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...
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....
The Stawesome Chief Sampler
On a whim I decided to call our exploratory trail run around the Stawamus Chief in Squamish the “Stawesome Chief Sampler” as it’s Awesome and samples some of the best trails in this small Provincial Park. We did a loop, checking out all 3 summits of “The Chief” as well as some lesser known viewpoints and airy hangouts. We don’t like to give too much away in our reports, so that you can discover these places for yourself, but I will supply this picture of our GPS track to get you started. Our route heads up, steeply, from the Mamquam Road, takes a lesser known trail up the back of the 3rd peak of the Chief, which features some interesting rope pulls and Via Ferrata, it then drops down before ascending again to a lookout and airy dropoff down into the North Gully of the Chief, from here you descend again before ascending to the 2nd Peak, which we crossed over and dropped off on the common ascent trail to the South, from here we joined up with the 1st Peak trail and took it to the top. We did some exploration up here to search for a viewpoint we’d heard about that looks directly down the face of the Chief. We found it! Definitely not a place for the faint of heart. From here it was a glorious trail run down the popular main Chief trail and then a mellow run along the “Apron Connector” trail, which passes below all 3 summits of the Chief that we’d just been standing on. Awesome! If you don’t know “The Chief” then just check out the photos below to get inspired to explore your local trails. Drop off before 2nd peak En route to the 2nd summit Viewpoint en route to 2nd peak To cool off we ended this adventure with some cliff jumping nearby at Brohm Lake. If you are lucky enough to live near this awesome BC Park, then DO. THIS. LOOP. So scenic, either as a lazy hike or fast and light trail run....
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...
