Plight of the Plunger

A Big-Wall Climbing Anti-Primer

NB: A tedious preamble concerning my rock climbing history was excised from this spell-binding tome, that I could chew on and better regurgitate its more indigestible, nay, unpalatable components as a toothsome and coherent fable, so this is technically ‘Part Two’ of how not to climb big walls. Part One shall follow eventually-with.

Second note: Many years and beers have flowed through the Kipper thought-processing device, and while equipped with a capacious memory bank, some corruption has occurred, and I’ve discovered that some memories range from semi-accurate to wholly incorrect. But hey, you’re here to have fun, so let’s not quibble about a route name here and a colour of cap there.

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Bob, Graham, and I pulled our harnesses on at the car and hiked up through the fragrant conifers to the base of Squamish’s Stawamus Chief Mountain, during which my right quad decided to cramp and spasm, almost as if it were chickening out for me. I’d been worried that 1500 vertical feet of technical rock climbing might be too much for me, and the possibility that I’d arrive at the base crippled from the WALKING portion did nothing to dispel that concern.

Our plan was to ascend the ‘easy’ version of the Grand Wall to avoid warming up on the notoriously stiff ‘Apron Strings’ route, thus conserving strength for the harder pitches above. This requires zig-zagging up a series of dirt-covered granite ramps called the ‘Flake Escape Ledges’, which are mostly hiking with a couple of rock moves thrown in for spice, and for actual danger, Batmanning ~15 feet up a knotted rope that hangs down from a filthy wall of oozing moss. Hand-over-handing up a slimy rope that squelches out goo while your feet skitter on a steep, sopping slab is even less fun than it sounds, given the consequences of grip failure: fall, hit the ledge, and plunge 100 feet into the forest, where you’d probably squash a lizard going about its bug-eating business. Consider this report confirmation that the author avoided this embarrassment.

The final zag to the right brings one to the start of ‘Merci Me’, a two-pitch climb up a relatively low angled slab on a dyke that also zig-zags, and can be wet, though it was mercifully dry for our ascent. The ledge atop The Flake is broad enough to stand on unroped without fear and little hazard, with ample room to flake out the ropes and tie in and chug gatorade. Bob and Graham tackled the rope management end of things while I handled the chugging of sports beverage and evaluated the easy climbing above. The dyke itself is perhaps a yard wide and composed of pinkish white aplite, unlike the showcase ‘Black Dyke’, a thick basaltic intrusion that cuts vertically through the entire Stawamus pluton, and in fact can be seen some miles distant on the far side of Howe Sound. While reassuringly solid, this aplite was fine-grained, and looked to be on the slippery side. Still, I could see plenty of holds, and expected we’d waltz up to the more strenuous traverse section that came next. My leg’s return to full function was obviously a good omen, and I felt thrilled to be there.

After a cursory inspection of knots and harnesses, Bob began leading and I resumed worrying, as I noticed the absence of an actual belay being in place, which Graham quickly corrected by threading the rope through his device. I heard a bit of rattling from his locking carabiner as he fed rope up, and asked if the gate was in fact locked. He twisted the collar up and down a bit and said ‘Yes, but I don’t cinch it up tight so it can’t jam’. Fair enough, I thought. Bob was what I consider to be ‘pretty high up without protection’ when I realized how sparse the bolts were, and that he still had a good 10 feet to the first one. The holds began to look less plentiful and more ‘have mercy’ small as well. Bob’s movements slowed, and I detected hesitation, a slight loss in confidence. YER GONNA DIE! I did not yell, choosing instead to brightly chirp ‘looking good!’, which I know I would have preferred to hear at that moment. The bolt was tantalizingly near, but not yet clippable: just another couple of moves, and Bob indeed would be that veritable uncle.

A long pause was soon joined by a touch of sewing machine leg, which telepathically touched off a flood of adrenaline *I* had no use for. KeeREIST, he’s not gonna come off there, is he!? I thought, and glanced over at Graham, who was alertly observing the lack of proceedings and ready to feed out more rope at a moment’s notice. Whilst looking his way, his lack of personal attachment to the rock, aside from via his runners, became evident, and a scenario I wanted no part of played out in my mind: Bob slips, gains momentum down the slab, slams momentarily into the ledge with me between him and Graham, the rope flicks me off the ledge, and Graham gets torn from his perch to make it a threesome worthy of lead article in that year’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering journal. I traversed back along the ledge, whipped a sling around a tree and clipped myself to it, thinking ‘You’re not getting *ME*, you bastards…’

Bob shook off the shakes with a decisive move to a good handhold, made his way to the stance (where some trad lunatic had stood in 1967 and manually hammer-drilled the rock to install the bolt), and let us know that he’d forgotten how far it was to the first one as he clipped it. It’s easily 30 feet above the ledge, and with the height from there to the forest floor psychologically pulling at your back, seems very far indeed on climbing that’s too insecure to be trivial.

The first ascensionists were both bold and skint, which makes expecting the NEXT bolt to be another 30 feet up perfectly reasonable - and correct. But once you’ve successfully clipped a bolt on that style of route, confidence is typically quick to return, and despite the sparse protection, Bob dispatched the remainder of the first pitch without a hint of tremors. Even mine had ceased. The second pitch was easier, Graham and I followed with the boldness a top-rope allows, and we soon found ourselves established beneath the vertical business to come. The wall looms above you at that belay station, with a roof jutting out and blocking sight of the upcoming pitches of the climb, which featured far harder climbing I had hoped to preview. I’d also hoped to catch a glimpse of a party on Perry’s Layback, but no such glimpses were available. Mind you, the situation is plenty absorbing as is, with the rock plunging away til it meets the forest, and beyond the highway the windsurfer-dotted blue-green waters of Howe Sound lead your eyes to the far side cliffs. Spectacular.

Next up, there’s a continuation of the traverse that concluded the 2nd pitch.It features a handhold-laden horizontal crack/ledge at first, and erosion has seen fit to equip you with footholds there as well. The easy section expires at a stiff move requiring a pull-up on unhappily small holds, with nothing but friction for the feet. Pull down hard, lock off, make a quick stab to a good but distant hold, feet up, voila: belay anchor. From there, you gain a bolt ladder across blank rock up to the base of the Split Pillar. Graham belayed Bob once again while I enjoyed the chilly breeze in my tee shirt. While watching Bob set off above the void I was afforded a sea-of-granite-and-world-beyond view. Quite stunning.

I’d never been too impressed with Bob’s choice of climbing shoe, opining to him at the climbing gym that better rubber was available, and that perhaps that model of shoe wasn’t sturdy enough for his beyond-sturdy frame. He informed me that he needed the widest shoes available, and accepted their limitations. His hands were similarly overbuilt, with double-wide fingers he’d held against mine to demonstrate. ‘A 5.12 climber in a 5.9 body’ was his claim, and it was certainly true that he was a skilled climber, adept at solving complex problems, but hoisting his frame up for a stab at a distant hold was a problem those shoes did not help him solve.

‘Watch me here!’ he warned, and attempted the move. Ooh, close, a little farther…and then he slipped and regained the start position. Those f’ng shoes, I thought. Another go, same result. And another. Several more…FINALLY! He nailed it and stood up, moving just out of my view due to the cliff’s curve. I could hear where he was though, breathing heavily in the distance. I’m sure he welcomed that chilly breeze, as he was standing in the warm sun, for which I’d have happily stood in those crappy shoes.

As was tradition by now, and it being a traditional style of ascent, Graham again followed while I paid out the rope that would protect me from a serious pendulum when I followed, assuming Graham clipped it in after unclipping the rope leading to Bob. He of course followed that protocol, and I continued being cold and intimidated, yet surprisingly unperturbed by the exposure. You’re only as high as your last piece of gear, I’ve heard, and I was clipped in to gear I trusted with a foot-long nylon sling. That adage is only half-true, by the way, as we shall see.

By the time I heard the call to begin climbing, I was itching to go, shoes on, chalk bag on my hip so it could be reached despite the small rucksack I carried, which contained our shoes, snacks, and water, not to mention the ‘Next of Kin’ cards climbers are required by Canadian law to carry. Just kidding. I unclipped from the fixed anchor points, and started moving across the wall, rather easily at first, then with some difficulty after unclipping from the second fixed piton nailed into the worsening hand-hold crack. I began to hate the tug of the pack on my back. The move that bedeviled Bob was harder than expected, but went first try with the assistance of my sticky-soled shoes.

The lads came into view, standing beside the overgrown bonsai tree that somehow survives growing from the back of a narrow ledge that also supports the Split Pillar at its leftmost point. The Pillar is a slender, detached rock flake some 130 feet tall, and climbing up its right side was next on our menu. They’d continued beyond the traverse and climbed up the three bolt ladder to gain said ledge. Ascending the ladder is pretty simple, if uncomfortable in rock shoes: clip a carabiner with attached 2 ft long sling to the first bolt, stuff a foot into the bottom of the sling, grab the carabiner and stand up, clip a second sling and ‘biner to the next bolt, step into that sling, reach down and unclip the first sling, and repeat this process until you’re standing beside a pair of men grinning in the sun.

After a quick munch and slurp, it was time to attack the Pillar. It’s separated from the wall by a thin ‘finger crack’ just off the belay, and as you climb, the crack widens until a hand can be slipped inside, and then a fist, and just below the top it widens into a squeeze chimney, where one gets to play reverse Santa. I’d been carrying the sack of toys, and wondered how ‘that’ was going to go, because, while no master of flying reindeer, slender with a pack I am not. But, what me worry, I wasn’t going to lead! Once again, that task fell to Big Bob.

He suggested I belay him this time, to avoid killing lightweight Graham via the slingshot method in the unlikely event he fell. Graham and I traded places, I reached up and clipped the pack to the solid multi-bolt and chained rappel station/belay anchor, and threaded Bob’s rope through my belay device. He attached a quickdraw (a short sewn sling with a carabiner at each end) to the bolt nearest the Pillar and clipped the rope through the second ‘biner. This was to save me from a downward impact (to protect the belay, as we say in the biz) if he fell off prior to getting a piece inserted into the crack. We gave each other a quick once over for safety, I told him he was on belay, and he tiptoed over to the base of the Pillar. After chalking up his hands, he glanced back at me and asked ‘Ready?’ and I nodded.

Climbing!

Climb on…

Bob stuffed his fingers into the barely adequate gap, left hand thumb down, right hand thumb up, pasted his feet against the wall, and heaved himself into action, left hip facing the Pillar. Picture a big strong guy trying to pull the Pillar off the Chief, and you’ve got it. He shuffled his hands up, shuffled his feet up, and was soon at the solitary rest/stance on the lower Pillar, roughly fifteen feet above the belay ledge. There’s a good foothold out right and a decent one on the left, which allows one to stand in balance and select the piece of gear which best fits the crack at that point. Due to the very gradual taper of the crack, the metal wedges called ‘chocks’ tend to not fit securely, so Bob selected a spring-loaded camming device (SLCD or cam for short) and slipped its ornate head into the crack, giving its ‘biner a couple of tugs to reassure himself it was a good placement. He clipped the rope in, and set off again, looking strong and confident.

Looking good, Bob!

The crack had widened enough by then that he was no longer stuffing his fingers in, but was not yet wide enough to accept the toe portion of the climbing shoe. Well, his, at least. Jamming the small toes of your left foot into the crack takes weight off the hands, allowing for much easier progress and delaying a forearm flame-out. A few more moves and he’d be there, more secure and able to reach back and dip into the pure white chalky powder of grip-bolstering bliss.

He was beginning to breathe hard and seemed to have trouble preventing his hands from slipping down the Pillar. I began to feel tense, or ‘regain my natural psychological state’, as I think of it. He shuffled his hands up again, moved his left foot, then the right, and attempted to slap his hands up again. He was by now panting, and Graham informed him he was doing well, which is also a beneficial thing to say to a climber who is clearly NOT doing well.

And then his left foot slipped, and was replaced, and again. ‘Panting’ falls well shy of describing the actual frantic growling wheezes emanating from our leader, who again slapped a hand into the crack to gain better purchase. ‘Oh noooo!’ howled my natural state, ‘he’s not going to fall, is he!?’ He was easily 15 feet above that lonely little cam, and I don’t know whether he thought it would survive a 30 foot fall onto its slender stem, but I sure didn’t.

Both hands slipped down a few inches as his vocalizations took on a peculiar steam engined freight train quality, breaths chugging out but slowing, like the gradient had become too steep for the available horsepower, and he was trembling and fighting and suddenly both feet shot out across the wall and his last dregs of arm strength propelled him from the crack, and

DOWN

HE

CAME

with a final prolonged train horn howl of terror.

And if you think he was terrified, imagine his humble ‘never caught a 200 lb man taking a 30 footer’ belay-slave, who latched both hands onto the brake strand of the rope and braced for impact, fully expecting that delicate little precision-machined cam to rip out, for Bob to plunge another 20 feet, and … then what!?

During his accelerating descent, Bob had remained in approximately the same position, as if seated in a fully laid-back recliner. This changed abruptly at about the same time the rope came taut as his left ass-cheek caught the ledge, flipping him over and upside down to better appreciate the distance to the woods far, far below. I only saw the butt-strike, because I was violently yanked off my feet and belly first into the pack I’d hung on the anchor, lengthening his fall but reducing the shock load on that little cam. Looking down from my improved vantage point, I could see him hanging upside down in his harness, his dwindling trademark sun-bleached pink cap slowly rotating like a poorly designed frisbee, skipping off the wall and retracing our steps until it was out of sight around the corner.

He reached up and grabbed the rope between his legs, pulling himself upright while claiming to be okay for the most part, to my immediate relief. With me as a counterweight, he was able to swiftly climb up the bolt ladder while I descended to my former position. Regaining the ledge, he looked at me and said ‘Man, that really blows the psyche!’, which is still hilarious now as I recount the experience.

But what a trooper! After a well-earned rest, he declared himself fit and able to resume the ascent. I thought this was a TERRIBLE idea, but remained mum. He’d clearly lost some oomph from his impromptu pull-up session on the traverse, and I doubted he’d have any left after taking a literal butt-kicking from the Pillar on his first attempt.

This time, though, he went in with managed expectations. After regaining the stance, he rested, climbed a bit higher, inserted another cam, and clipped his harness to it with a short sling. I could see ‘that’ working. It was still hard as hell, but slow progress was made: up 6 feet - hang on a piece - repeat. He was maybe 75 feet up when I heard him mutter ‘this went a lot better last time’ to himself, but he was going to make it. Having no baseline, I was starting to be happy about this time, because I was going to have a go at the SPLIT PILLAR, a legendary piece of rock, a global rock-climbing icon. Added bonus? I’d be protected from above the entire way.

Bob gained the spacious ledge atop the Pillar after a brief thrash in the squeeze chimney, and put Graham on belay. Even better! By reverting to third man up, I’d have Graham plucking out all the gear for me, so my ascent would be a total cruise! And Graham did pluck out all the gear, save the camming unit that held Bob’s fall, which played hard to get.

Graham joined Bob at the peak of the Pillar, and then the blessed words floated down: Do you want us to haul the pack?

Oh lordy yes! I wanted them to haul the pack. Yes, PLEASE!

And then it was my turn for ‘made as easy as possible for me’ abject misery. I’d have preferred an easy warm-up after cooling down for a solid hour or more, and the climbing was indeed strenuous, but I was soon eye to eye with Supercam! He who stopped a 30+ footer. The stem was in too deep, making the trigger pull impossible to reach with thumb and fingers, but I devised a two-handed method that required cramming in both index fingers and minor skin loss. Scritch, and out it came, to a chorus of distant cheers.

Plugging on after that sneaky rest, I quickly reached the ‘goddammit that hurts’, illusion-destroying part of the climb, where one gets to ‘enjoy’ the enhanced security of cramming the outside edge of the toes behind that nasty sharp flake of granite. Classic granite features do not come with a guarantee of user satisfaction. So it was an unpleasant improvement, but the pain lessened as more toes could be stuffed inside, and I resumed having something like fun again. In addition, I was pleased that I was both fit enough and dumb enough to keep going. My ego wrote that last sentence.

I’d been left-leaning (as usual, har har) up the climb to that point, in the layback position, but the crack opened up enough that hand-jamming became possible, forcing me to switch sides, putting my right shoulder against the Grand Wall. The Pillar could now chew both of my feet with its cruel granite incisor, but the hand jams didn’t hurt much and were bomber, and I was able to relax into a new state of reduced brutality. Feeling ‘solid’ allowed me to take in the full breadth of the experience, the vastness and beauty of the place, and… oh hey, there’s birds up here!

As I climbed, the crack continued to widen, and the comfy jams stopped working, so my hands had to be cupped for purchase, less secure and ouchy with the knuckles reporting a multitude of pointy crystals. On the plus side, my feet slid in farther, and supported most of my weight when inserted sideways and twisted upright so my ankles were less bent over. Heck, my feet barely hurt! Those were big wins. Of course, my happiness was short lived once fist-jamming became the new requirement. Some may be thinking, why not just layback the whole thing? and I like that idea, but I not was not quite strong enough then to attempt it.

Around the same time fists were going to become disconcertingly rattly, I reached a short section of easier climbing on smaller flakes that required no jamming, bringing me to a solid stance below the squeeze chimney. The lads were grinning up a storm, and confirmed that I’d done them proud. The chimney welcomed me with the aroma of urine, which the breeze largely kept at bay, and I thrutched my unjolly self up the slot, happy at least that I wasn’t wearing the pack. They soon offered me that pack for water and a snack, and I pulled out my watch, learning that I was standing on top of the Pillar at 2:30 in the afternoon, far later than we’d expected, and an obvious reason to retreat. We’d just reached the hardest part of the route, and were barely half-way up!

I discovered I was the only one who knew the time:

Nodding up at the perfectly named ‘Sword of Damocles’, Bob popped the question: ‘going to give that a try?’

Graham, somewhat guardedly: ‘I’m… thinking about it’

Me: REALLY!? Are you out of your MINDS?! WE’LL BE UP HERE ALL NIGHT!!!

Keeping that to myself, I sagely mentioned the hour with some solemnity. They expressed disappointment at that news and resigned themselves to a regrettable retreat. The retreat was facilitated by tying the two ropes together after feeding one end through the station anchor chains and tossing the ends down. As we knew we’d be nowhere near safe on the ground after that rap, we also tied the lower ends together to prevent accidentally rappelling off the ends of the ropes. Rappel errors kill more climbers than merely falling off of climbs, and I lost a former climbing partner that way.

Once we’d all rapped to the base of the Pillar, we pulled down on the knot side, making the other end go up and through the anchor above and down to us. (this is occasionally dangerous: 130 feet of high speed rope can give you a nasty welt or burn) Rope through the anchor again, and we set off on the next rap, which ended in the middle of a steep slab, or ‘the middle of nowhere’ as it were. Stepping off to begin that rappel was a bit unsettling, knowing it would end at a hanging belay station, where we’d be utterly dependent on a few bolts and some chain, with all three of us dangling there in the middle of the wall. Had we all been as slight as Graham, my nerves would have jangled more quietly. But, there being no other option available, and despite my unvoiced misgivings, we gathered at the hanging rap station, the bolts did not fail, and we descended without incident to the base of the mighty Grand Wall.

It was pleasantly warm down there, birds chirping, a few climbers wandering by, and while we didn’t have enough time to complete the Grand, there was plenty of time left in the day for another harrowing misadventure, so after we’d coiled up the ropes, off we went to the base of Seasoned in the Sun. I’d seconded that 100-foot classic in the spring with my friend Jana. She fell while leading it, just a few moves from topping out, and as the rope came taut, the piece that took her weight popped out, and she fell again, further, onto the next piece, which held, but seven pieces below it were yanked out by the rope tension, a failure mode called zippering. Had THAT ONE failed, she would have joined me on the ground, very much the worse for wear, likely dead on impact.

Graham hadn’t tested himself sufficiently, so he tied into the sharp end, during which I mentioned Jana’s difficulty, which stemmed from not having the piece she needed to protect the final, crux section, as she’d used that cam lower in the climb. Had she a carried another one, she wouldn’t have needed to rely on what she admitted was a ‘pretty sketchy placement’. Our gear rack was bristling with defensive weapons, so Graham felt he had everything he’d need, and began climbing with Bob on the belay.

There’s a much shorter climb in the crags just north of the Chief, the Smoke Bluffs, called ‘The Zip’, which closely resembles Seasoned, starting with a tight finger crack that gradually widens to ‘rattly’ fingers, and then opening part way up into a pod that accepts an entire leg. When I first saw Seasoned in the Sun, my eyes were fooled into believing it was about the same length, but that’s a perspective illusion caused by the rock gradually steepening, and when Jana was climbing it, she seemed to shrink as she approached the pod, into which her entire body fit, to my surprise.

Graham was in no mood for a debacle, and ‘sewed it up’ with gear every 10 feet or so, climbing with elegant form and flawless technique. When he reached the final, near-vertical hand crack to the top, there was much fiddling about with the gear as he selected the needed piece, only, he couldn’t, because, like Jana, he’d used it earlier. He looked down, wayyy down, smiled wanly, and said: ‘Wish I had one more #2 Friend’, as that size and brand of cam is called. He refused Bob’s offer to lower him to retrieve it to protect the top, chalked up, and cruised over the lip of the climb, to celebratory YEAH!s from the throng of two below.

Some years later, I returned to lead it, bringing extra #2 cams, and was so sparing in their use that I somehow topped out without using ANY.

Graham belayed Bob and I up to his aerie, we enjoyed the camaraderie and the serenity and ease of mind a good day’s climbing tends to beat into you, and rapped down. We hiked out, and ended the day with hot wings and beer at the late lamented Cliffside Pub.

Finis!