I don’t even remember when was the last time we went to Squamish for climbing. I know it was one of the first place we learnt how to crack climb. Well finally we made a trip up there this year. The trip was shorter than original plan because of Matt’s job but it was sweet.
Our first route in Squamish is the Cruel Shoes. We drove all day the day before so we figure we needed the extra rest before we try the Grand Wall. Turns out it was one of the worse climb I have ever done. Of course if you asked Matt, he will say it is awesome because he just cruise each pitches. I am not a fan or (1) traversing (2) slab climbing and when you combine both of them together, it is almost the worst climb. The only way you can make it worse is by adding my third fear (3) put a whole bunch of snakes on the wall. After the Cruel Shoes, we hopped on the Exasperatore, an incredible finger crack. What an awesome route!
Cruel Shoes shares the same first pitch of the Grand Wall.
Unfortunately the crux is wet when we climbed it which makes it quite unnerving
Matt cruising Exasperator
Anyway, the next day we climbed the Grand Wall. It was a pretty great climb. I took picture of every pitch just so I can remember it well. We did the entire route under 7 hours car to car so it was great. Then we went back up and climbed full Diedre on the same day. I think we climbed total of 19 pitches that day.
Split pillar is my favorite pitch on the Grand Wall
Matt made Perry Lieback looks like a 5.8. It is funny watching him cruise it
Diedre seem too easy after all the other routes
The next day we were both glad we did the Grand Wall the day before because it was just non-stop raining. We droved up to Cheakamus and climbed a few hard sports route which is pretty cool.
Matt really wanted to do the Ultimate everything on the next day but once again the cloud is low and covered the entire wall. Everything is wet and nasty and I refused to climb wet rock. Instead we drove to Smoke Bluff and climbed all the 5 stars routes there. Once again Matt is unstoppable and just keep setting up routes for me. I was pretty happy because I did really well on all the hard 11s.
Finally on the last day we woke up early and managed to climb a few more pitches of Memorial Crack before we leave back to Oregon.
It is really hard finding the starting pitch of this route but I think we found it
Fun looking hand crack
All in all it was an incredible trip and I don’t know when we will be back again considering we are moving to the East Coast.
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