get pummeled too terribly. Surfing is definitely one of those sports that take tons of practice and is way harder then it seems.

We were at it again this morning, both of us doing better than we were last night and even got to enjoy some sunshine while we got thrashed about. Now were back in Nanaimo trying to figure out a course of action from here. Sounds like to get the equipment we need for some mountaineering we want to do in Strathcona Park we are going to have to ferry back to Vancouver, go to MEC and then ferry back here tomorrow.... bummer.

However! After all of that is done we should set for a wickedly awesome expedition into the heart of the island mountains to bag a few peaks, get our resumes in and even do some alpine climbing. Should be awesome!

Checking out the abundant fauna in the tidal pools with Bonnie and her parents

It was so great to see Bonnie again!

Wick beach this morning. It was starting to get hot out and the water was evaporating of the sand creating a beautiful mist that hung just a few feet of the sand.


Unfortunately, surfing (or swallowing sea water?) seems to make Paul feel nauseous so after a few hours he turned in his board for his camera and snapped all of these shots!

Riding a wave in!

Peace, Love, Anarchy and Surfing (....and climbing)

Paul doing the dishes in our Ucluelet kitchen.

Staying warm! We were really suprised that we had to dig out all of our layers from the depths of the car. Misty and cool.

Vancouver Island

Since we arrived in Squamish, we have planned to spend some time on Vancouver Island. There are quite a few reasons for wanting to go; I have quite a lot of family on the Island, Ashley's very good friend Bonnie lives on the West coast of the island, and we are both hoping to get jobs at a lodge there for the fall.

Since this weekend was the Squamish Mountain Festival, we decided that it would be a good time to make an escape before the hordes of people arrived. So on the morning of July 15th, we packed up the car, and headed to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. There we met up with my Mum who was in transit to Holland, but spending a few days in Nanaimo on the way.

Baby on the Ferry

After sailing across the straight, the three of us made our way to my cousin Devin's house, who was kind enough to give us a place to stay as well as, shuttle us around the city. It was great to see Devin, it had been about a year since we last got to catch up with each other.

On our second day on the island we drove down to Victoria to see my cousin Stephanie and her partner Jason. We had a great day in downtown eating tasty vegan/veggy food at "Rebar" and looking around.

Sunset in Nanaimo

From Nanaimo, the plan was to drive to Strathcona Park Lodge (where we would like to work for the fall); then spend a few day climbing in Strathcona Provincal Park (arguably the best alpine climbing on the island); and then to drive to see Bonnie in the town South of Tofino, who's name starts with a U, and is neither pronounceable or spellable.

Things started to get interesting once we arrived at Strathcona Park Lodge; the two of us seem to have lost all concept in the last month of what day of the week it is(and sometimes even what time of day it is!), and so we were informed upon arrival that the chief instructor was gone for the evening, and since tomorrow would be Sunday, that he would not be back until Monday morning. All pretty predictable stuff, and yet it seems to have escaped the two of us. At this point the best thing to do was to find a place to camp for the night. Being a Saturday evening on a beautiful July weekend, all campsites were full in the area, also fairly predictable. In the process of driving to find a campground, we found ourselves in Gold River, a beautiful and somewhat remote town on the West coast of the island. By this point in the whole process, there was some talk of the fact that Bonnie might try to find a ride up to meet us in the Strathcona area, and also that she only was off work for the next few days. Now the problem for (relative) suburbanites such as ourselves, was that there is absolutely no cellphone service in this area (for at least an hour's drive in fact!), the horror! This meant that Ashley and Bonnie could not communicate rendezvous information to each other. After much discussion, and failed attempts at using a pay phone (that somehow seem to cost as much as successful attempts), it was decided that due to the impossibility of communication, in combination with Bonnie's work schedule, we should proceed immediately to the town South of Tofino who's name is neither pronounceable or spellable.

So, at approximately eight thirty in the evening we began our backtrack to Nanaimo, where we turned off West and headed back to the West coast, only this time several hundred kilometers South of our previous position on the West coast. About a third of the way through this crusade, in Campbell River, we decided that it may be prudent to send Bonnie an email to keep her up to date with regards to our to our wildly erratic and unpredictable methods of trip planning. We found a Starbucks where, in the six minutes before closing, I procured a quadruple americano, and Ashley sent off an email that went something like "We are driving to you! We don't know where you are! Text or email me if you can!". We arrived in the town that begins with a U and is neither pronounceable or spellable at one o'clock this morning. With no good ideas of where to camp or stay, and little energy to search out such a place, we found a nice spot to roll out the sleeping bags amidst a residential neighborhood, and proceed to sleep under the stars (in a figurative sense only, it was actually under the fog, which in turn was under the stars).

I awoke around seven this morning to a thick coastal fog; the thick salty smell of the ocean; the lonely cries of a solitary seagull, punctuated by the staccato chatter of the small forest birds; the distant ringing of a buoy somewhere out in the fog; and I proceeded to try and wake up Ashley before the residents complained and had us arrested. It took over an hour. This morning we found ourselves a nice little cafe, with great muffins, and wireless internet.

Ashley sleeping... You can't tell, but there are houses all around us.

Bonnie has just sent Ashley a text message, so we'll be able to meet up with her in a few minutes. Yet another great success!