Blackwater, at Murrin Park's evocatively-named Petrifying ("Pet") Wall, is another entry in the new Squamish guidebook's Top 100 list. The route is renown for staying wet in all but the driest conditions as it follows a drainage line, but it has been dry recently. Stupidly I have been avoiding it, despite several frequent visits to Pet. This stems from deranged climber-logic: Blackwater's grade (5.12a/ 7a+) is a level that I consider too easy to be worth "projecting", but potentially too hard to "flash".
Jack Ziegler just visible working Blackwater, back in September
As it turned out, Blackwater went down without too much of a fight. I failed on a flash attempt, but soothed my hurt ego with a plausible "cold hands" excuse. Then I succeeded on my first redpoint try. I hadn't rehearsed any of the moves in detail, but still managed to flow up it in a loose scrappy style. This felt good - and was a big contrast to my tightly-choreographed ascent of the Heifer a few days before. I wish I could conjure up that style of climbing on demand. For me it seems to only come after a lot of climbing volume - which has been the case recently - plus confidence boosted by a few successes - ditto. It didn't even last one day: on Thursday I got shut down on another (allegedly easier!) Pet Wall classic, Burning down the Couch, through a combination of hesitation at a not-that-hard section and getting scared on a not-that-bad runout.
If anyone is reading this with a specific interest in Blackwater, I recommend it very highly if you can catch it in dry condition. As a single pitch of vertical face climbing, it is as good as any I have done anywhere in the world. Almost every move is interesting. The climbing is sustained for 30m but has enough marginal rests to keep the effort reasonable. The final crux, at about 25m, ends with a big move to a definite jug, then above is a fabulous "glory road" of huge holds to follow before reaching the chains. Aside from a sketchy start - best subdued with a stick-clip - the bolts are all intelligently placed.
Friday has dawned exactly in line with the midweek forecast. This sequence of morning photos taken over the last three days spells it out.
View south from our deck, 7:30am Wednesday
and same view at the same time on Thursday
... and on Friday
And here's the grim new forecast. With this much rain ahead, it looks very likely that my ascent of Blackwater was the last in 2012!
Anyway, I shouldn't complain. I have been very lucky to have six weeks of continuous good weather since I started this late season sport-climbing campaign. I have also been really lucky with reliable and knowledgeable local partners, almost all found through the Squamish climbing forum. Thanks especially to Todd and Kay, who have been supportive through my projects.
The next task is to figure out some way to stay sane through the winter ...
POSTSCRIPT: whilst writing this post I stumbled over this interesting account of the early days of Pet Wall climbing by Perry Beckham, one of Squamish's strongest climbers in the 1980s. And this article at Rock and Ice by guidebook writer, Marc Bourdon, is pretty interesting on the full history of sport climbing in Squamish.
