Descending Monmouth Canyon, Squamish
Last year we started to see more and more mentions in our news feeds and social channels of Canyoneering in Southwest BC. It was enough for me to investigate it further to see who was doing it and where. When I discovered that these Canyoneers were coming to Squamish and descending Monmouth Canyon (known locally as “Jump for Joy Falls”) I was shocked. I’d past by some of the waterfalls of Monmouth before on a previous adventure and I remembered them being not only large, but powerful. I couldn’t imagine people trying to rappel anywhere near those things. We’d never really Canyoneered before. On a past holiday in Scotland we’d experienced “Gorge Walking” which, I’m not going to lie, felt a little contrived. We basically just walked around in shallow pools in wet suits and did a few short jumps into the water. I was always aware that I could just step out of the river onto the banks. It lacked the feeling of commitment that I imagined rappelling waterfalls in a tight canyon would provide. I contacted one of the BC Canyoneers and gave them my best elevator pitch to see if they’d allow us to join them on their next trip. I wasn’t hopeful but they accepted! We rented swimsuits, figured out what waterproof gear we’d need, and, slightly nervous about stepping into an unknown activity in an unknown environment, met up with them to cross over the Squamish river and explore Monmouth Canyon. I’ll let the photos below do the rest of the talking, and check out the video at the bottom, made from the plethora of GoPro footage I recorded on this adventure. For more information about this Canyon check out this website: BC Canyoneers Photo Credit for some of the pictures in this set goes to the awesome Kevin Swanson. The 30ft jump after rappel 6 Touchdown! Video from this...
Squamish 50 Orientation Run
June 22nd was the last of the orientation runs for the Squamish 50. I knew I wanted/had to run the 47km for peace of mind. I woke up that morning tired, unsure of being able to run the full distance. I actually thought to myself I would cop out and probably choose the 37km halfway through, as there is a point in the run where the 47 and 37 runners split. Anyway, I had my good running friends Adam and Sarah(both wanting to run the 37km) with me, so with their combined stoke we walked and laughed our way to Escape Route, the start of the run. I started off nice and easy, I wanted this to be a long slow run for endurance training. Adam took off like a shot and within after about 3km I didn’t see him anymore. Sarah and I yo-yo’d a bit but were generally always in eyesight of each other. I knew I wanted to keep it really slow and forced myself to take it easy. I arrived at the 18km aid station to find Sarah fueling up on coke, cookies and other ultra type foods that one only eats during an ultra (Scott Jurek dies a little inside at reading this). Adam was already gone as Sarah told me that they were goth going for the 37 distance. I wasn’t too excited for the additional 10km loop but the thought of getting to hit the aid station after the loop was pretty enticing and when asked what distance I was doing, they keep track of all runners for safety reasons, I immediately said 47km. I chugged a bit of coke, had a few salty chips and a Hammer Bar and then told Sarah I was off. However during the time spent at the aid station Sarah succumbed to a bit of peer pressure from other runners at the station and she was shamed into running the 47km. So off we went.Not going to lie, this worked to my advantage as it was nice to have company on that extra 10km. Not a bad view. Going UP! The theme of the race. Another lovely view en route. I think it may have been a mix of the coke, the calories from the hammer bar and just starting to get my second wind but i was starting to feel good again. The 10km loop was beautiful, with one steep uphill section and the rest classic flowy squamish bike trail. Only the last few km’s were on logging road and I forced myself to run until I seen the aid station. Most times on logging...
Descending Box Canyon, Squamish
All great Canada Days should start in a canoe in our opinion and on July 1st, Canada Day 2014, ours was no exception. Myself and Spring, along with 6 others loaded into 3 canoes on the east shore of the Squamish river and made a crossing to the west side and the trail head for Echo Lake. We followed this trail for a while before branching off and following Box Canyon Creek upstream for a while. The geology in this area is amazing with high walls of basalt columns on your left and walls of granite on your right. When this creek became a waterfall in front of us we left it and climbed up beside these waterfalls in the forest until we reached an area were we could enter the creek again and being our descent, rappelling these waterfalls and exploring the canyon along the way. Canyoneering (aka Canyoning or Gorge Walking) is still very much a fringe activity. We’re pretty new to it ourselves but can see it becoming something we’ll participate more and more in in the future. There is an indescribable feeling being at the bottom of a deep canyon, waterfalls booming around you, looking up at exquisitely carved walls of smooth curving rock which tell the history of how the flow of this water has been the architect to creating this place. You know this is somewhere that humans don’t go for good reason, but curiosity, and necessity, pushes you onward, deeper through the canyon, until you can experience all of it and find your way out on the other side. We’ll let our pictures do the rest of the talking. If you want more information about this canyon please visit this website. If you have the inclination or opportunity to experience Canyoneering yourself we’d highly recommend...
Climbing Rambles and Banana Peel in Squamish
Recently myself and Spring got to climb a fun multi-pitch route in Squamish. We linked two climbs together, the first called “Rambles” and the second called “Banana Peel” making for 11 pitches in total. It goes at a relaxed 5.7 but it’s pretty run-out in spots. There are also a lot of pitches which only nose into Class 5 in difficulty. This would be our first multi-pitch climb together so we wanted to focus on our climbing systems, protecting while lead climbing and moving efficiently. We also got to get some “Alpine climbing” conditions for the last few pitches when it started raining on us. You really learn to place protection only when you need to when you are climbing against the rain you see approaching on the horizon. Thankfully the rock wasn’t fully slick by the time we topped out and we escaped without any falls. We’re looking forward to many more rock climbing adventures in the future… with hopefully less rain....
Acorns, Part 3: The Stawamus Chief
<Acorns, Part 2: Starvation Lake “The Chief” is a large dome of granite that overlooks the main core of Squamish (official name: Stawamus Chief Mountain). If you’ve been through Squamish you’ve seen it. When we started meeting people in Squamish for the first time and told them we were getting into hiking almost everybody asked us “have you hiked the Chief?”. We did some research and found out it was a steep hike up the backside of of this granite dome which eventually leads to some scrambling and walking up granite slabs before reaching the most popular summit, the South one. People generally rated it as difficult and, I’m not going to lie, we were pretty apprehensive about attempting it at first. It was going to be the first summit that we’d hike to the top of in Canada. At that time we still didn’t really understand how elevation gain would affect the difficulty of a hike. We put it off for a while, convincing ourselves that we weren’t ready yet. We began to hear more horror stories from people who’d slipped on the wet rocks or had pushed themselves to the point of throwing up due to how steep and sustained it was. It all just added to the notoriety of it. Eventually, cautiously, we decided to attempt it. This was back in 2010 and the Chief wasn’t near as popular back then as it is today. Today the trail has been vastly improved. Wooden staircases have been installed for the lower scrambly sections and the trail has been rerouted higher up to avoid difficult wet sections. Back then you couldn’t actually just start hiking the trail, it started with a section of rock that you had to scramble up to access the trailhead, beside a large sign that read “This is not a walk in the park”. We scrambled up these boulders and began heading up. Within a few meters the quads on my legs were burning with a searing pain and I could feel my heart working overtime in my chest. Every 5 minutes I had to stop from the pain in my legs and to catch my breath. My face was turning various shades of red and purple. This is what dying feels like Boulders, before we knew climbing them was a thing I remember that first ascent taking a long time. In reality it took us about 2 hours to get to the top but our progress was excruciatingly slow. Spring was definitely more capable than I was at that point so she waited patiently as I stopped every few feet to rest. About...
