Escape to Squamish, July 2001 - Dave Bone (and Tony Major)
By Dave Bone
This is the story of a trip to that Mecca of Canadian climbing, Squamish, 40 miles North of Vancouver, planned in those bleak, dark days of Foot and Mouth. So bleak that the maximum time out of the country was required, so 2.5 weeks at the start of July were found. OK so "everyone goes there", but with good reason...
So to keep the costs 'down' we were shoehorned into a Charter flight from Manchester via Calgary where we had a hour's delay to refueling while a lightning storm cleared the Airport. On arrival at Vancouver, "those arriving from Britain and Europe, go that way" via the pariah's exit. "Warning, disinfectant mats, no animal products, sniffer dogs". Well those machines all our luggage passed through looked rather like X-ray machines, but perhaps the hood on top hid a caged dog... Oops - did we clean my climbing boots after that last trip? "What's this dense mass at the bottom of your Sac, Sir?" It's my climbing rope..". Turns round and "It's OK, it's some kind of Bungee cord"! After some battling with the directions, we eventually got to our Car hire pickup point, and were shortly after wending our way through the streets of Vancouver, to head North into the dusk, on highway 99 - the "Sea to Sky highway", or locally, "the cedar-sky".
We camped the whole trip, mostly at the Chief campsite, tucked right under the rock, 3km outside the town of Squamish. We later found of a free, no facilities site N of the town, but at $8 (£4) a night per site (not per person) we didn't see the need. For that you got a walk in, hard pad, pit toilets, and a water tap, plus the site doesn't take caravans or RVs with most occupants being climbers or groups being brought out for a taste of the outdoors. Squamish itself, has everything one could need, a launderette, two supermarkets (with an amazing range of choice - Tesco should take note), two outdoor gear shops, mountain biking, windsurfing (Squamish is also one of the world's wind surfing centres, and they're damm fast!), showers at the Brennan Leisure park, Pub and hardware store with everything flammable (Colemans, Gaz, etc), camping gear and hunting equipment (beware mad axemen in the woods). We recommend "Climb on" for their help and friendly approach.
OK, what climbing is there? Well first off, the grading seems to be fair in the main (but watch for the slabs) and actually follows the standard US-UK translation. ie 5.9 IS HVS, 5.10a is E1 5b etc. There's a good range too from 5.7 up. It's 95% granite. You have the Chief, a 600m high granite monolith with crags on all sides, with the 450m high Grand wall - you won't top out on this unless you can do E4 or A3. But in the apron area you have access to the slabs with a series of ledges. There's anything from single 30m pitch to 12 pitch routes here on the Chief and Squaw, plus some popular aid routes (portaledges were seen). Then a number of smaller crags back towards Vancouver less than 15mins away, including Murrin park which has a number of atractive small crags tucked into a country park centred on the "Browning lake" (swimming lake and flesh exposure) much used by families at weekends. This gives quite a variety. There are trad routes, clip up routes and Sports+ routes, where you'd better take some gear (if you can find placements).
We opened our guide on the first day at the Smoke bluffs, a area of quick drying crags on the edge of town. All single pitch stuff, mostly bolted and popular with top-ropers which seems to be a disease here. A quick warmup on a 5.9 crack then a look at the nearby 5.10a/5.10b pair of bolted slab routes. A desperent ascent on one on cornflake edges and Tony wants to do the 5.10a - sorry Tony, that WAS the 5.10a! Moving on, we had a look at "Pear Slab" 5.10a and retreated from the crux - let's follow suit and top rope it then. Crux doesn't seam so bad then but then found the leaders pyscological crux - the steep 30ft of slab climbing to the belay off the ledge where THE bolt is. By this time we were getting the idea - avoid slabs if you don't want to be scared and drop your grade on them - cracks are all right. It seems there is a tradition of placing these bolts on the lead, so they often aren't where you want them. The main slabs have things like 5.9s with one bolt (there is no natural gear in glacially polished granite) in 50m! - we didn't do that one. The cracks and walls are good though.
What about other activities? There's mountain biking, wind surfing, and walking. There's the Chief summit trail, a brutal ascent used by the locals for a morning/evening jog with the dog. Then there's the Coastal range of 7000-8000ft mountains with the Garibaldi provincial park. These offer some good hikes, hill walks and mountaineering. They have glaciers and permanent snowfields, and in early July the snowline was ~4500ft so many of the trails had large amounts of snow. However, after a week of sun, this disappeared to 6000ft to reveal a glorious array of alpine flowers so my high pt was 7200ft on the well named Panorama Ridge. If you get bored with woodland walks don't go here as the treeline is ~5500ft - all you can see are 200ft Douglas firs! It doesn't take long to stop being impressed with big trees and it takes a fair amount of effort to get a view.
What's the weather like? Well it's on the coast and so is supposed to get periods of rain interpersed with long sunny periods. So we waited for rain to have a rest day. Ho hum, apart from 1mm of rain over one night, it didn't rain at all until 2 days before going home (and had been dry for weeks beforehand)! It was bright to sunny the rest of the time with temperatures generally in the low 20s - perfect. Just had to rest eventually. When it did rain, we had a look at the tourist attractions - the Britannia museum of mining and the West coast railway world. So we had a morning at the Brittania copper mine site complete with 300yard underground railway journey. Then back to Squamish to look at the shops again.
What is there to do when it rains? Ah well, you can look at the gear shops, look at the local attractions... for a morning, then well... hmm, go back to sleep again. Yes folks, there's not a lot of non-outdoor interests there - I think we covered about 50% of them in a day. Whistler isn't very exciting,has poor gear shops and does lots of designer 'sports' wear. Could be alright for skiing though - indeed some glacier skiing and a few other high areas was still open. The lower runs were used for another purpose in summer - mountain bike 'trails' (or throw yourself down a hill suicide attempts).
We did quite a variety of routes on the Chief, aiming for all the 3.5 (!)star routes in our grade. There was "Sunblessed" 5.10b, an immaculate 50m hand jam jam crack plus a 10b flared jam crack. "Rock on" - a 4 pitch 3.5 star 10a. The guide book says "slow to dry" - "top pitch crux, hard when wet, and it often is - that's life". Surely we could handle a few wet holds - but pulling over the guardian overhand above the belay we found the corner walls steaming with water - 'wet' wasn't adequate! Great excitement ensued and we were glad to emerge into the sun at the top, 40m later. It's kinda hard to climb on well lubricated fingerlocks when the slip rate exceeds one's pulling rate. But do it anyway. "The flake", 5.10b laybacking and a tricky throw yourself into a grove and breath out to wedge in move. Others included "Exasperator" 5.10c - an incredible 50m finger jamming exercise where in parts one was fully suspended from finger locks. The crux was a leaning, very thin fingers crack with smears for the feet - some airtime here. Superb.
We had a day at the "Malamute", just over the road from the campsite, at the edge of the water with a good breeze and view of the Windsurfing and logging operations (everywhere at low tide are the bleached bones of logs jammed in the mud, as well as great rafts of logs being Tugged around). Recommend the 40m crackline of "High Mountain Woody", 5.9/HVS 5b as well as "Paul's crack" 5.10a/E1 5b, and down to the lower tier for the overhanging, arm grazing, V-slot of "Canadian Compromise" 5.10a/E1 5b ("Did you enjoy that - ask me later") and others. Squamish is on the main railway line and every day, regular as clockwork, enormous freight trains squeal their way along the valley with one local stopping passenger service. The valley echoes to the blasts of their horns as they negotiate the many level crossings. The line follows the foot of the crag (you climb from the ballast in places) and the guide warns of keeping gear off the line and moving on quickly - when a train passes, all climbing stops as the "earth moves" and what a racket! From 15ft, these engines are damm big! Thank God they just ding the bell going past and not let rip with the horn! And what a surprise, 80% of the freight is wood products (in both directions!).
And now for another guidebook (you can pick this up in the supermarket!) and a bit of a change - the Chek 'sports' crags, covering the valley North of Squamish thru Whistler and on to Pemberton. We moved campsite for this to the Calcheck campsite - a really good site with a spring issuing from a large tree as it seems, and quiet apart from weekends when Vancouverans spend their weekends tending campfires. It had a resident warden, "Wayne" that we expect Duncan would get on well with. There's quite a bit to look at, with routes from 15 to 40m, all 'roadside' and a few trad routes. We looked with interest at the Suicide Bluffs description with the enticing prospect of a tyrolean across the river (with large waterfall downstream) to get to it. However, after inspection we can report that the insitu cable is no longer there, the river's 60 ft wide and has a melt-water flow so look for excitement elsewhere, perhaps at the other tyrolean to the 'Basalt' crag. After doing most of the 5.10as and bs in the book over 4 days we returned to Squamish (a hour down the road).
The days got rather hot (30C plus) for a while and we considered other places inland. However, these (Skaha)looked even hotter, drier (the wet weather option) and at the best road speed of 50mph were 6 hours away. Perusal of the other inland crags book revealed such nicieties as the prevalence of ticks bearing Lyme's disease and a rather nasty disease from mouse droppings with the story of a worker sweeping out an old factory, dying 24 hours later. So we stayed put! Skaha looks good if you have a lot of time to spare and rain sets in on the coast. We could still find routes to do and did them (apart from the 12 pitch Angel's Crest 5.10b we'd been saving).
And now for the hazards. There are rumours of bears in the hills but not at Squamish. Inland there would be snakes. There doesn't seem to be a problem with rucksack chewing vermin. It's too far south for Blackfly but it is the insects you have to watch for. The mosquitos are a force to reckon with, they range from big to enormous with hypodermics that would make an elephant run! They were a real problem in the evenings to start with but eased off (leaving the scars), either because they died off, we became less attractive, we found a safer site or the local insect repellant sprayed everywhere as the first evening task, did seem to work. They did seem to go for visitors! The evenings entertainment involved tracking the whine down in the car and clapping hands for the kill with a cheer (or groan if the flattened corpse was embedded in a big red splat).
Of course we flew home to a typical British welcome and have since lost the toughened finger-tips. But I would highly recommend a visit to anyone - a great trip. If you want some route recommendations, I've got the guides...
