Ten Years After Photos

[Fish Boy]

Just soloed Ten Days After and thought you might like a look at some pics. The weather was stunning, the rock perfect and climb exciting! Get out there!


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 86f9598520

[gnarnaphobe]

you killed it dude! do you own that ledge..

[scrubber]

Nicely done. That looked like fun. Good rope-schinannigan training for NIAD, but you'd better lighten the load! I've got some topo's with pitch beta and hints for your Nose assault if you're interested.

Kris

[Anders Ourom]

Should it be Ten Years After - we saw you on Saturday morning and afternoon. Good climb!

[Fish Boy]

Scrubber, I'm not climbing the Nose, it's a buddy of mine and a Squish local Nathan...they know what they are doing.

[Fish Boy]

Here's a little trip report since it quiet around here...

I arrived in Canada at the start of August with my wife and have been blown away by the great climbs and experiences I've had on the stone. I spent my time up until now running up and down the stunning crack lines in the sun with good folks...now that the weather had turned less predictable I couldn't hold back from jumping on an aid route.

Arriving at the Chief carpark, there were several large wet streaks however the area around TYA looked dry! It's on!

I went up Merci Me just on dark and then got my junk up there ready to go the next morning.



Here I at the start of the route, half way across the 10c traverse into the Split Pillar. One has to lower off some gear onto an anchor for the first haul off Flake Ledge. The climb heads straight up on hooks and bolts, all bomber and solid into an A1+ (sounds like a sandbag rating to me!) crack that takes lot's of thin stuff.





I set the ledge up here, as I couldn't be stuffed climbing anymore! This was going to be a cruisy trip, not some speed ascent! The next day the climbing got a bit tougher onto some expanding cracks, lot's of small wires and plenty of cam hooks to keep it clean.



This was another slack day...2 pitches! I stopped short of where I thought I would according to Matt M's guide as a bunch of bolts appeared that I couldn't resist! Another sweet biv...I thought I'd better hurry up the next day, but not all went according to plan.





After climbing for 20m, I expected to see an anchor before the last tricky climbing involving an A3 traverse across an airy section then up into an A2 crack which looked yuck. I cobbled together something resembling an anchor out of an offset friend a nut and a C3, rapped off, cleaned and hauled.



Just before hauling some crew who were blasting the Grand were finishing the Sword and getting on Perry's, which is exactly where my haul line ran over. So I chilled a while and chatted to them, letting the climb with me keeping my junk out of the way. The whole process added a couple of hours of non climbing, which I didn't care about, but by this stage I had a cliff bar and a packet of soup left, and still a bunch of climbing! So I got on the traverse and it was cool! A bunch of hooking and quite solid gear in a well exposed spot. Was fun to clean!







All I had to do now was punch up the 10c crack to get to Green Acres to sleep with one more cruiser pitch in the morning to Bellygood.



Yay. Getting everything off Bellygood was awkward, and putting two ropes, a ledge, a rack etc on my back for the walk down was heaps of fun!



Can't wait to get out there and do another one....

Nick

[c-plus]

Nice work! And way to take your time and just enjoy yourself out there. No point rushing things if yer enjoying the experience. That being said, I've only solo-aided a big wall once (portaledge and all...) and it was so freaking slow i think 2 pitches per day is about as fast as I can go!

[scrubber]

Sorry about that. When your first post linked to the photos elsewhere, I thought I saw one of your captions saying you were in training for the Nose later this month. Thanks for the great shots and story anyway. I wish I'd taken more advantage of the window in the weather.

Kris

[Fish Boy]

No worries scrubber! Have you done NIAD? My buddies have been listening to Steve Schneider's audio book to get her done....

[squamish climber]

Hey Nick, it's nice to have a climbing thread with photos even. I like the close up's of the hook placements and nice shot also the traverse. How much traffic did it look like the route was getting?
Looks like a great outing. Well done.

[slopr]

looks like fun, thanks for sharing.

[Fish Boy]

Dave, hard to say how much traffic it is getting...the only indication was the non crusty tat that was on a couple of fixed pieces that didn't seem more than a year or so old...a couple of fixed heads were in good condition too.

[scrubber]

Yeah a friend and I did it a year ago this week. Small weather window so it meant there was no one up high, but LOTS of people in the starting blocks just waiting. We ended up only having to pass three euro parties in the stovelegs. It was the perfect spot because even though they can probably all climb 5.13 back home, they were aid leapfrogging #2 camalots up 500 feet of perfect 5.9 handcracks. "Stand aside boys, we're coming through!" Simul-climbing past them felt like getting away with murder. But they were all for it and cheered us on.

Kris

[dberdinka]

Wow, someone else does a wall in Squamish. I'm always amazed how deserted the aid lines are.

I think that route in general is a bit of a sandbag, the third pitch in particular is pretty damn expando right off the anchor and doesn't really let up until you reach the anchor. And I've yet to see a topo that matches the reality of anchors as you note.

[browniephoto]

hey man, i happened across this post and realized that i snapped two shots of you while shooting a buddy aid the 1st pitch of university wall ....

i posted the two pics on my blog (www.browniephoto.com/blog) cuz i couldnt figure out how to put them in this reply, feel free to use them....

cheers!