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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sep 15, 2008 - 10:09pm PT
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Chris advises that: "As I recall Friend continued up further almost to the end of the second pitch until I rapped down to where he was. He then rappelled down with me. He seemed quite comfortable leaning against my legs as I rapped down. I took him back to the van and closed the window tighter so he could not get out and join the fun again. The bear was still hanging about on the approach ledge but quickly disappeared when Friend saw him and headed towards him. I was worried for the bear since it went down a very steep slab and crashed into some trees below, then disappeared over a rise. Friend wisely decided to stay with me."
Chris is going to look for photos. I suspect what he calls the "second pitch" was actually the first pitch, which sometimes used to be broken into two. The meandering pitch. You belay at its end, then traverse left into the base of corner of Diedre.
My memory of the events is clearly incomplete. I vaguely recall that Chris insisted on using a body rappel, as he believed it more rope-friendly than the carabiner brake. But I don't remember him rappelling to rescue Friend, or rejoining us.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sep 16, 2008 - 01:09am PT
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Now where were we? Yes, that’s it – bogged down in 1976, with only occasional hints that any climbing has occurred at Squamish since then. The Little Smoke Bluffs were still cooling, and those of us who did climb at Squamish were happy as savages. Well, hopefully we’ll now move on a little, though I’m afraid we won’t get through all this before I leave for the FaceLift or to hunt for ladybugs or something. (As a reminder, all stories and photos copyright © Me, that is MH, 2008, unless someone else took a photo, in which case copyright that person.)
As mentioned, around 1974/75 people started to clean and free climbs around Squamish. Most but not all were existing routes, which by definition had been cleaned somewhat, in nothing else by piton action. Often thinner cracks – the wider ones were not susceptible to 1970s technology, and had to wait for tools of moss destruction to be invented. And most were shorter routes – typically one pitch, or longer routes with a few sections to be cleaned. Our tools included only the Chouinard Crag Hammer (the one with a pick, for light nailing), wire brushes, swede saws, and nut tools. A few did get into things like ice axes and crowbars, but mostly not until a bit later.
Some routes could be cleaned on rappel, especially the short ones. The longer ones usually involved more effort, and often featured a very bored and uncomfortable belayer holding the rope while Eric aided up and down something, gleefully fixing (other people’s) pins as he went. (Several of my pins that he placed are still there.) The cleaning was of course as much to be able to place nuts and protect the routes, as it was to have something to put one’s hand in.
Eric did several routes during 1975, mentioned upthread, and here are some photos of some early ascents. I don’t have shot of all, of course.
Exasperator – first pitch (1976).
This was an unusual phenomena – a naturally clean crack. I’m not sure when it was first freed, but I saw Eric solo it in 1975, trailing a rope for the rappel. A few weeks later he freed the second pitch, which was somewhat harder. This photo is from the second free ascent of the second pitch, April 1976.
This is the third (second?) free ascent of Caboose, on the same day. (Dave N.)
Dave fell soon after, and was held by a pin. My pin, though for once I’d fixed it myself, years earlier when nailing it.
Clean Crack is right beside Caboose, on the Malemute. For some reason, we got interested in it, although it’s quite technical. At that time, you climbed to the pocket about 6 m off the ground, then just made a few more moves to a downhanging cedar, so it was pretty short. We had lots of fun bouldering out the start, and sometimes the railway guys on their speeders would stop and chat. So this is from 1975, a visiting climber from the U.S. at the pocket – you can see the shadow from the tree above.
I spent five or six days during winter 1976-77 cleaning all the rest of the crack, which was a lot of work. By the end it was climbable as a hard free climb, though others have done some more cleaning.
I’ve never been quite able to lead it.
Also at the Malemute was Hand Jive. We somehow talked Carl into going there one very wet day, and digging it out. It had never been an aid climb, and was then full of salal, and a big effort. Carl hitchhiked back to Vancouver late that afternoon, and came into MEC, which was then a little place on west 4th. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so dirty in my life. Soon after, he and Eric freed it, and here’s a shot of an early ascent.
Winter/spring 1977 were quite dry, so the season got started early. One day we were up at the base of the Grand Wall, and while walking along I noticed an interesting looking crack. Better yet, one accessible from above from the scramble approach to U Wall. So I returned a day or two later, dug it out, then a few days later came back with Simon T. and Dave L., finished cleaning, and freed it. It is called Seasoned in the Sun, and for such a pleasantly named route has featured some astonishingly long falls, as mentioned above. Anyway, here is the first ascent, and as I’m leading, you can’t blame me for the “quality” of the photo.
Some ascents over the year or two after:
The eventual removal of the obstinate stump, with an inspired trundle, was quite clever.
There were other naturally clean lines at the base of the Grand, especially the Flake Route (the proper start to the Grand), and Apron Strings. The latter has always been a bit of an effort, especially when it was still graded 5.9 – now 5.10b. Particularly for those unable to find the obscure no hands rest just below the crux. It is a fun climb, though a bit precarious. Here’s the second pitch:
It leads to the top of the Flake, and one can then continue up Mercy Me, a lovely exposed 5.8 dike climb for two more pitches, into the middle of the wall.
This is now the usual approach to the base of the Split Pillar – you turn right halfway up the second pitch, and do some fun stuff with flakes. A few convenience bolts have been added, but it’s still a good airy adventure.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sep 17, 2008 - 12:02am PT
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A member of my posse who speaks French has pointed out that the proper spelling is Diédre, not Diedre - the "é" has an acute accent. It is pronounced as though it was "eh" - thus "dee-eh-dra". Very Canadian. I suppose I will now have to go back and make the necessary amendments to earlier posts.
Speaking of which, what is the quintessential Canadian grade?
5.10, eh?
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Nohea
Trad climber
Aiea,Hi
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Sep 17, 2008 - 04:12am PT
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Anders, that is one Helluva great history lesson.
Thanks! That is the stuff that makes the tacostand rock!
Aloha,
wil
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sep 19, 2008 - 02:28pm PT
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I just thought I'd give the thread one last bump before leaving for the FaceLift. More stories and photos to follow, and I hope others will also chime in with theirs. We're only at 1976/1977, so really only halfway.
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Crimpergirl
Social climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Anders mentioned this thread to me on the 4th of September and I'd been too busy playing to even have a chance to peek at it. Wow, I was missing out. This is one of the best threads to date for sure! Thanks for sharing and I'm looking forward to more...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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O.K. Anders, the party is over, get back to work, I'm dyin' here.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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OK OK, I'll try to add something in the next few days. Maybe a mini-essay on how the Chief became a park - one of the story ideas I had while driving home from the FaceLift. More context. It takes time, especially when also scanning slides.
Of course, any of YOU can always add stories and photos from the period. :-)
Edit: Randy's over-exuberant bumping reached its limit when he started bumping bumped threads off the front page. So this is a sort of anti-bump. All you have to do is delete one of your earlier posts (within last week), then re-post it - it bumps the thread right back up, without adding to thread clutter.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 13, 2008 - 01:05am PT
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Now where were we? Ah yes, mired in 1976 or so. But it’s time to get moving again, as winter’s rain gradually seeps into our world, and we turn our minds and hands to more sedentary activities. First a little more history, as I stall for scanning time. But future history this time, to provide a bit more context.
(As a reminder, all stories and photos in the thread copyright © Me, 2008, unless someone else took a photo, in which case copyright that person.)
The Stawamus Chief and surroundings only became a provincial park in 1995. Yosemite of course has been a national park for over a century, and protected for longer, although there is still much squabbling about exactly what that means. Not the Chief. From one perspective, this was good – it meant that for the most part, as long as we weren’t too visible or annoying, and didn’t burn or cut down many trees, no one cared much about what climbers were up to. We could camp on the old highway, or in the boulders or the forest, party, and have fires, and it was no biggie. But this also meant that there was no protection for an icon, and eventually something needed to be done about that.
I’m not sure when the backside trail was built up the Chief, but would guess sometime in the 1950s. Climbing didn’t start there until 1957, and didn’t really get going until the highway was built in 1961. There’s some excellent footage of the highway, and of Squamish and climbing in the early 1960s, in a 2003 film about the Grand Wall, called “In the Shadow of the Chief”. Also footage of Jim Baldwin and Ed Cooper. Another film is “The Vertical Desert”, a National Film Board documentary from 1973, of Jim Sinclair and Jeannine Caldbeck climbing the Grand Wall. Finally, Dave N. made a film of Dave V. and Eric W. climbing (aiding) Sentry Box, in 1975, which they later converted to video, and added a soundtrack to. Extremely cool.
For most of its history, most of the Chief was nominally on land managed by the Ministry of Forests. However, two key parcels were privately owned. One encompassed what is now the campground and the base of the trail, and indeed there was once an attempt at quarrying there. The other parcel, of which more later, is now (temporarily) the gravel pit occupied by equipment for the highway project. It would be interesting to find out what the Ministry of Forests knew of hiking and climbing at the Chief and area in the 1960s and 1970s, and whether that influenced its management policies. As a non-forester, it always seemed to me that most of the trees could not be removed except from the air, given all the boulders in the forest getting in the way of road-building. But there also seemed a significant number near Stawamus River Road particularly (north of the Apron) that could be easily cut and moved. We may owe some unknown bureaucrat thanks for far-sighted decisions.
People just seemed to have assumed that the Chief was some sort of park or something. There were trails and signs that were occasionally upgraded, and somewhere to park, and it just seemed the sort of place that would be a park. And indeed several organizations and individuals approached the provincial government in the later 1980s, as climbing became more popular, to promote the idea. There was negligible interest, due to a somewhat reactionary government, and to any and all possible new parks being entangled in the huge logging-environmental debate at that time.
In about autumn 1990, there was a big windstorm. Forest-wind dynamics are complicated, but trees at Squamish are often shallowly-rooted, and so aren’t that hard to blow over. Indeed, as they get bigger, they’re more vulnerable. Plus once a few trees have been tipped, it creates an opening and more follow. The 1990 storm left a lot of wind-throw trees in an area just behind the Chief, across Olesen Creek. If you look east from the top, there are some bluffs directly opposite, above the creek valley. The wind-throw area is immediately below and around them. The trees in that area were fairly fine and straight grained, and so valuable. Forestry in B.C. then was having serious troubles. So a year later the Ministry of Forests advertised that it would be removing “dead and down” trees from the area.
Now “dead and down” has a pretty clear meaning to me, anyway. English can be like that. In spring 1992, the contractor actually went in and took quite a lot of standing timber on the edges of the wind-thrown areas, plus bits and pieces of the fallen trees that weren’t too badly smashed. It seems likely that the Ministry knew full well what was going on. The trees were removed by helicopter, and for several weeks the trail was ostensibly closed. I got wind of this, and snuck up one afternoon to spy things out, and take pictures. As a result, a group I was then working for issued a press release denouncing what was going on, but spun toward the idea that the area should be a park. It got big news media attention, and an immediate reaction from both the Ministry of Forests (helicopter tour of the area with the news media, commitment to replant, apology), and better still the government, which committed to studying it for park status.
Luckily, a new government had been elected in autumn 1991, and had committed to resolving as many land use and conservation issues as it could. And the local B.C. Parks office and manager were quite supportive. So over the next three years we had a long series of planning meetings involving all the usual suspects, to decide whether the Chief should be a park, and if so some parameters for it. In mid-1995 it was made a park, subject only to the unresolved claims of the Squamish Nation. The clincher was that Drew C., the local parks manager, was able to find funding to buy the land at the base of the trail, create the campground, and do some trailwork. He’s never really got the credit he deserved for that fine bit of work.
Sadly, we weren’t able to get the Malemute included in the park. Also, the day the park was officially announced in Squamish, by a government minister, some loggers upset that they were out of work circled the area in their trucks, honking continuously. A sad day.
Over the following years a management plan for the park was developed, followed by a climbing strategy. Always involving climbers, and generally acceptable to us. That didn’t mean the Chief was free of development threats, or that all climber and land use issues at Squamish were taken care of. But it was a good start.
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rayjay
climber
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Oct 13, 2008 - 01:10am PT
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Anders this thread has become an all-time classic...
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 13, 2008 - 01:15am PT
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"trees at Squamish are often shallowly-rooted, and so aren’t that hard to blow over."
As an example of just how easy, think back to a day many years ago when you and I were climbing the Smoke Bluff Connection (Late 70s? Early 80s?). It was really windy, but otherwise a fine day for climbing. I led the first pitch (Mosquito), you led the second (Phlegmish Dance). When I got to your belay -- which was a small but solid-looking tree -- you were not entirely happy with life. I remember you pointing to a similar tree, lying on the ground a few meters away, and saying "It just blew over."
No more tree belays for us that day.
David
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 13, 2008 - 01:22am PT
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Carrying on, a bit about names. The proper name for the Squamish people, transliterated into English, is Sḵwxwú7mesh. The village that was at the foot of the Chief was named St'a7mes.
Articles about the Chief and area at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stawamus_Chief
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stawamus_Squaw
No more accurate and reliable than all on wikipedia, of course.
The cliff just north of the Chief was unofficially nicknamed the "Squaw" in the 1960s - which gave us a Chief, Squaw, Papoose and Malamute. In the context of the times and knowledge then, it perhaps made sense - those who invented the latter three names are decent progressive folk, who meant no harm by it. However, squaw came more and more to be seen as a derogatory term, so in 2000 the government announced that all features with the word squaw in their names would be re-named. Our Access Society immediately informed the climbing community, and suggested that the Squamish Nation provide a new, acceptable name. It was recently done, and the proposed new name is Slhanay. It's unknown whether it will be officially recognized, or simply local usage.
There has also been a suggestion that the Chief itself be renamed Siyam, which means chief in the Squamish language. It wouldn't be surprising if it ended up with a dual name.
Following on from Ghost's comment, I did mention upthread that tree identification was a useful skill for all Squamish climbers. Both quantity and quality are usually possible.
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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Oct 13, 2008 - 01:42am PT
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 13, 2008 - 02:00am PT
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Some last notes for today.
I don’t know the proper pronunciation of the Squamish (Coast Salish dialect) names mentioned in the previous post. Presumably “St'a7mes” is something like “Stawamus” or “Squamish”.
Very few climbers actually lived at Squamish in the usual sense of the word until the early 1980s, and not many until the early 1990s. Joe T. may have been the only climber who actually lived and worked in Squamish in the 1960s, and he still lives there. But apart from summer campers, most of the Squamish climbing community lived in greater Vancouver, as is still the case. (The community, although an amorphous thing, now extends from Chilliwack to Whistler to Nanaimo to Bellingham, with outliers.) Starting in the early 1980s, a few climbers began renting places in Squamish, first on a seasonal basis and then longer. The best-known perhaps being the house on No Name Road (really!), and the cottage at the Kindree’s. Eventually some found or made jobs, bought houses, and settled down. So there is now something of a local climbing community, although given the proximity to Vancouver, and the mobility of many climbers, it’s not a very distinct thing. It is amusing to hear climbers, some of whom have only recently moved to Squamish, or who live there only part of the year, going on about this. Canadians do like to squabble about “distinct societies”.
There was no commercial climbing at Squamish until at least the early 1980s. In the 1970s, guiding was mostly seen as a suspect un-coastal activity that was carried on by German speakers in the Rubblies, and rigging hadn’t been invented. Scott F., Mike D. and Cam C. did develop an interest in guiding, and we did sometimes see Alberta climbers at Squamish or in Yosemite, and many spent at least some time ice climbing in Banff. But there really wasn’t a commercial presence, with its attendant pressures, until the mid 1980s.
Very few if any climbers then were pure rock climbers. At the least, most got started as mountaineers of some sort, and eventually morphed into rock climbing. Even so, almost everyone did at least some alpine climbing, if only in the Bugaboos, a bit of ice climbing, and some backcountry skiing. Long winters were a factor – you can’t reliably plan to climb at Squamish between October and April.
Thanks to Todd for the photo – I was going to use it in my last post in this essay, when/if I eventually get there. A natural for The End. It is a sculpture by Jack Richardson, made to commemorate a sixteen-person (!) ascent of the Grand Wall in 1969, which I believe was masterminded by Steve and Hugh. It is just off the trail to the base of the wall.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 14, 2008 - 05:42pm PT
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Bump. Because it is a climbing thread. And because some content was recently added, even if it's the boring historical/editorial stuff I so like. Also so the thread isn't misplaced - hoping to actually add some photos soon.
Plus it would do us all good to practice our Coast Salish pronunciations.
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hafilax
Trad climber
East Van
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Oct 14, 2008 - 06:10pm PT
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Anybody have any juicy details about the recent coif on the crown of the Malamute?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 14, 2008 - 09:30pm PT
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The Malemute is a complicated subject, which I could touch on more - although most of what could be said is from post-2000. Including closure by the company that owns the railway (and right of way) that runs along the base of the cliff (2001?), their placing warning signs in several key locations, and then logging of much of the top of cliff in 2007, although it has now been somewhat tidied up and replanted.
It would be a lengthy digression even for me.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Oct 14, 2008 - 10:50pm PT
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bump for a climbing thread. and for simon t as a linguist.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 14, 2008 - 10:51pm PT
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and for simon t as a linguist
Which, if you knew Simon, is pretty f*#king funny.
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