moderate route developers dream post!

[gokoloco]

Hi people my name is Gord. Last winter a bouldering friend took Jer Blumel and I to an area where he was developing boulders to show us some walls that he had found, and this summer I and a friend developed one of the walls there. It is called the Who's the Boss wall, and there are three new routes at the wall a shitty 11a sport route (who's melissa mylano?), a really good 11c mixed route (bruce springsteen), and an amazing 12c trad line (tony danza). Moral of this story is that behind this wall is a wall that probably has the potential for over 70 new moderate (mostly gear) climbs between 5.7 to 5.11 and definetly there is multi-pitch potential !!!! I am far too lazy to develop these climbs but am quite happy to to show anyone who is interested on how to get there. I would say this wall rivals the papoose in steepness and quality, is a little smaller (2 pitches high), and has a 15 minute approach up (10 minutes down),you cannot hear the highway, and I've already cut the trail! This is a dream for all people who like developing and I am hoping that someone or numerous people will go and give this wall a good scrubbing so we have a new big area! My e-mail is gokoloco@hotmail.com please put something in the subject line that alludes to why you're emailing me. Thanks bye!

[gokoloco]

After receiving a reply which accused me of being secretive, which wasn't my intention, my intention here was pure, please don't e-mail me unless you're not a forum zombie who writes things they neccessarily wouldn't say face to face (which is why i hate forums). I will be at starbucks at 1130 am on saturday morning to take (normal) people who want to have a look for a tour. If this seems insincere, don't come! I drive a little silver ford ranger with a black cab, and can guarantee you will be back to town in a couple of hours and you'll get a nice little hike.

[MarkR]

You could just tell us where it is. Maybe throw up a photo or two to inspire route setters.

If being secretive isn't your intention then why all the song and dance?

[gokoloco]

This will be my last post. The reason for no info was it is confusing as sin to describe/find. Alas today i went and flagged the trail (after work, in the dark) and here is the description. park at welcome to squamish sign at top of britannia beach hill. head east into forest following orange flag tape. trail will be steep for the first 5 minutes walking through a huge jumble of dead trees after about 2 minutes . after 5 minutes of zig-zagging up steep hill you will get to a small plateau. 2 more minutes of walking easier terrain, you will walk on two giant trees for some 100 metres or so, to which the trail will continue easy terrain until you hit a faint creek (winter time only). from here you could go left in the ravine, or break out of the ravine and go up a steep slope, you will want to stay right. until top of another plateau, from here you will see a super steep wall that is cleaned, that is the who's the boss wall. If you stay left at my new wall and pretend you were going to rap into my wall, you will walk under the giant wall i'm talking about and it continues from there for about 400 meters. there are leaves everywhere on the trail so good luck but i think with my marking it in the dark you should be able to find it! now that i marked it I will not bother with the tour on saturday. there is another wall below with a splitter 5.7.-5.9 handcrack, as well as a few other walls in the area with potential.

[Jeff Thomson]

Hi Gord,

Thanks for the posts and thanks for the personal e-mails as well. Regarding the crappy responses and messages people have send to you, all I have to say is "haters will be haters". Glenn and I had our fair share of those sort of interactions over the years and learned to ignore them.

Jeff Thomson

[smallman]

I would like to thank Gord for having the courtesy and taking the time, and initiative to inform potential route developers of a cliff worthy of development but for which he doesn't have time or desire to do himself. He could have just kept this cliff to himself and it would potentially lurk under the moss forever. Half the battle of route development is identifying potential cliffs with excellent development potential ( many climbs of similar grade). I have spent days wandering around in the forest trying to identify "good" areas. I appreciate any help I can get to reduce the amount of recee time I do in order that I can develop areas more quickly. Thanks Gord for the heads up.

[c-plus]

Thanks for the head's up Gord! Funny, I've seen people criticized for developing routes (self included), but getting flamed just for telling people where to find a cliff for developing routes has a certain amount of irony to it...

Just keep on truckin'...

[timelessbeing]

So how does it look ...
What is the difficulty? Will it need much work to become climbable? Did anyone take photos?

[Dru]

This sounds like a new trail up the bushwacking south approach to Valley of Shaddai and the multipitch cliff mentioned sounds a lot like Glenn Payan's Mountaineer's Cliff?

[MarkR]

I went to go check this place out a week ago. There is a wall, but none of us noticed any "holy sh*t" lines that I imagine you'd want if you're going to convince people to hike for 25 minutes uphill in a place like Squish where we're spoiled for classics ten minutes from the car. If this crag was in the bluffs where people already are, maybe it'd be worth it, but we're not hurting for rock to uncover when you consider all that rock South of the Papoose.

I don't know, who knows what's under that moss, right? I could be wrong and hope I am. There was one striking left-leaning undercling feature that looked highly rad, looked in the 11+ range. All in all it just didn't seem like a wise investment to us given what's happened to the Valley of Shaddhai. I heard rumour that VOS is getting rescrubbed though,anyone know if this is true? I have to imagine this crag is near VOS, so if people start hiking up there again for other reasons maybe this changes things.

[skidrc]

haters be hating

[MarkR]

haters be hating

Okay.