Squamish

Our four friends from Colorado have left but not before dispatching a few projects.

They started off their trip on the receiving end of the Squamish Shutdown. V4s were a challenge at first but after a few days in the forest they learned the style a bit and were enjoying the slabs and technical problems. It turns out Flannery has an abundance of slab skills, they were just dormant at first. She managed quick work of the V3 friction slab that I had to project and she far surpassed my highpoint on Black Slabbath.

Video still of Flann trying Black Slabbath V7.

Black Slabbath.

Written by Flannery Shay-Nemirow.

We’ve gotten lucky with the weather, managed to roll into town in the middle of a pleasant, warm dry spell. It’s been a bit too warm, but not too bad after a sweltering, yet rainy, Colorado season. It’s my second trip to Squamish, and I spent most of Colorado early season looking forward to it. I’m traveling with a ragtag team of misfits, each bent on crushing the boulders of the Grand Wall. After a somewhat harrowing 24 hour drive, we stumbled into the forest unprepared for the difficulties we would soon face. Maybe it was fatigue (we were 36ish hours without proper rest) or maybe it was the unfamiliar style of climbing, but performance was lacking on our first few days. Or, maybe, we all just paled in comparison to Asher’s climbing. 1 hour out of the car and Asher had already made new friends, scammed some beta and put together a quick ascent of Black Hole (V11). After a marathon sleeping session, the rest of the (mortal) crew was ready to take on the forest.
Our first day brought us Alex Savage, film maker impresario. Alex began our tour of the forest by taking us to Squamish’s most frustrating slabs.

Asher on Skin Graft V4. Photo by Alex Savage.

Other than V2 slabs I haven’t done any bouldering in the three weeks since I hurt my tendon.

Left Rib V2. Photo by Asher Shay-Nemirow.

Lately I’ve been trying to work on my weaknesses. One of them is slab climbing. I think the hardest pure slab I’ve climbed is around V6. For my first few years of climbing I got in the habit of avoiding styles that I wasn’t good at. That included slabs and slopers. Horse Pens was my home area for several years and I would usually skip over slopey technical problems because they always felt hard! I would walk right past classics like Millipede and Trick or Treat. It wasn’t that I was incapable of climbing them, I just didn’t want to fail on something well below my physical limit. Thankfully my friend Leslie is always full of psych and he finally pushed me to session Millipede one night four years ago. After a few frustrating attempts I finally sent the classic Horse Pens problem!

Me climbing Millipede for the first time.

I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t climbed a route involving a rope in well over a year.  I’ve done a fair amount of sport climbing in the past and a bit of trad but have never been super psyched on either. For the past year and a half I’ve been on a perpetual bouldering trip where I’ve had the luxury of chasing cold weather. Back when I lived in the south, bouldering in the summer wasn’t an option so we would always go out sport climbing. It’s been a long time since those days!

Today I finally tied into a rope again.  It started with an epic hike to the Smoke Bluffs, just look at the steep, treacherous trail we were on:

Wicked hike

Summer seems to have finally arrived in Squamish.  It’s a couple months late but better late than never!  We’ve had perfect sunny weather for what feels like two whole weeks now!  Before that we had a weeklong stretch of rain so it feels great to soak up some sunshine.

The Chief in all it's 2,000+ feet of glory

I’ve been in Squamish for a month now and it seems like I’m just getting to know the area! The bouldering here is massive, I have been busy just ticking off the moderate classics. The forest is dense and beautiful with boulder after boulder waiting to be climbed. The forest is so thick that it keeps the heat out and is a good ten degrees cooler than out in the open. The climbing style here tends to be technical with lots of slabs, aretes, and mantels. It’s a really fun style of climbing that challenges you to be more than powerful.

Jeremy on Undertow V7

I got grilled at the border crossing into Canada last week and I didn’t have the right answers to their questions so I had to go inside and talk to a border officer.

“Where are you from?” Um, I’m not sure, my truck says I’m from GA.
“How long will you be in Canada?” I don’t know, a month or two?
“Why do you want to go rock climbing in Squamish for two months?” Because that’s what I do?

They couldn’t understand what I was up to but luckily they let me in!

The weather has been pretty good since I’ve been here.  It’s been in the 60’s and hasn’t rained too much.  I wasn’t planning to come up here quite so soon but that’s how the journey goes, it’s often unexpected.  I’ve been climbing, getting to know the area and some of the locals.  I’ve been fortunate to hang out with Tim Clifford who lives in Squamish and works at blurr, one of my amazing sponsors. He’s been educating me on all sorts of things!  When I told him I had been climbing for ten years he said, “Oh, so not that long then.” Would you believe he started climbing before I was born?!  Just four years ago he established The Singularity, an as yet unrepeated V14 here in Squamish. He is a bit older than the average boulderer but still climbs harder than I do!

View from the Chief

My original plan was to be heading back to Atlanta within the next few weeks to spend time with my family and lock myself in a room to edit my movie!  I will probably try to get most of my filming done here in June and hit the long road back East as planned. Alternatively I might try to stick around Squamish for most of the summer.  It’s considerably colder here than Hotlanta, plus it’s beautiful and there is an abundance of bouldering!  We shall see, I have been itching to actually have a home that doesn’t have four wheels so hopefully I can make that happen soon one way or the other!

Squamish