Squamish Photos and Stories

wine summit

wine-tasting

I met Daryl on Psyche Ledge in the spring of 76. I had just hitched up from Vancouver and was planning to rendezvous with Dave for a weekend of neophyte shenanigans (it's a wonder either of us survived that first season). It was late afternoon with the western sun finally warming the Grand Wall and the forested old highway and as I approached Psyche Ledge I saw two trolls sitting in the grass doing troll stuff. I mean, they had to be trolls, they had long shaggy hair and dirty headbands and were communicating in some hard to understand language while passing a bottle of straight Dark Navy Rum back and forth. I cautiously approached them and said hello. The red haired troll responded with a gruff but cheery, "Hi, how's it going man? I'm Daryl and this is Stewart, have a drink."

So began my friendship with the late great Daryl Hatten, aka Doug Fir, Chrome Molybdenum Man, Darly Halfweenie, PO Solo or whatever colorful moniker best suited the occasion.

Daryl and I became regular climbing partners through the late seventies and early eighties. He taught me many of the fundamentals of big wall climbing and was totally trustworthy.
Daryl was also an excellent free climber and a five hour romp up the Grand via Cruel Shoes back in the mid eighties stands out in my mind. Daryl and Eric Weinstein were the strongest rockclimbing team in Squamish at that time. Among their many accomplishments was the second ascent of the PO with Java and Kim, at that time, the hardest big wall in the world.

Daryl had a sharp wit and great sense of humour. He loved plays on words. We were bivied on the Artery Ledge while starting up a cool overhanging unclimbed wall. Daryl thought it looked just like a mini Shield Headwall and suggested we call the wall "The Panty Shield". We liked that and kicked around names for our yet unclimbed route. It was quite rainy and we felt a bit amphibious in our endeavours so a frog theme emerged. I was reading some Kurt Vonnegut at the time and he made reference to a character known as the Pan Galactic Straw Boss. As we lay there mouldering in our sodden bivi gear, smoking bunk we merged the amphibian with some Vonnegut and came up with the Pan Granitic Frogman. We laughed so hard we cried.
We left ropes fixed to our high point and before I could come back to finish the route, sprained my ankle taking a sixty footer of Rainy Day Dream Away while Daryl was holding the rope. Dary went back and finished the aid route with John Simpson.

Sorry to bring up a touchy subject.

No danger of any climbing breaking out, the next few days look like a series of righteous fronts delivering primo fun.

just a little more challenging with a coating of slush.