New routes above and beyond area

[squamish climber]

Glenn Woloski sent me the topo for four new routes on the backside of the Chief including a very nice looking four pitch 5.11




(A) Split Decision 4 pitches 5.11 minus
P1-3 Glenn Woloski , Yuko Iwanaga, Harry Young, Robin Barley
FCFA Glenn Woloski, Paul Street
Approach: Start up trail to Above and Beyond ,after about 100 meters take trail on left (south)
switch back up open rock with aid from fixed rope. Traverse further (about 150 meters) south
along narrow ledge until ledge widens to large right facing corner.
P1 Climb in corner to large roof and a bolt. Travers left to a good ledge. Climb steep corner, or
twin cracks which slowly eases. 10b. Continue up to bolted belay at base of beautiful open wall.
P2 Climb a short pitch up an easy groove to an large overlap, move slightly down to a bouldery
move past a bolt and a few thin moves to a station at the base of a steep hand crack.5.10 +.
P3 Climb the fun steep crack which briefly widens to off-width. Keep right to an easy ramp.
Continue through to a stiff layback up and over to a large ledge and a belay. 10b.
P4 Climb up the impressive corner with jamming and laybacks, stay in the corner until on top of
the large pillar and blocks.
Right hand variation: Step up right with an undercling to clip the first of three bolts in a tricky
traverse to a small alcove. Delicate moves and thin jams with a long reach to an airy finish.
5.11
Left hand variation: A tricky reach out to the left gains a good flake and cracks to move up.
Watch out for rope drag. A pumpy handrail to a bolt, a long step down then a technical mantle up
and left gains the finish through horizontals to the top. 5.10+

Approach for next 3 climbs : traverse left from cruising to infinity approx. 300 m

(B)9 am crack 2 pitches 5.10+
P1 Glenn Woloski, Yuko Iwanaga,Harry Young
FCFA Glenn Woloski, Robin Barley
P1 Climb the funny crackline in the middle of the north facing wall to the second ledge and
chains. Easy does it when pulling up on the large flake.
P2 Committing pitch. Move up into the flake on the right . Continue steeply past the second bolt
and a seemingly dead end. Swing around to the main face on the left. Difficult thin moves further
left and up finally come to a short good rest where the route joins the last pitch of Split Decision
at the alcove.

(C) Glenn Canyon ,aka? Abandoned project ? 3 pitches 5.10c
The deep off width crack in the corner finishing at the right of a giant roof.
FA ? Glenn Woloski,Yuko Iwanaga, Paul Malo, Robin Barley, Harry Young.
P1Climb the wide crack to a sloping ledge 5.10a.
P2 Traverse left with difficulty and climb up the wide chimney to a very steep off width,
continue up to the base of the final right leaning corner crack. 5.10b
P3 jam and stem up the steep corner to the top. 5.10c
Gear to #6 Camalot..

(D) Cruising to nowhere 5.10 plus 30m
FA Harry Young
FFA Glenn Woloski
The steep crackline running up next to the arete right of Glenn Canyon. Harder than it looks.
Rap from top.
Double up on mid. size gear.

[Mr.Sleazy]

Looks cool! That are has much potential

Do you know where these routes sit in relation to Everything Under the Sun??

http://www.quickdrawpublications.com/Fr ... 20Topo.pdf

[squamishbeta]

9am crack, Glenn canyon and cruising to nowhere start off from you "secret Garden Ledge", Split Decision ,and 9am crack top out on "Raven Ledge"

[squamishbeta]

Update on the routes
Left hand variation ( Mantel Asylum ) to Split Decision, freed by Paul Street 11-
Cruising to Nowhere, tree root removed now 10C
Note: pitch 2 Glenn Canyon could be considered dirty (alpine' ish ) by some people.
Any feed back on these routes from people who have climbed them? This area is well worth checking out. Robin Barley figures that Split Decision is as good as or better than Sunblessed.
Paul Street rates these routes as " Must do"
Rock here is quick to dry and it is a beautiful location.
Glenn

[J Mace]

Took a tour up here yesterday with my buddy Nick.

The plan was to find and climb the route Split Decision, apparently on par or better than Sunblessed.

Follow the third peak trail to the Slhany/Squaw trail and take that trail. Go past all the routes and a ways after the rock slide you will see the above and beyond trail heading up slope, its well marked with orange flagging but its hardly used.

Follow that trail for a 100m until you spot a blue ribbon on your left, take that trail easy to follow, up a fixed rope and finally at the base of the obvious corner crack with easy to spot bolt at mid height.

A good pitch, looks like its most often dry but still a little gritty. I found it quite nice but a stout warm up.

Then its nothing but granite goodness! Second pitch is short to the stump, then its just an awesome 35m pitch of awesome! On par with Sunblessed money pitch I think.


The third pitch takes the main wall from left to right starting at the stump


Nick decided to take the right hand variation on the fourth and that pitch I think needs a little re-working. The crack down low is still a tad dirty although face holds help. The top traverse past three bolts is really hard, both Nick and I had to come across low below the bolts on gear. Maybe a broken hold? Or Maybe its rated hard? I cant imagine its 11-

I would try the left hand variation next time as that looked good and may be more keeping in theme of the rest of the route grade wise.

Rope stretcher on rap on 3rd pitch a 70m is nice, a 70 m will get you down from top of second to ground straight down.

There is a rough bush wack trail that connects the base of this route to solarium, so between this Sunblessed, Everything under the sun, plus the other new routes we saw being cleaned, this area looks to be very promising. I would recommend the route and its worthy of the hike which is actually easier than sunblessed approach.

Standard rack, brought one 3 and one 4, not crucial to bring # 4

Thanks for all the hard work, this topo should be on quickdraw so it can get some traffic.

Cheers

J

[PStreet]

Hello j. I was reading your post about the grading, so Glen and I went up on Sunday after the deluge of rain...boy it dries fast up there. Anyway, went at 'er again because it is so good, but also to climb through there again. Long story short, I worked it high and am convinced it is no harder than 11.b/c. It's a bit of a crux moving up to the 2nd bolt for sure, and definitely a techy sport move. I suppose you could work it low on shallow gear, although it doesn't seem quite as aesthetic and would be troubling given where the bolts are...I believe it goes well as is. Try it again!

Also, Glen went rapped into that pitch last week and in addition to cleaning the crack, trundled some huge blocks that had us concerned. It climbs even better now. The first 3 pitches should be on everyone's 5.10 tick list and anyone capable of more should go all the way for impressive and varied climbing.

Glen did a great job back there and deserves a lot of credit - he is happy to see it get some attention. In addition, Robin's trail work to get there from the Squaw was a tremendous effort.

I hope more folks get inspired to make the trek.

[cmoorhead]

Hi Paul and Glen,

We did this route last weekend and though it was great. We did however think the traverse pitch in question was not ideally set up. I tried the traverse via the bolts and fell, I would estimate that the move is 11b-d. After falling it just seemed to make sense to try and hand traverse the dyke feature rather than foot traverse it as following the bolt line would have you do. I extended the runner off the first bolt of the traverse and went low, I got a decent c3 about 2/3's of the way in the the hand traverse (the climbing is really easing off at this point). This felt to be about 10d or 11a, definitely easier than the higher traverse.

My vote would be to re-jig the bolting. Lower the first bolt, remove the others. Somewhere around the c3 placement put in a second bolt or just leave it as small cam placement (the cam is pretty good but not perfect, a small size, in a horizontal crack, in a glassy dyke block. If you had used up this size earlier on you might be a bit spooked). Besides being easier the hand traverse is awesome, some of the coolest climbing on the entire route. In general I prefer hand traversing on positive hand grips with minimal feet way more than foot traversing on good foot grips with bad handholds.

Again we thought this route was really worthwhile, approaching from the Squaw to this remote wall we felt like we were in a totally different climbing area, it has a very backcountry feel. Great work guys and the above opinions are meant to constructive and not critical. I appreciate the amount of effort it takes to put something like this together.

[slopr]

Is it that much quicker to get there via the Squaw trail as opposed to the backside???

[squamishbeta]

Hey everyone
Thanks for the input!
It's great to finally see these route see some traffic, and yes I too feel I'm in a different world when I go back there. Going from the Squaw is much better approach I'd say.
The right hand finish I still think is bolted the right way though over more time this may prove to be needing change (hold breaking) Myself I cannot pull off the high traverse , though Paul Street has done it twice and Harry Young once. I do the low traverse by clipping the first bolt, going down low with hands to my foot holds. I make two moves with difficulty to a decent foot hold directly below the second bolt, I`m out a little ways out and much below the clipped first bolt. From I do a committing but easy 5.9-10a mantle up to the second bolt and clip, another easy more goes to the third bolt and final crack.
Give the other routes a try too!
Glenn

[PStreet]

Above and Beyonders...had a great trip up there on Sunday starting with Cruising to Infinity. That route is easily one of the best 5.10's in Squish. 60+m of incredible crack climbing. Glenn and I also cleaned up and climbed the "Cardiac Arrest" finish to Split Decision at about 5.10c. You can see it on the upper right of the posted photo...very exciting to say the least! We also cleaned up 9am crack, removing all looseness, and the first pitch now goes at about 5.10b and maybe needs the bolt moved. The second pitch that leads into Split Decision is probably 11-, so if you are going to do that it won't bug you too much.

Also climbed "Glenn Canyon". It is fun and climbs quite well. There is a really unlikely move to the wide crack left of the belay atop pitch 1. What follows is surprisingly easy face climbing left of the wide crack and then a reach back to the crack - a #6 camalot - and then an amazing layback off the giant off-width. Does anyone have a #6 cam? I thought it was a novelty just carry one on my harness! It is a bit dirty on the scrambly bit at the end of pitch 2, but it won't affect your enjoyment too much. Last pitch is also very cool and steep!

Finally, I would also agree on the assessment of "Split..." right hand finish to logically go low with a long sling on bolt 1 followed by a hand traverse and gear. This seems to keep it at 5.10+ or 11- and is really cool. At this point I believe that Glenn wants to keep it as is until more folks have there say, but a re-jig may be in order. Also, the left finish - Mantel Asylum is probably a tad harder than this low variation. My assessment of left finish is 5.11b. Again, thanks to Glenn.

[jstod]

Had a great day on Split Decision on Saturday - What a cool area! We took the Squaw approach and didn't see another person back there all day. I bet the backside trail would have been crazy.

The climb itself was fantastic as well. Four quality pitches, each of them a ton of fun. Pitch 3 is stupidly good .

For pitch 4, I was fully expecting I would clip, downclimb, traverse and mantle to the second bolt, but once there it looked reasonable to keep my feet on the dyke and go for the second bolt direct. I got it first try - felt pretty hard to me but I'm definitely not an 11+ climber (my hardest redpoint ever is 11c) so I'd have trouble believing the traverse move is harder than 11a/b. That said, I don't have a ton of mileage in those grades so I'm hardly an authority.

Beyond the traverse the finger-crack to the station was pure awesome - quite thin with perfect locks right where you need them.

My buddy followed the fourth pitch the same way I'd gone and stuck the traverse no problem. He thought the moves between the bolts flowed really well with just enough to grab onto, and went so far as to call the bolt placement "genius". So for what it's worth, you have two fans of the bolt placement the way it is.

Really a very enjoyable outing - great approach, great area, great route and great company. Looking forward to getting back there to try some of the other new climbs.

Thanks to the developers!

[hans]

Where does the Squaw approach start?

[jstod]

Approach as for regular "Squaw" routes (Birds of Prey, Great Game, Jungle Warfare etc)... Parking is about 1.5km's down the Mamquam FSR. From the base of the cliff you traverse to the right past Jungle Warfare and Flight Simulator before the trail heads towards the Chief. It's well marked and signed.

Once you've arrived at Above and Beyond, the key is to find the blue flagged path in order to reach the bottom of Split Decision.

[hans]

Thanks. I've seen that trail and wondered where it went.

[squamish climber]

Here are some more additions by Robin Barley et al for the Above and Beyond Area:

Twilight Zone:


And Sunrising