freeway

Last summer I climbed Freeway for the first time. Not that significant an achievement for me, even adjusting for my age, decrepitude or any other handicap, real or imagined. But, nevertheless, a big day on an exceptional route. So I thought that I should document it, before the memory fades.

Freeway is widely regarded as the best of the Chief’s long free routes. It has loomed large in my consciousness since my first summer season in Squamish in 2005. My climbing partner then, Andy Donson, had done Freeway on a previous visit. He and I did Grand Wall together, an intimidating climb for me at the time, and definitely at the edge of my granite trad competence. Though he was too tactful to rain hard on my parade, it was fairly obvious from his comments that Freeway was a much bigger deal and something I needed to work towards in the future.

The line of Freeway on the west face of the Stawamus Chief © Squamish Rock Guides/ Marc Bourdon

Over the next few summers, when I typically spent 3 or 4 weeks in Squamish each year, I gradually ticked off most of the easier long routes like Angels Crest, Squamish Buttress and the Ultimate Everything, mostly with my friend and fellow “Japanese Wife Club” member, Bob Jasperson. Though I didn’t fall off anything, the 5.10 pitches on those routes seemed hard enough and the cumulative effort fairly exhausting. A route with multiple solid 5.11 pitches like Freeway seemed a very distant prospect. In fact during that period I never even tried single-pitch 5.11 routes. In 2010 I made my usual summer trip to Squamish but left the family behind, which raised the possibility of getting more climbing done than usual. Colin Spark, an expat Brit, then between jobs, was staying with me. We actually set out one morning specifically to “have a go” at Freeway, but - fortunately, I suspect - got cold feet once we had arrived at the parking lot and decided to do Milk Road instead, a 5.10+ multi-pitch which follows a parallel but inferior line nearby.

After I moved full-time to Squamish in 2012, Freeway was promoted from the "maybe one day" list to "really must get it done". But it was a surprisingly long time before the stars aligned and I felt ready. Generally I have restricted my trying-hard efforts to sport routes, and kept my trad-climbing as low drama as possible: climbing onsight on routes well within my limit and focusing on placing good gear. Somehow, though, my comfort level rose. A few standouts included Yorkshire Gripper and Crime of the Century in 2013 and Hungry Wolf in 2014. Earlier this year I changed tack slightly and "head-pointed" a couple of routes: the quite bold Electric Ball and tough Spiderfly, my first Squamish trad 5.12. A sad affliction of Brit climbers, at least of my generation, is to translate trad ascents into Britain's weird E-grades. These last two seemed respectably in the E4 to low E5 zone, roughly the highest level that I used to manage on British cliffs in my mid-20s, before I discovered sport climbing.

Simon benchmarking himself for Freeway with an onsight lead of Yorkshire Gripper at the Smoke Bluffs

Another auspicious factor was the impending visit of my friend, and business partner, Simon Lee to Squamish for three weeks mid-summer. Simon is almost exactly my age and has had a very similar climbing evolution to me, both in terms of duration (decades …) and the objectives we have pursued at similar times (though he has managed to push the bar a little higher). He wanted a target for the trip, so Freeway was adopted even before he arrived. Simon has put in some time in Yosemite, including an ascent of the famous Astroman, to which Freeway is sometimes compared; success therefore seemed reasonably assured.

Ahead of his visit, I read as much as I could about Freeway on the web. A recurring theme was off-putting descriptions of the 4th and 5th pitches. For example:

“The 100 meter dihedral which is one of the best features of the route … can be split up into 3 11b-ish pitches or the first two can be linked together to make two monstrous 50 meter endurofests …. the climbing was spicy, extremely technical, with occasional wet finger locks, and cruxy dead dihedrals that were negotiated with many calf-burning stems on micro features. … the cruxes are short. The thing is: every pitch has a handful of them with no places to hang out and rest.”

Or, even more discouraging, from one of the best female sport climbers in the US:

“I found myself trying harder on the 11c pitch 4 than I tried during an entire month projecting Dreamcatcher (5.14d) in the forest below”

Consequently, I got a little anxious and began a long period of what - with hindsight - I realise to have been over-preparation. In particular I became obsessed with finding the correct shoes for Freeway (and sent stern emails to Simon suggesting he think likewise). Whilst I hate painful feet from over-tight shoes worn on long routes, the “calf-burning stems on micro features” seemed to require a precision shoe. My usual shoe choice for easier long routes is a baggy pair of old-school La Sportiva Mythos, and for harder single-pitch trad the same firm’s Miuras, sized as tight as I can bear. Neither seemed right for Freeway.

My first experiment was to buy some Miuras one half-size larger than usual. They were - initially - disappointing. I did a lap up Grand Wall in them, with Eric Hildrew, another Brit visitor, in town a few weeks before Simon and his family. The Miuras hurt, yet didn’t feel very precise. In a panic, I made a very left-field choice: a pair of Mythos, sized tighter than usual, and, for extra impact, in the women’s style which is significantly narrower. For a while I managed to delude myself that these were good shoes, and even took them for (another) lap up Grand Wall, with Simon and his son Tom. But a couple of obvious negatives were hard to ignore: one, that they were scarcely less sloppy than my normal Mythos, and, worse, two, that my feet were tending to pop out of the shoes’ shallow heel cups.

Simon and Tommy on Grand Wall

Eventually, in search of objectivity, I carried a bouldering pad and my entire shoe collection to a slab near my home, notable for some thin problems. In particular there is a sandbag V2 which starts with two consecutive rock-ups on small crystals, on which I often fail. The only reliable shoe I own for moves like that is the Five Ten Anasazi White, a stiff “plank” too foot-crushing to wear for any significant time. Predictably the problem wouldn’t go in Mythos of any flavour, nor in any of the other oddities I have accumulated down the years (Five Ten 5X’s, Red Chilli Spirits … czech carpet slippers … etc). However the aha! moment came when I did manage the two crystal moves in the new upsized Miura's, even though they felt awkward and clunky. I decided to stop fussing and just concentrate on getting those shoes thoroughly broken-in.

The chosen Miura's (and nut key)

Another issue was how many ropes to take. Double ropes are a common choice for the route, as it makes a retreat easy if the crux middle pitches go badly (the route is equipped for 50m rappels). On the other hand, double ropes are a time-suck on long routes with small stances, as they usually need frequent untangling. A single climbing rope plus a haul-line is an other option but still comes with a high clusterfuck risk. We decided to just take a single rope and assume we would either top out somehow or sacrifice some gear to rappel if absolutely necessary.

Besides agonising over equipment, I also asked around as to whether there were any lesser routes Simon and I should complete together as “a Road to Freeway”? My very keen friend Travis, who seems to have ticked almost every trad pitch at Squamish sub-5.13, offered the non-intuitive suggestion that the best preparation for Freeway would be the first pitch of Freeway itself. I now know that this is excellent advice, as the first pitch is indeed a microcosm of the whole route, but I wasn’t wholly convinced at the time, and certainly couldn’t motivate Simon to do it. So it came to pass that out first encounter with the route - on 3rd August - was the real deal, the actual send, rather than a reconnoitre.

We decided to climb the route in two blocks, with me leading the first five pitches. My web research had convinced me that the big dihedral pitches (pitches 4&5) were the crux and the roof (pitch 6) more of a formality, but of sufficient substance that Simon would feel he had participated adequately. As with most plans, the actual implementation played out quite differently.

Getting to Freeway from the Chief parking lot is much like getting to Grand Wall. You wander in amongst the forest boulders, expecting to find a single upwards trail but are instead confronted by a confusing plethora of trails eroded by boulderers, from which you randomly pick one. After a few minutes you are overcome by doubt, walk back down and try another one. Or at least that is how it usually works out for me.

The base of Freeway isn’t. Steep uphill dirt transitions subtly to steeper scrambling then a fixed rope up a smooth slab. “Where do I change into my climbing shoes?” I wondered. At the top of the fixed rope, of course, but when I got there I found Simon lashed to the anchors and nowhere to stand but a smooth groove full of cedar needles. The day after our ascent I wrote on Facebook that the crux of the route is finding a way to clean your shoes before starting the first pitch, and, honestly, I still hold that opinion. The pitch is technical and insecure right from the first move, so you don’t want any extraneous material between your rubber and the rock.

In various sources pitch 1 gets 5.11a or 5.11b or a split-grade in between. Whichever, it is stout. Lots of thin laybacking and undercutting with poor feet for 20m or so. Eventually the holds grow and there are few jamming moves but the angle steepens. The anchors were more distant than I anticipated. Pitch 2 starts with a blind reach around an arête. The rest is easy jamming up a nice splitter. Some recommend linking pitches 1 and 2 but the rope stretch would guarantee some very long slides for the second if they fell low on pitch 1, so I wouldn’t suggest it. Pitch 3 is very aesthetic: a long downwards traverse along a flared feature to a nice belay ledge, mostly protected by bolts. Not very hard climbing but stimulating: as the face below is steep and blank and the ground already quite distant. Somewhere in the middle of this pitch I realised that I was having fun; an emotion that sometimes eludes me for the whole duration of multi-pitch routes. Unfortunately my positivity drained away whilst Simon seconded, as I had time to fret about the “I tried harder than on Dreamcatcher” pitch 4 above. It looked very similar to pitch 1, but steeper.

Simon following the easy splitter crack on pitch 2

The interesting downwards-traverse on pitch 3

In maximally-apprehensive mode, I indulged in various spurious gear-rerackings and shoe-retightenings before setting off. To my surprise, the style of climbing seemed to suit me, progress was pretty smooth and my good mood returned. One question mark in my mind was whether to split the pitch at a small ledge with gear anchors or keep going for a full 50m pitch? A team ahead of us, now struggling on pitch 5, had split the pitch. I decided to do the same. As the climbing had gone well up to that point I assumed the crux must still be ahead, so I was happy to minimize rope drag and recover all the small cams I has used below. In fact, it wasn't a great decision. As I intended to keep leading, we had to contend with an awkward swap-over. And then the pitch - let’s call it 4(b) - proved no harder than 4(a) and even had a bolt at its crux. So: top tip #2 if you are contemplating the route - don’t split pitch 4.

Simon following pitch 4(b)

Simon at this point was getting a little impatient for the sharp end, so he set off first up pitch 5. I had seen the guys above doing some horrific-looking tips laybacking, so wasn’t wholly upset. However, being an independent-thinking kind of guy, Simon found some much easier beta, using … well, maybe I shouldn’t say. Following the pitch, I found one of the toughest sections to be passing a dead tree stump in the main corner. One day, when that falls out, the pitch will be harder. Near the belay ledge the climbing becomes quite runout and changes character from crack grovelling to big face moves between knob features. I wasn’t wholly unhappy that he got the lead on this either.

Simon starting pitch 5

... and higher on the same pitch. The large overhang above the Truckstop is visible above.

The ledge system above pitch 5 is known as the Truckstop. Though you can just about sit down, it is not the most relaxing place. The ledge is partially filled with jammed boulders and the whole thing is capped by a large horizontal overhang. Then there is lot of air underneath. Overall it is both claustrophobic and vertiginous, a weird mix. We caught up with the other team here. Embarrassingly I failed to recognize one of them, who reminded me that we had spoken together at length on two previous occasions, about adventure tourism opportunities in Oman. They decided to rappel down, feeling that the route was too hard them(or maybe in disgust at my senile forgetfulness?).

The next pitch breaks through a two-tiered overhang slightly left of the anchors, with only the first couple of metres visible to the belayer. Simon again took the lead on this. He managed to pull through the first overhang OK, and disappeared from my sight. Unfortunately he then botched the next moves, and took a short expletive-laden fall back into my view. One more misfire later, he deciphered the moves and finished the pitch.

As he started to take in the rope for me to second, I realised that I badly needed to shit. It would be an understatement to say that this was bad timing. I pondered trying to hold out for longer, but from what I knew of the pitches above, there were no ledges until the top of the cliff. An obvious problem was that there was no question of removing rope or harness on the Truckstop, but a quick trial revealed that my cotton trousers were just sufficiently lycra’d and stretchy to be pulled out of harm's way whilst the harness stayed on (thank you, Patagonia). I tied off the rope at the anchors, leaving about six or seven metres of slack, then shuffled backwards in a crouched position as far as I could along the ledge, ass-outwards, hoped that no-one in the parking lot had binoculars or zoom-lens trained in my direction, then did the deed. For good measure, I wrapped the turd in some tissue and hurled it even further down the ledge, with a silent prayer that it would be sufficiently distant to decompose or mummify without stinking out future Freeway ascentionists, perhaps earning me such notoriety that I might have to leave town forever.

Simon meanwhile was getting confused by my lack of progress on the pitch, and had pulled the free rope super-tight. The possibility of being catapulted into the void caused me some anxiety as I removed the anchors and started climbing. This eased once I was over the first overhang and we could communicate easily again. Somehow I then failed to fall off the crux move above, though my beta - a long lurch to a distant finger-lock - was not elegant.

Simon’s position was a hanging belay on which it didn't look easy to swap over, so I took the next pitch. Descriptions for this pitch are rather confusing, suggesting it is all about a strenuous rightwards traverse in a very exposed position. When I got to the end of the obvious traverse line, the sun was directly in my eyes and it was hard to know where to go. I blindly chose upwards, which turned out to be correct. This section is for me the finest climbing in Squamish: you venture up vertically for about fifteen metres on improbable face holds, then make a final slopey diagonal mantle on to a small but perfectly-positioned belay stance, with a 300 metre clean drop to the ground below. Before bringing up Simon I paused to enjoy the solitude and overwhelming feeling that this long-sought-after route was now in the bag.

Simon on pitch 7. The excessive depth of field here makes the base of the cliff look deceptively close, rather than 300m below. 

Simon finishing pitch 7

The three pitches of the Express Lane finish to Freeway, between us and the cliff top, are face climbing at a lower angle to the rock below. Not pure slab climbing, but reclined enough to be fairly relaxing. We alternated leads. Unfortunately Simon again took a short fall. I sensed his focus had dropped after blowing the onsight on the roof pitch. In contrast he cruised the very last pitch, a short arête with some classic barn-door laybacking, which I thought was quite fluff-able. After that, it was all uneventful. We wandered down without getting lost and headed directly to the Brew Pub. At the next table was a guy from Alberta who I had climbed with for a day two summers before; predictably I didn't recognize him ...

For me, an unexpected feature of climbing Freeway was the consistent quality of the climbing. In theory I knew that in advance, because of the online hype, star ratings in guidebooks and general reputation. But that kind of thing doesn't always correlate with reality, especially with long routes. At least three of the pitches - #3 (the downwards traverse) and #4 (the crux dihedral) as well as pitch 7 (the airy wander above the overhangs, already praised) - rank amongst the best in Squamish, and all of the pitches are good. My main emotion with most of the long routes, that have been milestones in my climbing, has been satisfaction in getting the job done, coupled with relief to have finished. With Freeway, my main feeling has been “must go do that again”.