Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Squamish

Right after I first started climbing I moved to Washington. Thinking there wasn't anything to climb on in my new home, at least there was Squamish a mire three and a half hours away. I had watched Sharma tear up Squamish (in Rampage) hundreds of times and The Egg being one of my favorite lines in the movie. My friend Kenny and I decided to make the pilgrimage to check it out, only needing my id to cross the border. At the time I was a v4 climber at best, so after seeing the lines in person I could only fantasize about a time when I was good enough to climb them especially The Egg. Right before I moved to Washington my dad had died unexpectedly. I was in a bad place and I was self medicating. The trip was a disaster. It was a hazy two days of climbing poorly but seeing those lines motivated me to become a better climber. I know its cheesy to say this but climbing gave me something to LIVE for, a reason to get healthy. 
Fast forward five clean years. The rules had changed, you needed a passport to cross the border. I couldn't justify paying for a passport when the climbing in Washington is so good (better then Squamish in my opinion) but this summer I was getting bummed by the heat and was thinking maybe Squamish would be a cooler option. So I shelled out the money for the passport and made my way through the interrogation that is the border crossing.
That first real trip was awesome! I felt like a kid in a candy store running around climbing loads of classics. Myles and I decided to stayed for a week. Finding out quickly that the camping situation in Squamish sucks. The campsites are outrages, eight dollars per person per night and it was full. The other campsite thirty bucks a night. So we decided to stay at the north walls. Are first hole in the wall camp got pounded with dust by the endless supply of construction trucks speeding recklessly down the road. One even peeled out to kick up dirt on us as we stood on the side of the road. So we moved camp way down the road to a lonely site. Camp 2, was eerily silent (no wind), as it got dark we started to hear noises of animals move around camp. Myles's imagination got the best of him with worst case scenarios. So then of course I got nervous. I brushed it off as field mice and went to sleep. That night Myles woke up to a deep breathing sound. Fearing it was a bear and paralyzed by fear, he plotted his escape for the next half hour. Finally realizing the breathing was coming from me in the other tent. Needless to say Myles wanted to move camp the next day. Camp 3, a beautiful spot right by the river were we managed to stay three days. The first day a hiker passively told us that people get kick out of that spot (with a dick undertone).
River next to Camp 3
On the third morning at that camp 3, that snooty hiker past by with a smirk on his face. Ten minutes later the rangers were kicking us out. Camp 4 this time we decided to find a spot so hidden as to not be bothered. This was a harder task then expected. Every spot that looked good we would wander back into the woods there were tents already there. We found small cities hidden everywhere.The last two nights we had to bushwhack deep in to the woods to get to are tent every night and we had neighbors.

Back to the climbing, my favorite send of the week was managing to get my butt up The Egg v11 after a extremely humid night session ended poorly making me doubt myself. The next day was hot as I was warming up but as I made my way to The Egg I got some cloud coverage and a send breeze kicked up. The stars had a lined and after a short session I had ticked it off my life list.
The video has a lot of my favorite sends from the trip but vimeo will only let upload about six minutes of footage. There are about ten more good lines from that first trip. I will put them in a extra video.