Squamishrock

Ed Cooper

From the 1962 Canadian Alpine Journal

The Squamish Chief is probably familiar to most of those who have driven from Vancouver to Squamish. One can hardly miss it, as the Chief dominates the view several miles either side of the highway. It has a beautiful setting at the head of Howe Sound, above the town of Squamish with Mt. Garibaldi visible in the background. The first time I gazed at the Chief, in 1958, it was with awe, and without a thought of attempting it. One's technique and ambition grow, and in the fall of 1960 while rock climbing in the area with Jim Baldwin of Prince Rupert, B.C., we looked at the 1700' face of the Squamish Chief and decided it didn't look so bad. In fact we would have started up at once except it was late in the year (November) and the monsoons had come. Instead we planned a spring assault.

One rainy day in May we arrived at the base of the Chief and went at the brush with machetes and axes until several hours later we found ourselves at a small clearing at the bottom of the face, staring up at an absolutely incredible view. Staring too long, I got dizzy and nearly fell over backwards. It later took less than fifteen minutes over the trail to the bottom of the face. The excellent trail is still there, blazed right from the highway. At this time our base camp was located up an old dirt road near the Chief in an abandoned dynamite shack.

We returned several days later in a moderately heavy rain, and set up an equipment tent, stocking it with ropes and pitons. Enthusiasm being at a high pitch we decided to go up a way, and wound up climbing the first pitch. The rain-soaked rock, lichen, and moss forced us to climb it all artificially. The piton cracks on this pitch were the best for the next 1500'. At the end of the pitch was a nice ledge (in fact the nicest for the next 900') with a large tree to which we anchored our first fixed rope. The next day we again returned, spent much time in organizing equipment, and for good measure climbed the second pitch, the flake chimney. Although water was everywhere dripping, this was climbed entirely non aid (+IV), and was one of the two non-artifical pitches on the entire climb. From here our work would begin - we would have to step out on the "apron", part of the smooth flawless wall.

Any further progress could now only be made with the use of bolts, as there simply were no piton cracks. While many climbers consider the use of bolts unethical, it would have been absolutely impossible to do the climb without them, and over 130 were used. Neither Jim nor I had ever seen a rock formation anywhere else with as noticable a lack of piton cracks. My ascent last year of the East face of Bugaboo spire had used only twelve bolts, the most I had used on any other climb.

For the remaining distance up the apron and the beginning of the "Grand Wall" to the bottom of the "Split Pillar" many bolts were used, occaisonal knife blade and other odd pitons coming in handy, always behind flakes of one type or another, and never in cracks on the face proper. Low on the apron we were spotted, and the word quickly spread about the climbers on the Chief. Soon small crowds would gather every night both on the highway and at the very foot of the wall to watch us descend. These small crowds grew to large crowds until one weekend the highway was jammed with 12,000 cars all attempting to get a look. Before we realised what happened, the residents of Squamish, not without some interest in the tourist business, sponsored us everything we needed, including 1500' of nylon rope. Quite novel and enjoyable at first, all this attention that we received turned from a boon almost to a bane. We were not left alone for a moment. One afternoon a newspaperman had the gall to shout up at us to come down immediately so he could get some pictures. Anout this time all the publicity drew several other climbers, who planned an assault on the face very near ours. Fortunately this did not happen. All this was not without effect on our climbing; we did no longer felt that we were doing the climb because we wanted to do it.

To return to the climb, the ascent of the split pillar was accomplished mostly with with pitons. The upper extension of the split pillar, above the only sitting ledge in 750', was especially trying. It ominously split even further from the wall when pitons were being driven behind it, and in one instance the lower piton popped out while the upper piton was being driven, the climber (Jim) not falling because of our precaution of snapping into upper pitons as soon as we started to drive them. The single feature that bothered us the most was the "sword of Damocles", a giant 200' flake that extended out from the upper portion of the split pillar and vibrated like a giant gong when bolts or pitons were being driven in or behind it. It was possible to look up under the sword of Damocles, at its start, until the view disappeared in a black abyss.

Altogether some two weeks were spent climbing and fix-roping the first 850' to the top of the Grand Wall. Here the route would go on long traverses and it was impractical to fix ropes any more. We prepared carefully for the final assault. With all the rope we had acquired we had enough rope to lower some food and two gallons of water to a prominent ledge with some trees on it, some 650' below the top, and 400' below the last of the severe difficulties. Our plan was to reach this ledge by the end of the first day or the beginning of the second day on the face, before the sun would reach us (the Squamish Chief faces directly west, and receives the afternoon sun about 1:00 p.m.).

Waiting a week until we were assured of several days of settled weather, we set out with a small quantity of food and two quarts of water apiece early one June morning. We had more difficulty than anticipated in clearing the upper section of the Grand Wall of hardware, and Jim was caught by the sun working hard on this section. He was quite spent upon reaching my position at the top of the Grand Wall, and rather than stopping there for the night I made the mistake of pushing on to the next lead. Although I made it in a rather desperate fashion as darkness was closing in, the extra height gained did not offset the added effect of exhaustion produced by the effort in the oven-like heat. (Temperatures down in Squamish reached into the high 90's we later found out).

All our water was finished that evening, and we could only hope that we would reach the large tree ledge before the sun hit us the next day. We spent the night a rope's length apart, Jim sitting at "rat's rest" (for an unexplained rat that bothered himn during the night) and I at "sleepy hollow", a small cave in the rock in which it was possible to lie, but not sit. The night remained hot and still, with clouds of mosquitoes. The next day promised to be even hotter.

One p.m. found Jim still struggling up the lower part of the slightly overhanging last pitch to the tree ledge, the detached flake pitch; another large flake that vibrated ominously. By the time I had removed the hardware and reached him we both felt at the end of our strength and could only lie exhausted the rest of the day. We drank a gallon of our two gallons of water, that had been lowered to the tree ledge, on the spot. It was impossible to eat any food.

Greatly weakened, but feeling somewhat better, we climbed slowly above the tree ledge until the sun reached us, and then descended to an excellent ledge (the best on the entire climb, being a level five feet by seven feet) where we spent the rest of the day in the shade of a small tree. The large tree ledge, although many times larger than this ledge, had all been disappointingly sloping at 30 degrees. The next morning we were again out of water, and moving slowly and irrationally, it was here we made some mistakes in our choice of route which caused us to spend another day on the wall. Even very little things now became difficult, but by early that afternoon we had reached the entrance to the Roman Chimney (for the giant sweeping pillars which flank it on its right side). There is here and amazing chockstone wedged in the very bottom of the chimney. The next day, Jim belaying from this chockstone, I started up towards the large overhang which completely blocked the view of the last pitch, a vertical diedre, which we knew was above.

Working entirely on pitons I reached the lip of the overhang where it was necessary to place a bolt on top of a small ledge. This was by its very nature a hazardous position, and I had prussiks attached to the rope, ready for immediate use in case of a fall which could leave me hanging. While placing the bolt, I was twice conscious of the piton I was standing in shifting its position. Once placed, a large crack fanned out from the bolt, and another bolt, in a more difficult position, had to be placed. In all my mountaineering experience, this was the most spectacular place I had ever been. Jim followed and removed the hardware, and continued on the last lead, the fifty foot diedre. We had only four pitons that fitted the crack, so that it was necessary, as on several other places during the climb, to take the lower ones out and replace them higher as we moved up, not a practice that is recommended for common use.

The very last piton came out as Jim grabbed a bush overhanging the diedre. Less than a half an hour later, late in the afternoon of the fifth day, we reached the cool water of the stream running beside the trail up the back side of the Chief, and drank our fill of that sweet nectar of life.

Arriving back in town that evening, we did not even get a full night's sleep before being awakened by reporters and photographers. I must add our indebtedness to those people of Squamish, especially the Mackenzies and Pat Brennan, who were kind, and understanding of our privacy, and without whose help and assistance the climb would have been even more difficult than it was.

Regarding the time it took for the initial ascent, it must be remembered that many, in fact most, of the days were only part days, and much of that time was spent in prussiking up, untangling snarls from the previous day, and rappeling down. Even on the final assault we climbed only one full day (the first) and half of that day was spent in gaining our previous high point and removing hardware from previous days. We would have spent nights on the face in the initial phase of the assault, except that there was no ledge, until about the 1000' level, that was really suitable for spending nights and storing supplies.

We did spend one night on top of the split pillar, at the 600' level, but this proved uncomfortable enough (one can fall off it not only in the front, but also in the back, where it is split away from the main wall by a foot and a half) that we did not spend another night there. Further due to the slow progress one makes with bolts, it is impossible to spend much time in any single day putting them in before it becomes necessary to stop for the day. Slow progress makes one psychologically discouraged, which makes for even slower progress.

With all the bolts in place, and some of the pitons, no doubt the next party will climb it in its entirety in as little as two days, and will not be able to understand the long time spent on the first ascent, and bolts or pitons placed in seemingly ridiculous or superfluous positions (much of this due to the effects of heat on the final assault). But no one who climbs the face of the Squamish Chief will fail to appreciate that he has done a difficult climb.

Copyright © 1962, Ed Cooper