Nice TR of Europa

[squamish climber]

Sibylle Hechtel who made the first female ascent of El Cap with Bev Johnson in 1973 is here on her annual pilgrimage to Squamish. She wrote a nice TR of Europa on her blog Fun climbs around the World. She agrees with the 5.9 rating Kevin Mclane gave the climb in his new guidebook Canadian Rock. The climb was originally graded 5.7

Initial reviews of the climb were kind of negative, but I think the route has kind of been cleaned up and there is a better ending that avoid the bolt ladder. What do people think? Anybody else climbed it recently.

[Mike Teschke]

Who is that Teschke guy anyways... wow, I got called out. Maybe i'll have to climb that route again.

[sherri]

I climbed the route in 2009 and put up some pics and a TR http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthr ... ber=902403 here on cascadeclimbers.com

Although I quite enjoyed it, I've never felt compelled to go back and repeat it. I think the subsequent reports of continuting loose conditions up there gave the impression that it was best to avoid and let it return to obscurity.

I'm glad I did it when I did. Nice to see that someone else found it to be a worthwhile experience.

Regarding the rating, I'd agree that it felt more challenging than a 5.7 at the crags but I think we expected that given that it was a new, long multipitch which was still a bit rough around the edges. Not sure I thought any of it was 5.9 though(which was my lead limit at the time.)

[sibylle]

Thanks for your comments on my blog post. I climbed the route with Andy Cairns, who lives in N. Vancouver and has climbed the route numerous times —and recommended it. While it is old-school, with trees, bushes, chimneys, and long corners, I did not notice any loose rock on the main pitches. The only part that felt loose was the traverse on pitch 4.
It felt a lot like the North Buttress on Middle Cathedral (Yosemite), and IMHO, Middle Cathedral is looser than this climb.
I love climbing at Squamish, and while it's not quite an annual trip, I'll come up at least another year. My son's a sophomore at Reed College, in Portland, so I drove him to Portland. From there, it's a short trip to Squamish. What a nice place to be in August!

[Optimally-Primed]

While hanging out at the base of the Grand Wall (100m north of Europa) the other day, I watched a party climb it and heard them yell "rock" 4-5 times over the course of their ascent. I was glad to not be at Arrowroot, Rutabaga, Millenium Falcon, or the Gauntlet.

[sibylle]

When we climbed Millenium Falcon yesterday, we encountered a group of three climbers at the base— one (sort of) up one pitch, a second following, and the third at the base. When I expressed surprise that they were climbing M.F. as a group of three, he told me "NO, we're climbing Europa."

They said they'd gotten their route information from V.O. C..

Perhaps, to avoid future confusion, the V.O. C. site could clearly describe the start of Europa?

Two parties were ahead of us on Millenium Falcon—a party of three higher up, and a couple in front of us. We noticed small pebbles coming down from the climbers above us (on M.F.)

Today, the three hopeful Europa climbers we'd found on M.F. told me that they saw three parties of climbers in front of them on Europa , and thus did not climb the route. Despite the (occasional) bad press here, it seems to be a popular route!

[scrubber]

I've been meaning to get up on MF and give it a sweep for some time now. The section below Europa had alot of debris dumped on it from that cleaning. It's good to hear that lots of people are getting on it. Did you find it dirty, or were there just pebbles coming off of the big ledges?

Wow, getting started on MF would be a rude awakening if you were expecting 5.7 corners!

Kris

[Optimally-Primed]

Putting the finishing touches on Flex Capacitor, I watched a party bail off Crap Crags. On each rappel, they yelled "rock!" several times. I lost count of how many...

While climbing at Arrowroot the other day (a party on pitch 2 of Crap Crags), my partner was hit by a cell-phone sized rock in the helmet.

[sibylle]

Kris,
I loved Millenium Falcon. I thought pitch 2 was stellar - my favorite on the route. Everything was clean up to the end of pitch 5.
The traverse across trichome ledge was partly in the forest, so I'd guess someone could knock stuff down from there.
Pitch 8, which ended in the tree, had a lot of loose stuff at the end, heading to the bolted ledge.
Pitch 10 had a little bit of loose stuff coming down, but pebbles. It also seemed sort of licheny to me, but then I'm not used to the NW growth you guys have.
Good route!

sibylle

[scrubber]

Thanks for the feedback. That probably saved me an unnecessary trip down on rappel. I think I'll give it an early season buff next spring before the falcon closure is in effect.

Kris

[itsonlyadream]

scrubber,

Millenium Falcon is in good shape up to Bellygood, at least.

It might interest you to know that one of the climbers ahead of Sibylle and myself was Russ Clune. Another was Eric H., one of the principals in the creation of Borderline.

Andy Cairns