Date: 10/10/2009
Trip Report:
Having both been somewhat unsuccessful on our recent wall attempts, Matt and I made plans a few weeks ago to “get up to Squamish” if we could before it got too wet. Weather, family obligations, stupid excuses, etc but finally a nice weather window and we assembled a support posse. When the support posse promptly bailed with the colder forecast I had to taunt Matt over chat at work and remind him that they made these things called belay jackets to keep you warm when climbing in chilly weather. We loaded up the car Friday night with lots of gear and some good canned beers and headed north.
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University Wall follows the prominent cornet system, our bivy was at the tree halfway up. - 
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Saturday morning we woke to chilly but mostly clear skies and loaded up my giant haul bag and backpack and hit the base of the Chief. The approach up to University Wall was a little exciting but featured a nice new fixed rope in the worst part. After some gear sorting I took the first lead doing the 5.6 traverse to the real start of the route and heading up the awesome C1 first pitch (or 5.12a for those so inclined). Approaching the wall we thought we saw a portaledge hanging in the middle of pitch 2. As I got closer it shrunk to a midget ledge made of plywood and nicely sized for standing or sitting on. It seemed like a good place to stop on the otherwise steep wall and I started the haul while Matt seconded. With the over hanging nature of the route and the fairly light bag I was done in time to mock Matt as he cleaned the somewhat awkward corner.
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He took over the lead and made his way up some more awkward corner bits and past some anchors not on any of our topos, finally stopping at a nice bolt and tree belay at the top of pitch 4 just as the sun was setting. I had a bit of trouble cleaning a few pieces of gear in the fading light, since of course I had left my headlamp in the haulbag. I arrived at the top of the pitch and we threw up the ledges (given the nature of the route and our plan to rap it, we each brought our own ledge). I cracked open a Guinness as Matt struggled with his double ledge.
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After a minute or two Matt let out a somewhat horrified “oh shit” and I looked over expecting to see a ledge or some other vital piece of equipment hurtling down the wall and was instead greeted with a golf putter. Apparently Matt was a little confused as to what type of trip we were planning on (or maybe he just got his gear a little mixed up while moving). I’m pretty sure we’ve set the record for highest ever golf club on the route. We passed an otherwise pleasant evening with canned ravioli, more beer, and cigars while watching the lights of Squamish pass by. The night was windy and tossed us around a bit, but I slept pretty well anyways.
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Waking sometimes well after first light we reorganized and I was off again close to the crack of noon. Our plan was to fix the last two traversing pitches thus allowing us to leave our bivy gear and haul bag here and rap back down after we hit the top (the usual descent is to rap Uncles Bens next door). I hard to start with some thrutchy squeeze chimney moves off the belay but soon hit a fixed pin and then was in great high stepping C1 again. I linked the next pitch with some tiny offsets and more awkward overhanging corner stuff up to pitch 6. Matt made good time getting to the belay and I was happy to get my belay jacket from him as the clouds had moved in and the wind was ever present.
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Matt made some angry vagina like sounds but I told him he was leading the next pitch anyways. He did well on probably the hardest aid of the route through some ratty fixed pins, hooks, and loose bits. I followed the traverse, thankful for my gri-gri and then set off for the last pitch featuring a cool easy hook traverse to some more hand cleanable fixed pins and then a bit of 4th and two more aid moves to the top. Actually the route ends on a ledge about 2/3 of the way up the Chief, but close enough. With some bushwhacking I managed to set a belay from a tree more in line with my last gear and Matt jugged.
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With brief celebration we managed a double rope rap right back to the top of pitch 6 with our fixed line allowing us to jug over to the anchor before the traverse. Another double rope rap got us back to our bivy. With the day continuing to continue we wasted little time in cleaning up and splitting the weight for the next rap, which got us back to the wooden platform of the day before. One more 60m rap got us down to where we started, but not wanting to carry stuff back down the ledge approach, we did two more full raps all the way back to the chief trail.
Now we were in the dark and our only hope of living through the night was to ditch the gear and make our way to the brew pub for beer and burgers (yes, bacon, a fried egg, pineapple, and a pickled beet really can all fit on one tasty burger).
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It was 30 degrees when we woke up in the morning so we retrieved our gear and had a leisurely drive back, finally with at least one short wall done this year. Good times, good beer, good partner, just the way it ought to be!
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We had topos from McLane and Maddaloni, both of which had some glaring errors like the three extra bolted anchors not shown on either. Matt used his mad topo skills to make this:
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More pics are here: [url=http://picasaweb.google.com/matthiesen/UniversityWallSquamish#]http://picasaweb.google.com/matthiesen/UniversityWallSquamish#[/url]
And Matt's pics: [url=http://picasaweb.google.com/matthew.clifton/UniversityWall#]http://picasaweb.google.com/matthew.clifton/UniversityWall#[/url]
Gear Notes:
Standard aid rack with extras in the blue-orange TCU size or blue-yellow aliens. Two med-large hooks should suffice. Don't forget your putter as well.
Approach Notes:
Head left when you hit the base of the Chief, past the flake trail and up to the next ledge system, grovel up and use the hand line, then squeeze past the trees to the first bolted anchor.
