The prospect of climbing a route of this statue is intimidating for me. In its 10 pitches 6 or 7 are rated 5.11 depending on how you link them. In addition, the crux double roof pitch is 11c/d - a grade that I've never onsighted on gear. Nevertheless, an acquaintance of mine who has climbed in Squamish for almost as long as I have been alive told me that the "cruxes are short" and the "route is about as hard as the Rostrum". And that's how I got sandbagged.
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At 10:30 am on Sunday we were at the base. It was chilly, but we knew that the Chief would be in the sun in the afternoon. To go light I brought 2 t-shirts for the climb and we both had flip-flops for the descent. The guidebook mentioned that the first pitch (10c slab) is often skipped using a dirty ramp and a fixed rope. I was hoping not to do that as I wanted to climb the route in it's entirety. In addition, warming up on an 11b pitch is not my style. We were disappointed to find a wide wet streak that overlapped pretty well with the line of bolts on the first pitch and resorted to yarding on the tattered and rotten fixed rope that looked like it has seen a few Canadian winters. I was hesitant to claim my lead and Jorge quickly charged up the 2nd pitch which put him in position to lead the hardest pitches for the rest of our climb. The climbing was very technical right off the belay and it took him a long time to clean out dirt from every finger jam while pasting his feet tenuously on the moist granite.
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As I came up to his station he looked very disappointed. The dihedral above was even dirtier, wetter, and completely overgrown. Bad thoughts started up in my head as well. "WTF? How can this be a classic? Has anyone climbed this before?" They didn't last very long as a quick look at the topo revealed that we are to take a hard right into a splitter, but grainy fist crack called "Daylight crack". We both cheered up and the climbing got better and better from that point on.
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I linked the Daylight crack into a sloper traverse down and to the right almost getting off route in between. That put us at the base of the 100 meter dihedral which is one of the best features of the route. The dihedral can be split up into 3 11b-ish pitches or the first two can be linked together to make two monstrous 50 meter endurofests. That's exactly what Jorge ended up doing for his turn. The climbing was spicy, extremely technical, with occasional wet finger locks, and cruxy dead dihedrals that were negotiated with many calf-burning stems on micro features. My friend Lindsay was possibly right - the cruxes are short. The thing is: every pitch has a handfull of them with no places to hang out and rest.
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For the second half the dihedral steepens and the quality of stone goes way up starting to resemble that of the valley. I got a mandatory knee-bar 10 ft away from the station and proceeded to get my body trashed. Fingerlocks become more positive but the climbing also got extremely pumpy with calf-pump and and forearm-pump continuing to build up. The book suggests to "bring all the gear you own" for this pitch. It was true: it's been a while since I've come to the belay with so little left of the rack and so much rope drag.
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The dihedral ends on a ledge that is capped by a massive set of roofs that can be seen from the base. We were both psyched to do the freeway "light" with no falls, but I started to worry as my body was starting to get extremely exhausted. By this point I've already climbed more 5.11 cracks than ever before on a given day and I was happy that Jorge was stoked to lead the crux roof pitch. It looked super intimidating as you couldn't really see any holds over the roof and the exposure was ridiculous. We chilled at the "Truck stop cave" for a few minutes and Jorge proceeded to onsight the double roof.
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While following I spent a good bit of time pulling out a cam that walked in and required both hands for extraction. Finding a no-hands position in the middle of that overhang wasn't restful at all. I'd say it was gut-wrenching. The exposure frightened me with nothing but air under my feet all the way to the base. I succeeded with the cam, but only to have my forearms explode on me at the last hard move of the 40 foot pitch.
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We rested for a few minutes during which I contemplated whether I still have it in me to lead the next (11a) pitch. With all signs against it I decided to give it a go and proceeded to get suckered into a harder variation. Upper levels (rated 12a if you link it with the previous pitch and omit the hanging belay) looked amazing, but hard as I climbed up to the fixed stopper at the crux. My forearms and biceps started to cramp up and I knew that I could barely hold on, not to mention place gear.
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I downclimbed back to the hanging station and let Jorge give it a go. A thought crossed my mind that we should traverse around the arete clipping the pin at my ankle level in the picture above (that's where the regular route goes), but the splitter layback of Upper Levels beaconed. Jorge finally met his challenge taking a fall into empty space below the roof and pulling me up to hang without touching the wall as well. The move wasn't super hard (maybe V3), but we were both pretty beat up. I could barely hold on to the rock at this point while following him. Nevertheless, I was happy to finally get on some sunny rock and return to the vertical terrain.
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Jorge started up the Fast Lane variation as the cracks on the regular route looked like they have not gotten much love lately. He proceeded to link two pitches avoiding the hanging belay in between to stretch our 60 m rope to the next station. By the way, did I mention that he is a total badass! The pitch involved stellar face climbing on very raw granite flakes that threatened to puncture our fingertips.
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I finished the climb by leading the short bolder problem pitch call "Last Exit" and we were finally at the top way more psyched than when we left the ground.
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Needless to say, today I'm feeling like I got ran over by a truck on the freeway. I hope that many more adventures with Jorge will follow. It's awesome to have such a solid partner!
Vlad
