an englishman in squamish: February 2019

The problem

Prise de Tête is a problem at Franchard Sablons in the Fontainebleau ("Font") forest south-east of Paris, widely regarded as the best bouldering area in the world. The grade is around Font 5+/6a or V2/ 3'ish for North Americans. The problem is also #19 in the "Red circuit" at that area. Circuits are a concept conceived decades ago in Fontainebleau to make bouldering more relevant to multi-pitch or alpine climbing. Problems within a circuit, numbered discreetly with paint, are climbed in a strict consecutive sequence to simulate a long route. Much less fashionable these days; the paint marks now mainly serve to orientate people in finding specific individual problems.

The context

Sometime in the early 1990s, various firms in the US and Europe began selling bouldering pads. Hardly a radical technology, pads could probably have been developed any time in the previous half-century or even before, but what really mattered was their cultural acceptance. Though there was surreptitious softening of landings with backpacks, puffy jackets, old mattresses, etc in places like UK gritstone for a decade or two previously, anyone wielding a purpose-built mat in, say, the late 1970s/ early 1980s when I began climbing, would have been mocked mercilessly.

By the turn of the millennium the bouldering pad had changed the world - for climbers, anyway. Rendered "safe", bouldering mushroomed into a huge new sub-sport, with all kinds of impacts from explosive usage growth at specific climbing areas - Squamish's Grand Wall forest is a good example - to major changes in gender participation to redefinition of the indoor climbing gym.

However my first bouldering pad purchase was prompted by a more mundane reason: becoming a dad. Bouldering venues seemed much more reasonable to inflict on a baby than cliffs for roped climbing (notably the ubiquitous British sea cliff!). Leo therefore visited places like Burbage and the Roaches in the UK's Peak district while still aged zero. The pad was used as often for changing nappies as falling on.

In 1999 my brainy nephew, Jeremy, who spent most of his 20's in a grand tour of the world's most prestigious academic establishments, moved to HEC (pronounced ash-eh-say) near Versailles, for a master's course ostensibly in economics but apparently in partying. Presciently I had somehow inculcated him into climbing during his undergraduate years, so he also became a habitué of nearby Font. That year and the next we visited him several times, combining tourism in Paris for Shoko with bouldering for me.

Leo strikes an existentialist pose in St-Germain-des-Pres

The most elaborate of these trips was at a weekend in spring 2001, just as Jeremy was finishing up at HEC. My sister Sally also joined us. We stayed in a cute boutique hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, at the heart of Paris' once-bohemian, now just expensive, Left Bank. Jeremy climbed with me on both days. In Saturday we went to Bas Cuvier, Font's most popular area. The next day started with brunch at a painfully-hip club, the Bermuda Onion, with which Jeremy had become acquainted. This was memorable primarily for two factors: that the food took hours to arrive (bad) and that the dining room had giant skylights which opened to let in the morning sun (cool).

Jeremy, Sally, Leo and Shoko at the Bermuda Onion, great food once it arrived

Jeremy and I then escaped to Font for an afternoon/ evening session. We chose Franchard Sablons for reasons I have long since forgotten. Probably because Jeremy had checked it out before and found it to be quieter at weekends. By chance - and this really made the day - there was one other group there, but they were true Font royalty: Jo Montchauseé, the guidebook writer and pioneer; his son; son's girlfriend and their other friends. We ended up working on a few problems with them. These days many people's experience of bouldering is almost entirely of this type - big groups playing on a single boulder - but for me at the time it was a total novelty.

The younger Montchauseé crew (and Jeremy)

Jo mentioned something to me that stuck in my mind (and has had some resonance subsequently): that, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the opportunity on his doorstep and supportive dad, his son had taken no interest in climbing until his late teens - but was now psyched and climbing hard.

The ascent

Jeremy styling (do people still say this?) Prise de Tête

I don't remember much about Pris de Tete. Mostly that it looked easy but in reality was slopey and baffling. Montchausee père et fils demonstrated various ways to do it effortlessly. The rest of us flailed but got up it eventually. Jeremy may have done it before me; generally he was climbing well at this time. The diary just notes that "we took ages".

Another shot of Jeremy at Franchard Sablons - identity of this problem now lost

Ditto

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Font since this visit. Bouldering did continue to be a genuine, if unambitious, interest for a few more years subsequently. Notably I discovered and developed several areas in the west of Ireland near the family cottage, including a beachside V6 that made the "Irish Top 50" list in the first Bouldering in Ireland guidebook, and a massive area of bogland granite, Derryrush.

The Barn - a fun moderate boulder in the Derryrush area in southern Connemara which I discovered in 2004

Butterfingers, V3 - another addition to Derryrush from 2004

Unfortunately three arm/ wrist fractures between 2009 and 2013 have made me very wary of ground falls, even on to pads, and the horrific talus under most Squamish boulder problems has reinforced that. I hardly ever boulder outside now. I like to think that would change if I ever found myself at a bouldering area with genuinely flat landings. Even looking back at the old Font photos is quite inspiring.

Like 2017, some of my best moments in 2018 were adventures in the local alpine. Of these, splitboarding Mt Garibaldi in May with Leo was the undoubted highlight; in fact, something of an all-time life experience. I have been interested in climbing Garibaldi ever since moving to Squamish - it dominates the town and is the most northern of the Cascades volcano chain that includes Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens - but had been put off by stories I heard from friends, especially concerning the long approach along Brohm Ridge. In July 2017 Leo and I considered it as a crampons-and-axes style alpine climb but changed objective to Wedge instead.

That we felt ready to splitboard Garibaldi a year later was a consequence of two factors. One was the indirect result of James spending the whole of the 2017/18 season in coached sessions with the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club. As I found myself committed to driving James to Whistler most weekends I bought a season pass and ended up doing far more snowboarding than I had done before. With backcountry objectives in mind I specifically tried to improve my woefully-terrible riding on steeper terrain. I downloaded an inclinometer app onto my phone and measured a few of the resort slope angles. I was surprised to find that 40 degree slopes (the angle at which backcountry descents start to be classified as “steep”) are pretty common, even on short sections of regular black runs. I worked harder at linking turns at that angle and banned myself from employing heel-side sideslips (the “safe space” for the timid snowboarder).

Leo dropping in to DOA

The other factor was Leo embracing splitboarding really vigorously from the autumn of 2017. This led to him (and I) acquiring more equipment, learning to use it and moving up the learning curve in travelling through more complex backcountry terrain. In December 2017 Leo and I rode the classic Husume couloir, just outside the resort boundary above Blackcomb glacier. Though classified as a steeper objective it didn’t feel especially difficult. For both of us it was also the first time we rode carrying ice axes - a significant psychological boost. A month later we descended the slightly-spookier DOA couloir in similar style. Later in the season Leo and his school friend Cameron then “enchained” DOA and Husume in a single day. Around Easter 2018 we spent four days in an AST2 course in the Whistler slackcountry then three days based out of the Jim Haberl hut in the Tantalus mountains, riding with a guided group. Though this was frustrating in various ways (I was reminded that I am temperamentally unsuited to being guided and prefer making my own decisions) we spent one excellent day ascending almost to the summit of Dionne and riding down a steep couloir from there.

nicely colour-coded while bootpacking the Dionne couloir

The Garibaldi trip necessarily had to take place over a weekend as Leo was still in school. It was also constrained by the late-spring snow conditions. Our plan was to hike up Brohm on a Saturday, camping as high as possible on the mountain then get to the summit early on Sunday hoping to catch rideable corn snow on the steep north-east face before the temperature rose and the face turned to slush. Possibly unnecessarily I also insisted that we take our avalanche airbag packs. As those packs are only ~30 litre capacity, and we needed to bring glacier travel and mountaineering stuff, our camping gear had to be severely pared down. No tent just aggressively-compressed sleeping bags, ultralight sleeping pads and a SIL tarp.

We were able to park at about 1000m on Brohm Ridge. Beyond that point the snow on the FSR was too deep for the 4Runner. I had been warned that the snowmobile club who have sole tenure on the ridge (a can of worms beyond the scope of this blog post!) were having their end-of-season party that weekend, so we attempted to gain the crest of the ridge via a decommissioned forest road that bypasses the sledders’ road. This was probably a mistake as it cost us a lot of time and energy but at least we avoided inhaling 2-stroke fumes. The horizontal section of the ridge, which eventually accesses the provincial park boundary, is a notorious grind for non-mechanised travelers, worsened by the constant buzz of snowmobile engines. The only compensation is the amazing close-up view of the Garibaldi massif’s vast west face.

Dalton Dome and Mt Atwell from Brohm Ridge

Tantalus range from Brohm Ridge

At the east end of the ridge, sledder tenure ends and there is a short climb up to the Warren Glacier. Most people climbing Garibaldi via Brohm camp on moraines there but we continued across the glacier aiming for the ridge just below the summit. Here we made another navigational blunder, heading straight up an abrupt slope direct to the ridge rather than finding a shallower-angled ascent further north. This involved a worrying bergschrund crossing followed by bootpacking up very steep collapsing snow. We had been on the move for most of the day at this point and I was very tired. Thankfully Leo, who is much fitter than me, took over the lead.

Leo on the Warren Glacier

Our intended bivouac spot turned out to be perfectly located with astonishing views north to The Table and Garibaldi Lake and west to the Tantalus range. Leo busied himself taking sunset photos while I dug out a trench for our bivvy, attempting to replicate an idea from a YouTube video I had watched the previous evening. Then we endured a very cold night. I guess the temperature only fell a degree or two below zero but it was sufficient to re-harden the surface snow and freeze our water bottles.

Garibaldi summit from our bivvy

Looking west to the Tantalus

Jones vs Prior; Karakoram vs Spark

Tantalus sunset

Our tarp construction

On Sunday morning we started moving at around 8am. Our bivouac site was around 2200m, so we had another 500m to climb. The initial section up to the moat (Canadian for bergschrund) below the final face was just skinnable, though we slid a few times on the hard snow. Beyond the moat we bootpacked in crampons. To save weight I had only the micro-spikes variety designed to keep hikers safe on horizontal trails. However they seemed just about adequate for this 45 degree slope. Helpfully a party ahead of us had already kicked some steps in the hard snow. The actual summit area was far sharper and more spectacular than I had expected. To the south is a substantial cliff invisible from the valley, presumably a remnant of the volcanic crater that is now splintered into three summits: Garibaldi itself, the very pointy Mt Atwell and more rounded Dalton Dome.

Leo on the final bootpack

Mt Atwell and Squamish from the summit

Leo on the summit

For me the crux of the trip was always going to be riding back down the north-east face. In powder conditions with the moat well filled-in I can imagine it feels quite friendly, but we had just a few cm’s of corn snow over icey hardpack stuff with the moat open below the fall-line. However the day was so beautiful - no clouds anywhere - and adrenaline already flowing so freely that there was really no question of not attempting it. Moreover, another mountaineering party had appeared while we lingered on the summit. Neither they nor the earlier ascentionists had carried skis up the final face, opting to reverse the bootpack, so honour demanded that we actually use the boards we had carried up. As soon as I committed to the first turn I realised that the descent would be fine. We broke it into two pitches, Leo leading both. On the steeper second pitch, Leo lost his heelside edge and took a short slide that he arrested fairly easily. I smugly rode past where he had fallen feeling very superior but then almost immediately blew an edge too.

Leo strapped in on the summit

Leo second turn

From below the moat, we rode the lower glacier slope face back to camp in a single mellow run of about a kilometre long, one at a time. With the scary section complete and reuniting with the jetboil imminent (second breakfast …), this was pure pleasure. I’ll draw a veil over the rest of the day: reversing Brohm ridge back to the car. Not fun at all, but inconsequential in context.

Leo starting the long mellow run back to our bivvy site (just visible left of centre)

Leo and I back at our bivvy spot after our ascent/ descent.
We rode the whole way from the summit to this point then another 300m of vertical below

Summer 2018 involved what now seems to be the BC norm of a week or more of “extreme” heat (apparently anything above 30C for people who have not lived in a desert) or wildfire smoke or both. In mid-August we were in the “both” scenario, rendering conventional rock climbing very unattractive. My friend Chris proposed a trip to Mt Sloan, a pointy rock peak about 150km inland from Squamish whose north-east ridge is considered a BC classic. The approach drive involved the sorta-famous Hurley road through the mountains beyond Pemberton. Though the mountain itself did not appeal very much, I had never been out that way before so agreed to the trip.

Sloan from Gold Bridge

We drove to the area on the previous day, staying in Gold Bridge, a remote town that does not seem to have received any fresh investment since the 1970s. On the way there, just outside Pemberton, we had seen two black bears close to the road. The next morning, driving to the trailhead, we startled another. Chris, who grew up in northern BC and has already exceeded a reasonable lifetime quota for bear encounters, was somewhat unnerved by this. Confirming his fears, an hour into our climb, where we gained the north-east ridge, we could see two very large bears in the meadows of the valley beyond. One was distinctly brown and humped, probably a grizzly. We were less sure about the other. I nervously joked that the bears would be unlikely to waste energy climbing up to the ridge to investigate us - moments later we found bear scat right on the ridge trail! However, thankfully, this was the end of bear-drama.

Grizzlies?

Or one grizzly and one black bear, or ...

Chris at the start of the ridge

We had decided to treat the ridge as a scramble and did not bring a rope. We also read all the trip reports for the ridge which we could find online. This combo did not work well: the trip reports confused us and at an early stage led us into terrain that seemed distinctly fifth-class and rope-worthy. We ended up down-climbing about a hundred metres. Following our instincts instead, which generally meant sticking to the main ridgeline, worked fine. The summit was a cool spot, but views slightly disappointing as the air was so hazy. Descent, using the “scrambles” route, mostly a talus-grind, was lengthy and unpleasant. I enjoyed one brief interlude, bumbling up some moderate lines on a beautiful white granite boulder while Chris - who had not brought rock shoes - watched enviously. Lower on the descent we made a significant navigational mistake and spent a couple of hours negotiating worst-case BC mountain vegetation, notably the infamous slide alder.

Chris saluting the tiresome "notch" area where we wasted time climbing the subsidiary tower

Chris on the summit

Bouldering break on the descent

Perhaps as I had been toughened up by this experience, a few days later I agreed willingly to another oddball adventure: crossing the Squamish river (my second time) with my friend Kris to explore the Touch and Go towers. These tottering forested spires and ridges are remnants of volcanic activity just a kilometre or so from downtown Squamish. (It is a sad reflection of the municipality's indifference to its natural surroundings that you'll find no official recognition of this extraordinary fact anywhere.) Kris' aluminum canoe was far lighter and easier to use than the wooden beast I had borrowed on my previous trip. From the west bank of the river, we hiked up old hydro access roads until behind the Castle. A steep scramble in old growth trees gains a col on the Castle's ridge, from where you can look very vertiginously back to the river. Kris led a short (15m?) but very loose pitch to the Castle's summit. This is an unsettling spot apparently composed of wholly-detached blocks. The existing anchors included tape slings so ancient that they had been encrusted in lichen. Kris deployed his guide/ SAR skills to assemble something more convincing, including a reassuring piton (though it would have been more reassuring had the whole summit not vibrated with every hammer blow).

The Castle from Squamish

Squamish from The Castle

Fifty year old sling?

And other tat ...

Kris demonstrates advance anchor repair skills

Finishing the job

After rappeling we went on a bushwhack in search of the legendary Teapot tower, allegedly climbed once in the 1950s and still awaiting a second ascent. The first tower we found looked plausibly climbable from its backside, like the Castle. I claimed the lead as Kris had led the Castle. Our route consisted of a loose earth scramble followed by squirrelling some distance up a poorly-attached young cedar, from which it was possible to mantle another cedar branch on the tower then ascend some low angle moss to the summit. There was no evidence of any previous human visit to this tower. However it was not the Teapot (we discovered later that it might be known as the Fiasco). After descending and traversing some old growth forest to the north for a few hundred meters we found the actual Teapot, which has a definite "spout" and is truly intimidating: overhanging and loose on its backside and merely loose on its river face. We did however note a very unorthodox possible route to the summit which we hope to investigate on another visit.

The Fiasco tower from the Castle, Teapot tower semi-visible down to the right

Chris above the cedar shenanigans, beginning the moss slab, on the Fiasco

Improvised summit log on the Fiasco

The final alpine excursion of the summer was climbing Mt Currie with James, my friend Luc and his son Kyle over the Labour Day long weekend. Very much a last minute idea of Luc's and not something on my radar at all, but it was great fun. Though the classic view of Currie from Pemberton makes it look almost Himalayan in scale, the easiest route from the Green river valley is just a hike, though a long and complex one with about 2000m of vertical ascent. As this area is still wonderfully unspoilt and little-trodden I will hold back on giving much detail. I'll just say that we did it over three days, spending two nights camping above the tree line. I carried a tent up there, assuming Luc would too, only to discover that he had only brought sleeping bags. I mentioned that the weather forecast, which I had checked carefully on spotwx.com, called for rain on the second night. He shrugged this off with typical Quebecois insouciance, claiming that I had consulted inferior sources and was wrong. To James and I's great amusement we were indeed hit by a quite serious storm on the second night after bagging the summit. Luc deigned to let Kyle sleep in the tent with us but insisted that he slept only in the tent's vestibule to preserve his alpine honour!