Squamish Photos and Stories

Sep 19, 2010 - 11:13pm PT

Once upon a time climbers in Vancouver would gather at a sleazy bar called The Cecil every Wednesday night. Drink bad beer, talk about climbing, tell lies, make plans... The usual. One drunken evening somebody mentioned a route named "Foot in the Gravy."

Silly little 30-foot route in the Little Smoke Bluffs at Squamish. 10c on an 75-degree wall with two bolts.

And this started an argument. Don Serl was there that night, and he happened to say something like "Oh, right, neat little edging problem." To which Konrad Kraft replied "Edging? You must be thinking of something else. 'Foot in the Gravy' is a slab. Smearing all the way."

"Smearing? No, it's little edges from bottom to top."

"Edges? Are you nuts? It's a slab."

"Slab? No, you're nuts. There are edges everywhere you look. There are so many edges I could climb it in crampons."

"Bullsh!t."

"Not bullsh!t. I could front-point the whole thing."

"Wanna bet?"

"Sure."

So, the following weekend, everyone who had been in the pub that night wandered out to the Burgers & Fries cliff in the Smoke Bluffs, and watched Don lace up his mountain boots and lash on the crampons. And carefully and concisely front-point his way up 30 feet of 10c as a light rain began to fall.

Of course most of us had climbed the thing a hundred times in sticky shoes, but Don had that edge mentality that comes from spending thousands of hours in stiff boots on steep rock.

So what's the takeaway? Maybe it's in your own mind. Or, if you'd been standing where I was standing, you'd have been able to see the tier of cliffs above, and like me you'd have been torn between watching Don front-point his way up "Foot in the Gravy on a toprope" and looking up to watch Peter Croft solo "Flying Circus."

I mention this because the light rain had influenced Peter's choice of footwear...

He took off his shoes and climbed it in his socks.

FOtos from my "red book" of Don Serl on Foot in the Gravy . It was because Kon Kraft said it couldn't be done in crampons that Don went for it. Too dodgy to lead the thing but he did the route on toprope.

I placed the bolts on that dumb thing, tried it, but for some reason didn't actually do it - although it's basically a three move 'climb', and not very hard. Ghost, were you with me then?

Nope. I've climbed it, of course, but wasn't involved in the FA.

It's gotta be what? 30 feet? Hard to even call it a "route" but it holds a special place in my memory because it was one of the routes I climbed with Andy (MH2) on my first day of climbing after getting my leg bolted back onto my body.