In the beginning was the yellow gate. Or to be more accurate: the mysterious absence beyond it, where there had always been a wall of trees. Piecing facts together later I would discover that two events had coincided that spring: BC hydro had clear cut the forest beyond the gate and a phone company had built a spur road to put an antenna on a hydro tower at its end. But all I knew on that April day in 2015 at Chek was that something had changed and it deserved further investigation.
Between the yellow gate and the Sea to Sky Highway was a small parking lot, sometimes used by climbers heading to some cliffs to the west. I parked there and instead wandered south up the spur road. After a few minutes I passed an intriguingly steep but small cliff at a bend in the road then a few metres further found a much grander feature: a short canyon where the road ended, flanked on both sides by mossy but tall slabs at various angles. A perfect candidate for route development, except for the steel building at its centre, surrounded by fencing and security cameras.
A few months later I showed the small cliff to my friend Chris Hecimovic, who deemed it worth developing. I christened it the “Shit Show” in homage to Chek’s similar angle but infinitely more impressive Big Show cliff on the other side of the hill. Over the next year I developed six routes there, from low 5.10 to 5.12d, then distributed a one page topo under a gentler name: “
The Substation”. To my surprise it proved popular for a short while.
More significant in that period were two other events. During one bolting session, a convoy of trucks passed me then later returned with the dismantled remains of the building in the canyon. Later I was able to talk to one of the contractors who confirmed that the cell phone company had ended its tenure. Within a few weeks I had fixed my first scrubbing line there, on an aesthetic low angle rib feature relatively free of moss, and tentatively named the canyon “Electric Avenue”.
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Drone shot of Electric Avenue after the first few routes were scrubbed.
The Substation is just visible overhanging the dirt road back toward the highway |
On every occasion that I drove from Squamish to Chek around that time, I was struck by the faux-alpine nature of the hill that rose two hundred metres above the Substation. It had a pointy summit and a large expanse of bare rock forming a ridge on its west side. Intriguingly a very steep cliff was just visible east of the summit. I once tried scrambling direct to the summit through the second-growth forest above the Substation but got lost in a maze of vegetated slabs.
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| Aerial view of "Mt Chek" from the south |
In December 2015, Chris and I tried a different approach, contouring south of the hill beyond Electric Avenue and bushwhacking up an interminable steep gully. Our efforts were rewarded when we emerged from the dense trees at a col with views eastwards. A few metres beyond we found the steep cliff just visible from the 99. It was as impressive as we had hoped but we were clearly not the first people to find it: bleached old ropes hung there like rigging on a ghost ship. Unused bolts and hangers were scattered all over the talus from a torn bag still clipped to a claim bolt but gnawed by rodents. When I got home I emailed Tyrone Brett, once the most active developer at Chek but by then submerged in work for MEC. He confirmed that he had been there ten years before and named it “The Monastery".
In March the next year I returned alone, flagging a tentative trail to the Monastery, and finding an easy scramble from there to the summit, a surprising flat area with stunning views to Sky Pilot and The Chief to the south, the Tantalus range to the west and Tricouni to the north. Around that time, neither of my two sons, Leo (sixteen at that time) or James (eight years younger), had any interest in climbing. However James would try anything if encouraged. It struck me that the summit might be a fun place to adopt as a family camping spot, especially as there was no evidence that anyone else ever went up there.
Over spring and summer 2016 we did exactly that, enjoying having a small but very special slice of the Sea to Sky to ourselves, encountering only grouse and the occasional bear. Meanwhile we began developing Electric Avenue slowly. James climbed the rib for the area’s inaugural route: “
Taiga Face”, 5.7 - his first lead. He would go on to lead several more moderates nearby.
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| James making the first ascent of Taiga Face in light rain, 2016 |
Meanwhile we regularly hiked past the still-virgin and still-secret Monastery, which I fully intended to develop when the time seemed right. One line in particular interested me: a sinuous overhanging groove at the right end of the cliff.In fall 2016 my friend Luc Martin and his family came to Electric Avenue to help clear alders. He made a critical discovery: that the yellow gate was no longer locked and cars could be driven up to Electric Avenue, reducing the hike to the Monastery. Coincidentally, for reasons I never fully understood, knowledge of the Monastery expanded to a couple of other route developers and suddenly there was an unseemly gold rush up there for the obvious lines. I dropped a rope down my groove to claim it for the spring.
In 2017 I spent 110 days at Chek, almost all of which working on new routes. Development at the Monastery was a frenetic scene in which I sometimes felt marginalised despite having (literally) laid the path for the other participants. On the positive side, about thirty good quality routes between 5.11 and 5.13 were established very quickly; a net gain for the whole community. My groove line (“
Puzzle Box”, 5.12b) would eventually find recognition in the Top 100 list of the Squamish Select guidebook (thanks Marc!) and most of my other lines are also popular.
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| Monastery development crew, 2017 |
Development at Electric Avenue progressed at a more relaxed pace, perhaps because there were no big lines there that might stand out in an ambitious person’s resume. Some other developers joined the party - Krissy MacKay, Tess Egan and Jay Robinson, Jack Fieldhouse - but we had no trouble dividing up the available terrain between us.
A surprise event that year was Leo taking up climbing, after a decade of almost non-stop soccer. The initial reason was his school’s Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme, which required a physical activity in which he could measurably progress. A guide friend, Emilisa, assessed Leo in the Smoke Bluffs and established that he could barely climb 5.7 - there was certainly scope for rapid improvement. As I had had some success throwing James in at the deep end by leading climbs at an early stage, I challenged Leo to make the first ascent of a cool-looking face route at Electric Avenue which I had just cleaned. Impressively he learned how to work moves, take lead falls and make redpoint attempts then succeeded on the first ascent within five weeks of the Bluffs assessment. The route “
Torii Gate” (named for a Japanese shinto symbol often placed at the base of steps to a shrine; the Monastery trail begins right by the climb) is in the guidebook at 5.10c but many suggest it could be 5.11.
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| Leo after sending "Torii Gate" |
In the fall, Chris Hecimovic and I went exploring again, hoping to confirm my hunch that another cliff lay beneath the Monastery. We came away with “The Hermitage”, an elegant cliff of very smooth compact stone, unfortunately rather distant from everywhere. A couple of days later I went on a solo hike from the established cliffs at the Circus area of Chek along the eastside canyon beyond then contouring around the whole hill to Electric Avenue and completing a loop. I did not find a better way to the Hermitage but did find many giant Douglas Firs and a lot of bear scat.
2018 brought more of the same (75 days at Chek), with the addition of some furtive work at the Hermitage. The highlight was a new style of project which had been on my mind since the summit camping sessions in 2016: a multi-pitch connecting large slabs on the west ridge of “Mt Chek” (as I had begun to call the hill). For this monstrous task I needed help and recruited Tess and Jay. We split the estimated ten pitches in half and got to work separately, right through a hot June and July. I took the upper half, leaving home at 5am every day to maximise time in the shade. We combined forces with James and their son Kye for the first ascent. The route “
Frontside 180”, 5.8 (named for the views and a reference to the easiest park trick in snowboarding) became an instant Squamish classic, receiving multiple ascents on most dry days ever since. In 2019, the route won a “Golden Scrub Brush Award” for best new moderate multi-pitch. At the award event, we sent James and Kye up on stage to collect it.
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Frontside 180 team, before the first ascent
Tess, Kye, Jay, James, me |
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| James on the FA, pitch 5 |
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| Chaotic post-FA selfie |
Meanwhile Leo and his school friend Nic were almost constantly at Electric Avenue working through the grades. By the end of the summer they had climbed all the 5.11's there and had relocated to “old” Chek to try the classic 5.11d “Rug Munchers”. My ambitions had narrowed down to a first ascent project at the Monastery which I had pre-named “Pain Box”, after the seminal
training essay by the patron saint of ageing climbers, Bill Ramsey. In late August I put in some determined attempts that ended with me touching but latching the hold beyond the last crux. On my next attempt I blew a pulley on the opening move, effectively ending my climbing for the year.
One project that did not need functional fingers was an alternative approach to the Monastery. At a meeting of most of the Monastery and Electric Avenue developers it had been agreed that parking was getting overwhelmed by the 99 and at Electric Avenue itself, and there would be advantages in finding a way to the Monastery from the upper parking lot at Chek. James and I found a way to link exposed ledges through the complex steep terrain above the eastside canyon to eventually reach the Big Show. Over the next few months I flagged this trail sporadically and eventually posted a map for it on the yellow gate. The first few users were not very impressed. One labelled the trail a “deathtrap” - a name which then stuck.
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Electric Avenue in its final form, fall 2018
Climber on Railton Road, 5.10a |
I released a topo for Electric Avenue and Frontside 180 just before the 2018 Labor day long weekend, documenting forty routes. The crowds duly turned out to climb there. However, some prankster thought it would be funny to lock the yellow gate at midday on the holiday Monday. In the subsequent panic, people who had driven to the cliff managed to break the gate off at its hinges so they could extricate their vehicles. On my next visit I was shocked to see that familiar metal object of four years acquaintance tossed aside in the bushes - a clear message that the place was changing and wasn't "mine" any more.
