Squamish Trip, 2009
When I left for BC in late June I was already fairly addicted to bouldering (think climbing things but replace cliffs with boulders and ropes with rigid mats), my only experience however had been inside.
My business partner and I were down in Victoria for the World Student Environmental Summit overseeing the launch of Wikiearth. Victoria was quite interesting, note all the rabbits:
Rabbits on UVic Campus
By our 3rd or fourth day at the conference we were already itching to climb, our plan being to sneak off to Squamish for four days after the conference. To satiate our hunger for climbing, we even took to climbing a few of the larger trees around campus (teaching me just how allergic I seem to be to tree bark).
After the conference, as we drove out of Vancouver into the mountains, and the sense of excitement reached a crescendo. Squamish, upon first impression, did not disappoint. I’m not one to speak in cliches, but the place really is a little piece of heaven on earth:
Squamish, BC
Upon arriving in town, we were promptly overcharged for a bouldering mat, bought some groceries, and took off to find a campsite.
Driving up to the car camping area under the Chief, we found a location that had the dualistic properties of 1. being one of the worst campsites imaginable and, 2. having one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Note, there was a beautiful mountain lake behind our campsite, I’m not talking about Christian.
Our Campsite
But hey, we were here to climb, not to have tea at a fancy-pants campsite.
Day 1:
Upon parking at our site, we immediately hiked into the woods with our mat, our topographical map, and climbing shoes. We promptly found what Christian informed me was an easy problem and proceeded to crush our spirits on it.
We bumped into a local about ten minutes later who kindly informed us that we were climbing about a V6 or V7 (about twice what we were in the market for). We proceeded to climb the V2 that this fellow was working on, and our spirits began to quickly be lifted. We then hiked with him over to a V4 he had been working on and had a great time working on that problem for a bit:
Day 2:
Did I mention that, despite our pristine surroundings of our campsite, we were within a two minute drive of Starbucks:
Starbucks with WiFi, next to the Chief
Upon waking up, being the workaholics that we are, we headed into town with our laptops to take advantage of said Starbucks’ internet. We also bought some blankets, the previous night having been one of the coldest, most miserable, sleeps that I can remember.
Upon getting back to our campsite, we had a great day of climbing. Ascending a great V3 problem and a frightening V0:
Great little V3 Problem
Frightening V0 Problem
Day 3:
The cold from the previous two nights sleeps was starting to kill Christian, so we were seriously thinking about heading back into Vancouver a day early. This having been said, I wanted to at least try to kill a V3 bouldering problem I had started working on the previous day:
I was triumphant, and we decided to head back into Vancouver before Christian’s fledgling pneumonia managed to really do a number.
I had a wonderful trip, climbing at Squamish managed to change a climbing compulsion into a climbing obsession.
