A selection of Climbing News, Updates & Info.
I decided to take on the task of producing a new Chief poster with 50 Classic Climbs on it. Back in January(2011) I flew with a photographer who took high resolution images of every section of the walls. Tim (the photographer) compiled all of the images into one giant montage of the chief. It total we used about 300 images; this allowed us to keep the sharpness of images so you can see individual crack systems, flakes and even a few belays. We then overlaid 50 Classic Squamish climbs, with belays, routes numbers, names, grades and pitches. The whole image was cleaned up by removing, roads, power lines etc.We then found a printer that could maintain the resolution and printed it as large as he would allow without losing quality. The end result hopefully will get the approval of the Squamish climbing community. There are two climbers on one of the routes…good luck finding them. http://www.50classicsquamishclimbs.com/
All the major climbing retailers in Squamish, Whistler and Vancouver are now carrying the poster. Please take a look and any feed back is welcome.
After Zombie roof I went looking for Squamish roof cracks and Colin Moorhead (Local climbing oracle) mentioned he had recently looked at a line climbed by Peter Croft back in the 80s that had not been repeated. I headed out one day after guiding and gave “Baby Bum” a try. I had intended to be home in a few hours but ended up in a gear rescue mission in the dark. The line traverse out from a rope swallowing flare and around a steep roof into vertical bushwhacking; no anchor had been installed. I led up and after getting shut down had to aid the roof. Once around the roof, rope drag stopped me moving, I had to down climb lower off a piece and my partner had to climb up removing gear and eventually getting to my high point only to find a nest of marginal gear as an anchor point. To make things worse I had Felix with me at the base and as it turned dark sent Darragh around to the top of the Papoose to rappel in and get the gear. I had to get Felix home.
I contacted Peter and he gave his permission to add an anchor but no protection bolts; I rapped in later that week fixed up the anchor, gave the top a scrub and worked out the gear. I also worked on the trail as I hope others might head up around the Papoose and try it. I spent a few days working the crux roof and eventually solved it with a painful upward shoulder press – I have the scars to prove it. In the end I had to use double rope technique to reduce rope drag and fix the crux nut as placing it on lead was impossible. Here is a quick clip of Baby Bum, good luck working out the beta from this!