the nostalgia project: Freeborn Man, UK (2004)

The route

The limestone sea cliffs at Swanage are located on the UK's south coast, near to Portland, but otherwise very distant from other mainstream climbing areas.

Freeborn Man may be Swanage's best known route; certainly it has the most YouTube videos. The route tackles a 15m overhanging face directly above the sea, topped by a short slab. Nick Buckley led the first ascent in the late 1970s (graded E4) but most ascents are now in Deep Water Soloing style ("DWS") and the route is graded like a sport climb at ~6c (5.11b).

The 1990s Swanage DWS guidebook "Into the Blue" suggests that soloing Freeborn Man for the first time is "a major life event comparable to driving your first car or burning down your first public building"!

Climber on the crux of Freeborn Man. The Conger is under the spectators. © unknown

Starting a few metres left of Freeborn Man is The Conger, also first led by Nick Buckley and also now a popular DWS challenge. The Conger has a very different character; the wandering line takes the climber into, then out of, a hanging chimney at the lip of a deep sea cave.

The context

In 2007 UKClimbing.com invited me to review Mike Robertson's extraordinary guidebook to world DWS : "Deep Water".  Aside from a free copy of the book there was no payment or obligation, so I cheekily started the review with a self-indulgent autobiographical fragment. In some ways, the exercise of writing those four paragraphs (below) was the original inspiration for my "Nostalgia Project":

"For a couple of years in the mid-1980s, I toyed ineffectually with being a 'full-time climber'. After a promising start in Nepal, Australia and one or two other exotic places, this lifestyle choice gradually lapsed into an extended stagnation in Bristol, interspersing long periods of doing not much with poorly-funded trips to nowhere in particular. A few other climbers in Bristol shared this life, one of whom, Crispin Waddy, would carve a successful trajectory from it into the future, whilst the rest of us eventually slid into office enslavement or other variants of normality.

Sometime in late summer 1986, Crispin, already revealing glimpses of higher ambition, encouraged three of us - Phil Windall, Jamie Ayres and I - to join him in Swanage, where he'd set up home in the Tilly Whim caves. I have various fragments of memory from the week or two we spent there: evenings nursing a single pint for hours in the gloomy Durlston Castle; stumbling later down the long dark cave-access tunnel, within which our host banned use of a torch; sleeping fitfully after failing to find a flat place to sleep; waking up to diffused but dazzling sunlight burning through the sea fog each morning. We climbed for few days in the Boulder Ruckle then were led by Crispin over to Connor Cove. At that time, there were almost no routes recorded there, probably because of the low height of the cliffs and limited number of belay ledges. Crispin rigged abseils optimistically in a couple of spots, and I held his ropes on some first ascents around E3/4 on what was later named the Funky Wall.

One day I was down on a ledge sorting ropes whilst Crispin eyed possible lines around us. Then I noticed he was gone and - more puzzlingly - was not tied in. He traversed a long way leftwards above overhangs, vanished around a corner and eventually reappeared on the cliff top. Reunited later he talked through the physics of what he'd done: the cliff was steep and not that tall, the water was deep and there'd been no real danger. I listened but didn't comprehend. The route was Fathoms; years later I realised it was probably the earliest first ascent in Britain made intentionally in DWS style.

A day later we were below the Conger and made a convoy solo. Crispin insisted that this was the normal way to do the climb; a statement that would only cease to be an exaggeration a decade later (though it was true that the route, originally led on gear, had been soloed by Nick Buckley in 1983). Most people are elated after their first deep water solo. Lacking any peer group endorsement that it wasn't madness, I set off scared, had a moment of relief after sketching across the hanging chimney crux, then reverted to terror, not helped by Crispin and Phil's laughter, as I topped out on friable shards of crud. As I get older, I notice that the world is split into people who grasp opportunity whenever it appears in front of them whilst others examine opportunity, succumb to caution and say "no thanks". Handed a privileged chance to get involved in British DWS pioneering from its inception, I turned my back and didn't solo above water again until 2002!"

My ascent of the Conger in 1986. Note the first gen Boreal Fires and the redundant harness!
© Jamie Ayres

DWS did not take off in Britain until the mid-1990s but then became fashionable very quickly. Notably in the late 1990s/ early 2000s it was popularised through a series of DWS "festivals", mostly held at Swanage, which combined crowds of swimwear-clad climbers attempting DWS routes with rave-style after-parties - a conceptually-radical evolution for British climbing at the time.

Freeborn Man climbed by Leah Crane during a DWS festival

© Mike Robertson, used with permission

I attended precisely none of these events, considering myself even then to be too old and boring. However I eventually became afflicted with a degree of FOMO, not helped by the irony (see above) that I had tasted DWSing a decade before most of the organisers of these events, let alone the paying punters. In August 2003 Dan and I paid a visit to Berry Head in Devon, also on Britain's south coast but 150km west of Swanage, to climb two famous DWS traverses there: Rainbow Bridge and Magical Mystery Tour.

Of these, Rainbow Bridge was considered quite hard at the time and had not been documented in a guidebook as a DWS. We had some beta from the web forums but little else. The early parts of the route were just above the sea but the "Crystal Cave" crux takes you high above the waves in a pumpy technical groove. I was absolutely blown away by the intensity of the experience. Being with Dan, there was an inevitable "safety-third" aspect to the day, resulting in us soloing two sections of the route that have boulders, rather than deep water, underneath and are usually bypassed.

At the end of the route, after about 300m of climbing, there is a giant wedge-shaped ramp rising out of the sea on which to recover and sun-bathe. Somehow I had not fallen anywhere on the route, and as it was a very hot day, I felt perversely cheated. Already awash with adrenaline, it seemed absolutely appropriate to hike to the very top of the ramp and take a blind running jump off the cliff beside the ramp without any thought to fall-distance or the adequacy of the landing. Thankfully it was "only" 15m or so to the water and the waves were soft.

In 2004, I was still living in Oxford, renting a small house by the Thames close to the centre of town. My "employment" that year was acting as finance director / cat-herder to an ill-disciplined software startup attempting to exploit a clever idea in financial econometrics from a local academic. This sucked up my time to a greater extent than I anticipated without generating any income. Meanwhile Leo was getting older and deserved more attention. Consequently I was not climbing as often as I would have liked.

Furthermore, Oxford is about as far from decent outdoor climbing as it possible to achieve in the UK. Swanage was one of the least-distant options, well connected by fast roads for most of the 180km drive from Oxford, so I made several day trips there. By then Freeborn Man was on my radar as a route I should try. The problem was that conditions there were hard to get right. It needed sunshine to be dry but also a calm'ish sea to be able to access the bottom of the route safely. In June a friend, Roger, and I hiked to Connor Cove for a "look".  We soloed the easier Troubled Waters next to Freeborn Man but contrived various excuses not to try its harder neighbour.

Throughout the summer the route stayed front of mind for me but opportunities to try did not arise.On the last day of July I was scheduled to spend the weekend at home, as we were setting off for a long family holiday in Ireland a few days later. However I could not help checking the south coast forecast: it was perfect. Frustrated, a mad plan popped into my head. Central to my reasoning was the rationale that everyone, even a non-bread-winner at the weekend, is entitled to a "lunch break" ...

The ascent

After yelling a "back soon" lie through the front door, I jumped into my car with climbing shoes and chalk bag. The diary does not document my start time but I recall it was "mid-morning": 10:30 - 11:00am? Average speeds in the "fast lane" of British motorways are 130-140 kmh, so a 90 minute drive time was just about feasible and I believe achieved. Unfortunately the approach hike to Connor Cove is a further 3km or so. Somehow, I found the energy to run most of this.

At the cliff-top I decided I had about an hour available to climb, at the very most. However the diary records that I allowed myself a "few zen moments" before warm-up laps on Troubled Waters then another pause "taking everything in" before scrambling back down to the shoreline. An absolute cardinal rule of DWS is to never do it alone, in case you fall awkwardly into the water and are unable to swim (collapsed lungs and broken backs have occurred from DWS falls), or get hit on the head by loose rock. Unfortunately, though it was the weekend and conditions ideal, there was no-one else in the area. I put that detail out of my mind.

As I remember it, the first few metres of Freeborn Man are steep but fairly straightforward up to a committing traverse on small pockets and undercuts into the crux bulge. There is a strong sense of summit-or-fly at this point as the prior moves feel irreversible The exit onto the slab is where most people fall off. I remember rocking-up optimistically and finding a small crimp that I knew I was definitely strong enough to hold. Then pulling into balance on the slab with a huge release of tension.

For an encore, I decided to climb The Conger as well, touching those holds again for the first time in eighteen years. The diary records that it was a "long expedition and not trivial". But with all the traffic on the route since 1986 it definitely felt more solid.

After that I just had to reverse the run and the drive. The diary claims that I arrived back at the Oxford house at 3:30pm. It does not record whether anyone had noticed that I had gone out!

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Connor Cove. In fact, 2004 was my last full year living in the UK and I have only climbed British rock on a handful of occasions since.

Some years later I met Mike Robertson, and some of the other larger-than-life personalities who pioneered the British DWS scene. But that story must wait until the 2012 instalment.

the nostalgia project: Kantti, Finland (2003)

The route

A rather flat country, Finland has not been associated with rock climbing. In fact, it has no entry in the usually-thorough Mountain Project database. Recently, perhaps because one of the world's best boulderers is a Finn, the country has become somewhat known for bouldering, and has a candidate for the world's hardest boulder problem. But its route climbing is obscure. Olhava, about two hours north-east of the capital, Helsinki, is the best-known (or least-unknown!) area. The king line of the cliff is Kantti, a sharp 50m arete, rising straight out of a lake. The grade is Finnish 6- or about mid-5.10.

Unknown climber starting up Kanti

And higher on the route 

I am soloing low on the route to give scale - Toby took the photo from the boat

The context

After our successful Lofoten trip in 2002, visiting Toby in Helsinki to check out Finnish climbing seemed an obvious idea. A rough plan set for June 2003 eventually morphed into a family holiday, with Shoko, Leo and I flying there accompanied by Shoko's sister Tomoko and her mum Reiko. They entertained themselves taking a ferry to the fabulous medieval town of Talinn in Estonia, which I also joined, and a train to Moominworld, which I regretted not being able to join as the deeply-weird Moomin books were a big feature of my childhood.

Leo, Tomoko and the Baltic sea, Talinn harbour

Talinn skyline

Obligatory post-soviet graffiti photo

Drunk Japanese women in Talinn

Russian Orthodox church, Talinn

Moominbus to Moominworld

Leo's granny guarding him from Sniff

Leo with Nokia phones, back when that Finnish company had not yet been crushed by Apple

The ascent

Meanwhile Toby drove me out to Olhava for a two day stay. The diary noted the scenery as "forest and tractors" and that the hike in to the climbing area with camping gear was "quite long". It also started drizzling with rain when we arrived. This was disappointing as Toby had already described Kantti to me as The Finnish Classic and I was psyched to climb it.

Paranoid that it would rain for our whole stay I decided to get on the route straight away. A quirky feature of Olhava is that some routes have to be approached on a rowboat. We duly rowed across and tied the boat up to a convenient belay island. The route did prove to be fantastic and just runout enough to be exciting. The diary states that the "penultimate move was scary as very wet on slopers" - which I don't recall, so it can't have been that bad. I do remember crisp edges with reassuring texture, vaguely reminiscent of the granite in Cornwall. Though the line follows an arete there were few pure arete layback type moves, which was a relief as I have never been good at that technique. Through beer-goggles that evening I even raised the idea of doing the route purely on cams, but forgot about it in the morning. Probably a good thing.

Olhava campground by the lake

Finns expressing their love of climbing and barbecue

Toby belaying me on a great splitter crack route next to Kantti

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Finland.

the nostalgia project: Vestpillaren, Norway (2002)

The route

Vestpillaren is a ten pitch route on the peerless Presten cliff in the Lofoten islands of Arctic Norway. Mountain Project describes it as "one of the better long 5.10 free climbs you will ever do".

Presten from the north
Vestpillaren takes the skyline, approximately

Presten from the south with six climbers on Vestpillaren

The context

I forget when I first became aware of Lofoten. It is possible that the book "Exotic Rock", mentioned here, played a role. Anyway, some time in the 1990s, I acquired its first english language climbing guidebook, "Climbing in the Magic Islands", and became interested in visiting the place. In 2000 I achieved this, though in the form of a non-climbing road trip with Shoko and Leo. We drove all the way from London to the Arctic Circle and back over two weeks, aside from the Newcastle-Bergen crossing and 24 hours southbound on the Hurtigruten coastal ferry.

At the time we had the use of an entertaining, if distinctly "boy-racer", Impreza Turbo, which I had persuaded my employers to buy me instead of the standard BMW 3- or 5-series that young professionals were supposed to drive. This made the long journey excellent fun and shorter than it might have been, though it now embarrasses me to think of the number of times I impatiently overtook sensible Scandinavians on the single-lane coast road.  I loved Norway, which in many ways is like British Columbia, though with fewer trees and even more bare granite.

On that trip we spent a few days in Lofoten, in a cod fisherman's hut renovated for tourists just outside the amazing fishing port of Henningsvær. The town is built on an archipelago of granite islands linked by bridges and causeways. (It is one of a surprisingly long list of European towns dubbed the "Venice of the North".)  We drove under the Presten cliff but I only really appreciated its awesomeness when we were leaving the islands by boat. From the deck Presten became the last object visible on the horizon as the coast receded, like a 500m tall ski-jump sticking out of the sea.

Leo and Shoko with Presten

Lofoten from the Hurtigruten coastal boat service

Two years later, a couple of major life changes created the opportunity to climb Presten. One was that I finally left London in early 2002, after being ejected from the firm where I had worked for most of the previous nine years. A complex merger, then de-merger, with a US firm had sealed my fate, as I had gone out of my way to work with the americans, rather than ignore them, as it seemed our vile London boss expected us to do. On the positive side, various deferred compensation, that I had accumulated with that firm, was all released at once in my payout, so I briefly felt quite rich. We spent the early part of 2002 travelling - to Australia and Japan - then returned to the UK to live temporarily with my sister Sally in Oxford. She was pleased to have company as her husband Charlie had died the previous year. I did not feel any immediate pressure to find another job so began thinking about other long-term ambitions that I could fulfill.

The other major change for me was getting onboard the social media juggernaut, which at that time meant web forums, specifically for me the "UKC" climbing forum. In my last year or so in London, I was astounded to discover that it was possible to squander the day chatting about climbing while ostensibly "working" at my desk. Some time in late 2001 there was a thread on ambitions for the next year. I mentioned Vestpillaren, then read this intriguing response:

The post on the UKClimbing forum that set this adventure in motion 

At that time UKC was small enough that there were only two people overtly posting as a "Toby". Inevitably this meant that I had already taken an interest in TobyA. He appeared to be a Scotsman with a Finnish wife, working in Helsinki in a glamorous-sounding policy think-tank. His fairly numerous posts suggested a genuine climbing lifer though (healthily?) not a grade-obsessed one. I forget how and when his first post crystallised into a firm plan. These days the concept of real-life encounters with strangers met on the internet has become wholly normal, but in 2002 it seemed quite eccentric. At some stage in our planning Toby, who perhaps had less faith in me than I in him, proposed a telephone conversation to break the ice. My main takeaway from this was that he was not in fact Scottish - a distinct positive. I also learned that he would indeed be driving the 1500km from Helsinki to Lofoten and with two Finnish friends. Comically, they were both named "Toni" ...

So, in early August 2002, I flew from London to Oslo then onward on a much smaller plane to Bodo, just inside the Arctic Circle. Reading the diary while researching this post, I was reminded that my luggage hadn't followed me to Bodo and that I was forced to bivouac outside the airport while waiting for it. Somehow I had completely forgotten this, which is strange as even in summer a night out without any camping gear at that latitude should have been quite cold/ memorable. The next day my stuff appeared and I was able to take another flight, to Svolvaer on the Lofoten islands. Grandly I was the only passenger. At luggage retrieval the only visible employee in the tiny airport pointed at my bouldering pad as it was spat out of the carousel, and asked whether I was a climber. I was and so was he. This seemed a good omen.

Toby, Toni and Toni then appeared to collect me, sardined into a very small hatchback, and drove me to the campsite where they had set up the previous day. I liked them all straight away. We managed to climb that day despite light rain. I discovered that Toby was a much better climber than his self-deprecating web posts suggested. In the evenings the Finns lit a campfire and barbecued magnificently unhealthy-looking greasy sausages which they washed down with vodka. I broke out a bottle of Talisker acquired in duty free. Toby and I did some planning.

Toni, Toni, Toby

On my previous visit to Lofoten rain had made an appearance almost every day so I was somewhat paranoid that our week might pass without a decent weather window. Looking at a forecast it seemed the next day might be our best bet. However we both knew it would be sensible to do some more shorter climbs together before committing to a long multi-pitch. A tough call. In the end we decided we should just get on Vestpillaren in the morning.

However, when we arrived below Presten there were already other parties ahead of us. So we decided to roll the dice and hope that the next day would still be dry. Instead we climbed on a smaller cliff, Festvåg, climbing two routes, Puffin Club and The Skier, of which I only remember the latter. The diary states that I dislodged a rock at the top of The Skier which hit Toby's hand and left him with some worrying bruising. (I had forgotten about this too.) To his great credit, he gritted his teeth, ignored the injury and stayed committed to the Vestpillaren plan.

The ascent

Thankfully the next day dawned equally fine. As far as I recall, Toni and Toni drove us to the base of Presten and abandoned us with the intent to meet in the bar in nearby Hennngsvaer that evening. "Climbing in the Magic Islands" listed two ways to climb Vestpillaren: the "normal" and the "direct". The latter looked like much better climbing but upped the ante with more "hard" pitches (how hard was tricky to gauge as the guidebook used mysterious Norwegian grades). We chose that option. In retrospect a very good choice as the normal way now seems rarely climbed and I think we might now be feeling cheated had we not done the route "properly". I recall the third pitch of the direct feeling quite hard, pulling a bulge between a couple of slanting grooves out of sight of the belayer. I worried slightly that it might challenge Toby but he seconded it fine. A feature of climbing with him was the union jack sticker on top of his helmet. I guess there were not many Brit climbers in Finland. It always amused me when it came into view.

Toby following Vestpillaren's crux pitch 3

that helmet

Just above that section is a long ledge, the Storhylla, where the normal and direct ways converged. I started to relax at this point. According to the guide the "direct" was harder than anything above (newer guidebooks suggest otherwise!) so it seemed we were very likely to complete the route. There was one distinct crux pitch ahead of us, a slanting corner, that looked like it could be awkward. I was slightly apprehensive before leading this but it proved to be fabulous climbing: a thin crack that could be laybacked or finger-jammed with plenty of small footholds. As we got higher on the face the water in the ocean below turned a translucent turquoise in the sunlight. We could almost have been in the Mediterranean.

Toby leading pitch 7

pitch 8 - the awesome slanting crack

Toby on the summit

Looking south to Henningvær - the beer is calling

The climb took nine or ten hours. Little mentioned in the guidebook was the scale of the descent from the summit of Presten. The diary describes it as a "horror". Helpfully the sun barely sets in Lofoten in early August so running out of light was not a concern. I remember interminable knife-edge ridge traverses before we could start heading down. According to the diary we made the bar by 11pm. The place was still busy at that time (it also doubles as a climbing school) and I was struck by the disorientating timelessness of the Arctic summer. The rest of the world felt very distant. We knocked back cold beers there for at least a couple of hours before being collected by the Toni's.

Toby and I climbed some more things over the remainder of our stay including a possible first lead of a top-rope problem near the campground (later retro-claimed by a local) and a great multi-pitch slab frightener Solens sønner. It was a brilliant week - one of my all-time favourite climbing trips. But Vestpillaren remained the highlight.

Solens Sønner - crux second pitch

Solens Sønner - pitch 3

Subsequent ascents

Regrettably I have not been back to Lofoten. 

the nostalgia project: Prise de Tête, France (2001)

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.

garibaldi, sloan, touch and go, currie

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!

James, Luc and Kyle on day 1

Day 1 dinner

Day 2 breakfast

Kyle with the summit log, day 2

Luc on the summit, day 2

James on the summit, day 2

Luc apparently not sleeping in our tent, second night

Luc's vestibule reinforcements, day 3 morning

Kyle and James heading down on day 3

Luc, James and Kyle on day 3; Pemberton valley beyond