This year’s Squamish / Whistler trip almost didn’t happen. Jen took a nasty digger on the Crest a couple weeks ago, and could barely walk for a few days after it happened. Then work got crazy busy for me and I spent five days doing a month’s worth of work in order to make sure I could hop into the van and head north come Friday afternoon. None of that matters now, because on Sunday we rolled up the Sea to Sky highway north of Vancouver and arrived in our favorite climbing destination.
With Jen’s injuries relegating us to cragging, we knew that this wouldn’t be the multi-pitch send fest of awesomeness that we had up here last year. Hoping to build on last year’s success, we formed some fairly ambitious goals earlier this summer, but now none of them were within reach, so I re-formatted my brain to sending some hard crack pitches right off the ground. That went great for about half a day until I did something nasty to my right wrist on a traversing 5.11 roof crack. We changed our goals again.
Now, we just wanted to climb. Anything would do really, we were just sick of being broken. So, each morning we slept in, ate breakfast in the van, and had a lazy coffee while working out all the sore joints and muscles. When we felt ready (or when I got too cranky), we left for the crags. Temps are horrendous up here right now, cresting into the mid 90’s (or 35c for you Canadian folks), so much of the days have been spent chasing shade and trying not to melt. Despite all of this, we got in a ton of absolutely amazing pitches.
Yesterday was supposed to be the first of a few rain days, so we slept in even more than normal and eventually hiked to the base of the Chief. The rain held off, and the ominous cloudy skies kept temperatures nice and low, allowing us to climb all day despite us expecting to take our gear for a hike. We finished the day (and probably the trip) with a lap up the Exasperator. This 50m stretch of 10c fingers is without a doubt one of the best pitches I’ve ever climbed in my life, and it was a great way to wrap things up. Now… off to Whistler.
