The last post

I'm writing this sitting in the Holiday Inn Express at Los Angeles Airport. Tomorrow we fly home, so this will be our last post. There's not a lot to do at the Holiday Inn, so I'm pretty bored. As a result this is a photo-heavy post, and it is quite possible that I will ramble on.

Innes and I have enjoyed the last two weeks of our trip. After climbing for a few days in Lander, Wyoming, we had both had enough of steep pocketed limestone. We also couldn't ignore the fact that there were some fantastic mountains and beautiful wilderness nearby. We decided that we had time for one last mission to climb a big, remote mountain. Our plan was to have a go at Gannett Peak, which at 4,200m is the highest peak in Wyoming. Although the peak is not technically difficult to climb, it is about 20 miles from the nearest road so another mini-expedition was in order. We somewhat optimistically planned to do it in three days - the first day to walk 20 miles to camp by a lake called Titcombe lake a few miles from Gannett Peak, the second day to cross a high pass and climb the mountain and return to Titcombe lake, and the third day to walk back out to the road. We set off carrying three days' food, tent and minimal climbing equipment - a short rope, slings, crampons and ice axes.

Gannett Peak is in the Wind River Range. The mountains are made out of granite, and there are many lakes. It is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been - I hope that this comes through in the photos. The flowers in particular were fantastic. We were impressed by how many people we met on the walk in, so far from the road. Some were going fishing or hiking, some were like us going for Gannett Peak. It turns out that Gannett Peak is on the tick list for a breed of people called "State Highpointers", whose mission it is to climb the highest peak in each state. I guess they are a bit like Munro-baggers, but as the State highpoints include Mount McKinley (Denali) at over 20,000 feet, I think it's probably a tougher challenge. We met a couple of guys who were on their fourth attempt to climb Gannett Peak. Fair play to them - it takes a lot of commitment to do a 20 mile walk in more than once.

The walk in took us about 7 hours on the first day. In the afternoon it started to piss with rain, and we got pretty soaked. Luckily it cleared when we got to our campsite and we were able to cook our dinner outside in the dry. We set our alarm clock for 4.00am, so that we could get up the peak early in the morning while the snow was still firm. We knew that the technical crux of the route was a bergschrund with a fragile snow bridge, which could be dangerous late in the day. However it was not to be. Soon after we went to bed it started raining, and it continued to rain all night. It was still raining half an hour before we were supposed to get up, so we decided to go back to sleep. You have to really want to climb a mountain to get up in the dark and rain at 4.00am in the hope that the weather will improve. For us Gannett Peak was just a bit of an excuse to go backpacking in some beautiful wilderness. Maybe one of these days we will be brave enough to leave the climbing gear behind and admit that we just want to go for a big walk.

As it happens we made the wrong call on the weather - it turned out to be a beautiful sunny day - ideal for climbing Gannett Peak in fact. We weren't too bothered though, and spent the next two days walking back out to the road via the same route. I'd love to go back to the Wind River Range to explore a bit more. There are acres and acres of rock.

After our attempt on Gannett Peak we had just over a week left. Time to visit one more venue. We decided to go to Maple Canyon in Utah. This is a sport climbing venue with probably the weirdest rock I have ever climbed on. The rock is conglomerate, made up of large quartzite cobbles in a cement-like matrix. It looks like the cobbles would just come out in your hand, but they are actually pretty solid. The climbing is great fun - mostly very steep and on positive holds. One crag is an enormous cave which apparently is big enough to fit a basketball court inside (I don't really know how big that is, but it looked pretty big to me). The canyon itself is a very nice spot, with cheap camping and plenty of shade.

Then it was finally the end of our trip - time to pack all of our stuff, clean the RV, and point it in the direction of Los Angeles. This morning we dropped the RV off, and we were sad to say goodbye to the Sport Jamboree. After all, it's been our home for six months.

So that's it. Thanks for reading our blog. I hope you've enjoyed it. We've had a fantastic time but are ready to come home. We're really looking forward to seeing all of you soon after we get back.

best wishes

Ruth

Photos from the top:

1. Lake in the Wind River Range on the walk in to Gannet Peak.

2. Me walking towards where we would camp at the end of Titcombe lake in the rain. Despite the rain we appreciated the beauty of this valley.

3. We appreciated it even more the next morning when it stopped raining

4. The view from our tent

5. Island Lake, on the way back from Gannet Peak. We saw a lot of people fishing for trout in this lake. We also saw what we decided to call a sea eagle, which came swooping down into the lake and caught a fish.

6. Bear proof food storage in the Wind River Range. I'm not convinced that a bear couldn't get at the food, but we did what we were told we should do.

7. Me on Le Spunk .12a, Maple Canyon

8. Pipe Dream Cave - you can see all the fixed quickdraws hanging down. Some of the routes have as many as 30 bolts and are almost entirely horizontal. We watched some locals climbing them by deploying sneaky knee bars

9. Box Canyon - this is a narrow, 200 foot high canyon. It had some good climbing but was a bit dark

10. Cheddar Tomato Fondue - America's idea of a classic recipe. Bear in mind that it would be made with classic orange American cheese. A Frenchman would be disgusted.

Goodbye to Canada

Sorry for the long silence. Here's an update on our last couple of weeks in Canada.

After Mount Assiniboine we took a few days to recover. Then we decided that we'd like to do something a bit different, so we went to explore an area to the east of Canmore called the Ghost River Wilderness. This is an area of slightly lower limestone peaks, which looked to have a lot of good climbing. It is also pretty remote and outside the National Parks, which means that you are allowed to camp where you want and there's generally less bureaucracy. We planned to go in and camp for a few days, and do a bit of cragging. After Assiniboine we fancied something fairly non-serious.

There was only one problem with this plan - 20km of dirt road which turned out to be too rough for the RV. We decided to walk in anyway, so with heavy rucksacks containing food for four days we set off. After about 20 minutes we discovered the second problem - the mosquitoes. I've never experienced mosquitoes that bad. I thought that they were worse than Scottish midges. The little buggers were even biting me through my clothes. We soldiered on, but unfortunately the mosquitoes ruined the experience for me. Innes didn't seem to suffer from them so badly. We also hadn't reckoned on how tired we would be from walking in, which meant that we didn't get much climbing done. Still, I'm glad we went to the Ghost River - it's really beautiful, and the climbing potential is massive. If it were in Europe, there would be a thousand routes. As it is there are only about a hundred. It's good rock too - solid limestone, as opposed to the more shattered stuff you get on the higher mountains.

Back in Canmore we started to think about going to the Bugaboos, an area of Alpine granite peaks about 100 miles to the south. We'd been looking forward to going there since we saw Kimm's photos from his trip a couple of years ago. What was slowing us down was that we couldn't seem to get weather forecasts that made any sense. Frustrated, we decided to ignore the weather forecasts and go anyway. After our Ghost River experience we fancied a bit of luxury (and lighter rucksacks) so we booked some space in the Alpine Club of Canada Hut in the Bugaboos.

The next challenge was to get there. The trailhead to walk in to the hut is at the end of 50km of dirt forest road. Ever since we'd arrived in America we'd been asking people who had been to the Bugaboos if they thought we could get the RV along the road. The consensus was that we'd probably be OK, but we weren't sure. In the end it was OK, but very nerve-wracking, and it took 3 hours to go 50km. Innes did a very good job of off road driving.

Once at the trailhead, we walked up to the hut. Two days of good weather were forecast, followed by rain and more unsettled weather. We decided to start by doing an easy, classic route called the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire. This was a fantastic day out - moderate climbing, solid rock and brilliant views. Unfortunately I wasn't feeling very well, and started feeling worse as the day went on. This meant that Pigeon Spire was the only route we got done in the Bugaboos, because I wasn't feeling up to doing much and the weather was going to deteriorate. We decided to leave, but we'd like to go back - it's an impressive place.

At this point our thoughts started to turn slightly homeward, so we headed south. We've got to fly home from Los Angeles on 31st August, so we are (very slowly) on the way there. From the Bugaboos we drove south for two days, over the border back into the US (luckily they let us back in) then through Montana to Wyoming. We're now in a place called Lander, where we have been doing some sport climbing. The climbing is good, and the crags are in a beautiful setting, but it's all pocket-pulling so a bit hard on the fingers. Today Innes is nursing an injured finger, and we're thinking of maybe having a few days off climbing and going to check out Yellowstone National Park, which is not that far from here.

See you all soon - not long now until we get home.

Ruth

Pictures from the top (they are in reverse order - sorry I'm too stupid to work out how to get them in the right order)

1. Me on Zorro 11d at Wild Iris at Lander, Wyoming - see what I mean about pocket-pulling?

2. The view from Wild Iris - it's at 9,000 feet and you feel that you are on top of the world. We camped up there for a few days.

3. Me on the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire in the Bugaboos. This bit of the ridge is traditionally done "a cheval" (ie sitting astride it) but we thought walking along the top would be more fun - it felt very exposed.

4. Pigeon Spire - we climbed the ridge on the right hand skyline.

5. The RV in the Bugaboos car park. You have to build a fence of chicken wire around your vehicle. Apparently if you don't porcupines and other critters will get in and chew your tyres and brake cables.

6. One of the many big cliffs at Ghost River. We didn't do any routes on this cliff as we hadn't brought enough gear, but it looked to have some good lines on it.

7. Innes crossing the Ghost River. It was damn cold.

8. Our campsite in Ghost River. Looks idyllic because you can't see the mosquitoes.

Pictures from the top:

Mount Assiniboine and Squamish

Ruth and I have been really busy recently, with the last week being perhaps the most jam packed yet. So here goes ...

When we arrived in Squamish after Skaha we were both dead tired. Pretty much exhausted. I think it was the heat of summer, or perhaps a bad case of Sea Level Lassitude. Anyway, we weren’t too enthusiastic for climbing for a while. Fortunately the Squamish Mountain Festival was running at this time, and we could entertain ourselves by going to presentations and films which were going on over a 5 day period. These ranged from the hilarious, to the tragically sad, and were generally all very good apart from one, which unfortunately was the British film.

Somehow between fighting off the lassitude each morning and attending the ‘mountain culture events’, we managed to get some good routes done. The highlight was probably doing a route called The Grand Wall. This is a world famous climb, and probably justifiably so. It climbs perhaps the most impressive wall at Squamish, and includes the infamous ‘Split Pillar’ pitch. I tried to take pictures of this pitch when we were on the climb but it’s not really possible to do it justice from these angles. If you want to know why this climb is famous you should check out this: http://www.rockclimbing.com/photos/Featured/Simon_Carter/Split_Pillar_95727.html .

Pretty cool, eh?

As it turns out, the Grand Wall isn’t actually as difficult as its reputation would lead you to believe. It is a lot of fun though!

We climbed the Grand Wall last Monday. It was our last route before leaving Squamish. To put things in perspective, we only really went to Squamish and Skaha because summer had not really arrived yet in the high mountains. At this time we decided that we were going to back into the Rockies to take another look, so we drove for 2 days to get back to Canmore in Alberta, on the back of what looked like a developing period of good weather. We had a few ideas in mind, but gradually settled on a plan as we crawled along the Trans Canada Highway yet again, and could see how the forecasts developed and what the mountains were looking like as we passed them. We decided to have a go at climbing Mount Assiniboine.

Mount Assiniboine is one of Canada’s most famous and iconic mountains. It is known as ‘The Matterhorn of the Rockies’ because of its striking appearance (see the picture above). It is also quite a long way from any roads – about 20 miles into the wilderness to get to the bottom of the mountain.

To cut quite a long story as short as I can:

Our plan was to walk in to Mt. Assiniboine, climb it by its North Ridge, and walk out again within a 4 day period, carrying with us everything we needed to be an independent mini-expedition. This is exactly what we ended up doing...

On day one it took us just over 6 hours to walk in the pissing rain into a place called Lake Magog, near the base of the mountain where we were to spend the first night camping. Also located here is The Assiniboine Lodge – a sort of surreal hotel in the wilderness, where those with very deep pockets can be flown in by helicopter to be wined and dined and taken on day tours around the wilderness trails. Here we talked to a bloke called Sepp Brenner – a silver haired mountain guide from Switzerland, and proprietor of the Lodge. Sepp has climbed the mountain more times than anyone else, and is a really good bloke. He told us that there was still a lot of snow on the mountain (we couldn’t actually see it then because it was completely obscured in cloud), and that the mountain had not yet been climbed this year! Lots of teams with professional Mountain Guides had cancelled their trips so far.

I will admit to thinking “oh shit!” at this point.

Given that Ruth and I both must have looked like slightly pathetic drowned rats at this point, Sepp understandably looked at us slightly suspiciously and quizzed us a little. But, he pulled out a weather forecast which was exactly what Ruth and I had previously seen – good weather arriving the day after tomorrow. Sepp also gave us some tips on our route up the mountain, which were to be really useful.

It continued to rain all night and we got a pretty good soaking in our tiny tent a couple of kilometres further on from the Lodge. We had decided that we were going to stick to our original plan, and so used the next day to climb to a hut at the foot of the North face of the mountain. The clouds even lifted momentarily that morning to give us a look at the mountain – this is the top picture on this blog. You can use your imagination to decide what we were thinking when we saw it!

Ruth and I got to the hut by mid afternoon. At this point two things happened which I think kind of consolidated our plans: the weather cleared exactly as forecast; and we were joined in the hut by two other climbers – a single Mountain Guide and his client who were going to attempt the same route up the mountain as we intended to climb (they had flown in by helicopter earlier that day). It was a boost to know that we wouldn’t be alone on the mountain.

I’ll save the blow-by-blow account of climbing the route for those of you who might understand what on earth I’m talking about. In brief, we left the hut by 4 am the next morning to start our attempt on the route. The weather was perfect: there was no wind, the stars were out, and the snow was frozen hard. We were past the guide’s team by sunrise, climbed probably faster than we’ve ever climbed as a team, stormed the ridge via a detour on the North face, and were standing alone on the summit before 9 o’clock in the morning – the first to summit Canada’s iconic Mount Assiniboine in 2010! Check out the pictures...

How’s about that then?

The descent back to the hut was down pretty much the same line as we had climbed up. It was pretty arduous ridge descent work (something Ruth and I seem to be making a habit of?) It took much longer to get down than it did to climb up the thing, and involved a lot of abseiling and down-climbing. Overall, we took about 12 hours for the climb ‘hut-to-hut’, which I think is pretty darn good given the condition of the mountain.

The next day we descended from the hut back down to Lake Magog, dropped in at the Assiniboine Lodge to pay our hut fees (they were very complimentary and gave us lemonade to drink), and then pressed on and walked the whole way back to the road head. It took us 10 hours with only the briefest of stops. We were totally ******* [insert word meaning ‘very tired’].

So there you have it. The Grand Wall at Squamish and the first to summit Mount Assiniboine in 2010, walking in and out, all within one week.

Does this excuse us for not having updated the blog recently Sheona? ;-)

We are in Canmore trying to recover at the moment. Our feet look a bit like they’ve been worked over with a steak tenderiser, and they hurt. The weather forecast is superb. It looks like summer has finally arrived.

Innes

Photos in order from the top (but sort of in reverse chronological order – sorry Squamish, but you get the bottom of the listings!):

1. Mount Assiniboine seen from the Lake Magog on the morning of day 2. From this perspective the North Ridge takes the direct line up the front of the summit pyramid, between the shadow and the vapour trail.

2. Ruth packing our kit at the car park before starting the walk into Assiniboine (before anyone asks: no, we didn’t take the bouldering mat!)

3. Ruth on the lower section of the North Ridge, Mt Assiniboine, taken about 6 am.

4. Ruth on the upper section (approaching the Grey Band if you want to check it out) of the North Ridge, Mt Assiniboine.

5. Summit cornices, Mt Assiniboine.

6. Assiniboine summit 08:43 hrs, 24^th July 2010 – mark one up for Team UK ;-)

7. A bull Moose. I was really pleased to see this geezer on the way into Assiniboine. He was bloody huge despite being relatively young, I think, judging by his antlers.

8. The Grand Wall, Squamish. Not so big really, but a nice piece of rock and with a cracking good route up it.

9. Ruth jamming up the Split Pillar pitch of the Grand Wall. If you look really closely in the top left you can see another climbing team starting up the wall.

10. Ruth emerging from the squeeze chimney finish to the Split Pillar.

11. Ruth negotiating the Bellygood Ledge on the Grand Wall. If you want to know why Ruth is in this position, and how the Bellygood Ledge got its name you’ll need to try and get across it yourself!

12. Ruth looking burly on the Squamish boulders.

Canada #2

Sorry for being so slack about updating the blog. It's so long since we wrote anything that I have started to forget what we have done.

After doing the route on Mt Gimli that Innes described in the last post, we were knackered and had to have two days' rest, which we spent driving slowly back to Canmore in the Rockies. We were lured back there by the promise of scorchio weather, although we later discovered that weather forecasts in Canada are pretty unreliable. The main thing that we did in Canmore was a route called Sisyphus Summits. This is a 21 pitch sport route right to the top of a mountain called Ha Ling. We had camped below this mountain last time we were in Canmore, and had spent a lot of time looking up at the line of Sisyphus but had felt that it would be too cold and windy to get on it. It turned out to be a brilliant route - exposed, a good line and sustained and technical at 5.10d (about French 6c, non-climbers just glaze over this bit).

After doing Sisyphus we decided to leave the mountains for a bit - all the higher routes we want to do are still too snowy, and will be until the end of July probably. So we headed back west to a place called Skaha, which is in the Okanagan valley in the middle of British Columbia. It is a totally different atmosphere to the mountains, being sunny, populated and covered in vineyards and orchards. You can buy delicious cherries for next to nothing.

We spent about a week sport climbing in Skaha, and really enjoyed it. We both reached important climbing milestones - I did my first 11b and Innes did his first 12b, so we were very happy. The rock is gneiss, quite similar to some of the gneiss you find in Scotland, and is covered with small positive holds. Unfortunately we were forced to leave by the heat which suddenly became brutal. Innes and I aren't too good in the heat. We tend to melt. When it got so hot that we found the 30 minute walk to the crag exhausting we knew it was time to leave.

So we headed further west to Squamish, which is on the Pacific coast so is cooler. On the way we did another long rock climb up a mountain called Yak Peak, which was fantastic. Now we've been in Squamish for about 3 days. We've done some bouldering, some crack climbing, and some friction slabs. No photos yet I'm afraid. We've stared at the Grand Wall and wondered if we will get up it...

Photos from the top:

1. Ha Ling. This mountain is 2400m and the face you can see is about 500m high. This was the view from where we were camping. Sisyphus summits takes a direct line close to the left hand sky line.

2. Topo for Sisyphus - it's much lighter to carry the camera with a photo than the whole guidebook!

3. Innes on pitch 5 of Sisyphus

4. Innes on pitch 10 of Sisyphus

5. Crag signpost at Skaha. For some reason Innes found this entertaining.

6. Me seconding pitch 11 of Yak Peak. This climb took us by surprise by being easy for its grade. We thought we'd be on it all day and it only took about 5 hours. Which was just as well as it faced south, and it was very hot.

7. Innes leading a blank bit of pitch 12 of Yak Peak. This was the crux pitch. Luckily there were bolts or it would have been very scary

8. Yak Peak. The route we did went roughly up the centre of the face. The peak is just above the motorway, which meant that the place you parked to walk in was basically a motorway service station, which felt a bit odd.

Ruth

Canada #1

Just after we posted our last blog we drove to Canada. Brilliant though Smith Rock is, we both wanted a change of venue and it had started to get hot and muggy in Oregon, so we decided to get into the mountains.

Now, we've been getting weather reports from all over North America from the various people we have met and talked to since we've been out here. They all talked of rain, which isn't what we wanted to hear. However, after several hours of intenet research, some discussions, and the purchase of a new guidebook, we decided to take a bit of gamble. We decided to drive north and east into Alberta, and on to Canmore.

It took 2 solid days of driving before we arrived at Canmore in torrential rain. Fortunately (well, okay, we'd seen the weather forecast), the next few days turned out to be beautiful weather, and we spent the time getting to know the local area a bit.

We climbed at a few different venues above Canmore. One venue in particular - Yamnuska - is reputed to be the birthplace of Canadian rock climbing back in the '50s. To be honest, after climbing a route on 'Yam' I'm surprised that climbing ever really caught on at all in this country. It was pretty grim. We'll give Yam another chance though, as I think we made a bad route choice by picking a 'classic' route to climb (it seems that Canadians are tuned into using euphemism in their route descriptions, just like us brits).

We did manage to visit some really good crags around Canmore, and spied out some stunning high mountain routes, which we hope to get on as soon as we get a weather window. But, a few days after we arrived another weather system rolled in and it started to rain and even snow. So, we quit Canmore for a while.

For the last week we've been chasing the weather, stopping off at some nice valleys around a place called Revelstoke, until a few days ago when a little patch of stable weather appeared in the forecasts to the south - so we drove straight under it asap.

We were after climbing a mountain called 'Gimli', which has a highly regarded route up its South Ridge. Just getting close to the mountain was a bit of an expedition, involving half a day's drive, a ferry crossing, 20 km of nerve wracking off-road driving (remember we're driving an RV here. Eeek!), another 12 km approach walk, and 1,600 m of ascent on foot... just to get to start of the climbing. Phew!

Luckily, it was worth it. We hit a 'blue bird' day of perfect weather, and climbed what is probably our favourite route of the trip so far. Gimli is a beautiful little mountain (see picture above). The South Ridge is a stunning line on perfect rock. But, more than that: not only did we have a world class route to ourselves, we had the entire mountain to ourselves, and the valley, and the next valley too. Pretty special really.

We've spent today relaxing and scoffing double rations of food. The weather seems to be looking good in and around Banff and Lake Louise for the next few days. So, we're gonna have a wee look over there tomorrow.

Innes

Photos in sequence:

1. Gimli shortly after sunrise. The South Ridge is prominent between the light and the shadow.
2. Route finding is easy - just follow the ridge skywards. If you look closely you might see me here on pitch 5. (Note to self: wear brighter colours when climbing)
3. Ruth descending the East Ridge, sans ice axe (thats another story though...)
4. On the way down from Gimli - only another 12 km on foot and 1,600 m of descent to get back to the RV from here! It was a long day.
5. This is Grassi Lakes above Canmore. We stopped over here for a few days. The local crag is really steep and stays dry in the rain, and we found a place to park the RV for free next to a lake. It's very nice here.
6. Chipmunks - Canada is lousy with these critters! They are constantly trying to steal your lunch, rock boots, or anything else that you may turn your back on momentarily.
7. Bard owl with chicks - it took us a while before we spotted these residents of the local crag. They are pretty darn big birds, but perfectly camouflaged in a cave half way up the local limestone crag. I suspect they like chipmunks more than we do. We like owls!
8. Trees. Canada does trees.

Smith Rock

Photos from the top

1) Dihedrals sector at Smith Rock - many quality routes packed into a short area of cliff 2) Ruth setting off up Moonshine Dihedral (just to prove that we don't just go sport climbing) 3) The Monkey Face - the route we did goes up the face you can see and into the "mouth" cave on the right, then out the other side of the cave

4) Ruth aiding the bolt ladder up the Monkey Face, etriers flapping in the wind

5) Innes exiting the mouth cave - he looks relaxed for a man with a 200 foot drop under his feet

6) Abseiling off the Monkey Face - that dot in mid-air is Ruth

After leaving Yosemite we drove north for two days to Smith Rock State Park in Central Oregon. This is primarily a sport climbing destination, and is famous as the place where American sport climbing began. We have ended up staying just over two weeks, because the climbing is excellent and it is a really nice place to be. The State Park itself is lovely - very well cared for, with loads of wildlife including Golden Eagles (although we are still not sure if we saw the eagles, or just saw turkey vultures which look pretty similar).

One of the highlights of Smith Rock was climbing the Monkey Face. This is a 400 feet free standing pinnacle. It's got lots of climbing routes up it, some of them very hard, but we decided to climb the traditional and easiest route to the top which is called Pioneer route and involves some trad climbing, some sport climbing, a bolt ladder which you have to aid, and to top it all off a 150 foot free hanging abseil to get back down to the ground. It was brilliant and incredibly exposed, made more so by the fact that it was very windy.

We also did a lot of sport climbing, and both felt that we were climbing well. There are two types of rock here - volcanic tuff and basalt columns. The climbing on the tuff is generally technical on small holds. The basalt is just weird - the climbs generally have no holds, and you make progress (you hope) by bridging and palming and all kinds of contortionist moves.

However after two weeks here we are ready to move on and ready for a change. We are both knackered, and also would like to get into the mountains and do some longer climbs. So we are setting off for Canada this afternoon, and will probably head to the Canmore area in the Rockies, although we need to check the weather forecast first.

Ruth