Day 25 - Up and down, highs and lows

To make up for yesterday, we didn’t stop for one second throughout the day, taking the ferry back to mainland bc to go climbing in Squamish!

Back to the Mainland

We woke up early today to make sure we didn’t miss the ferry back to the mainland. We arrived a good 45 minutes to an hour early which gave us the chance to go explore the pier and enjoy the morning views. Before long we were called back to our car to get on the boat, making our way across the strait of Georgia. With the morning fog slowly making its way down the approaching mountains

Back to Squamish

A few days ago we passed through Squamish and knew we had to come back here to climb outdoors. Tim knew before even leaving for Calgary that we would want to come here to climb, but bringing our climbing gear would have cost us at least another 120$ for the bag in the plane. So we had to look for climbing partners here. Fortunately, we managed to find a few Facebook groups for climbers and Squamish and made posted that we were looking for climbing partners for today. With our great luck going strong so far, John answered our call and we were going to climb with him today !

Learning to Lead

There are different types of rock climbing, as some of you have been introduced during this year’s Tokyo Olympics, that is, Bouldering, Top-Rope, Lead/Sport and Trad.

Both of us started off our climbing adventure a few years ago with bouldering, that is, climbing problems on a pretty low wall with no harness or rope, only a mattress to catch us when we fall.

Top-Rope climbing is your normal run of the mill rock climbing, where both climber and belayer are wearing a harness and the rope is set a the top of the wall where the climber is heading towards. Tim started to climb top-rope in April this year, whereas Marty only started climbing and belaying top-rope during this trip.

Now, Lead is another level above that. in Lead or Sport climbing, the climber sets the rope as he climbs and the belayer must constantly adjust the amount of rope in the system. As the climber ascends the wall, he attaches Quickdraws, also known as dog-bones, on metal eyelets on the rock face and then secures his rope into the Quickdraws. If you’re following this logic, you’ll have figured out that most of the time, the climber is above the last safety he set, and therefore, if he falls, he’ll fall for a good while.

All that to say that to say that lead climbing is an incredibly thrilling experience compared to top-rope climbing, and having the opportunity to learn it here in Squamish, one of the best places in the country for rock-climbing, was an incredibly fulfilling experience !

Our awesome teacher

We’ve met a lot of great people on our trip and John was definitely one of them, we feel very lucky to have met him. John is a paramedic and a rope access supervisor, as well as an avid Trad Climber and it turns out that he’s also a Quebecer!

Trad climbing is where you set your own protections. Where in sport climbing you clip your quickdraws and rope in eyelets already bolted to the walls, in trad climbing there are no bolts already set in the stone; you have to set your own protections, be it cams, nuts or ropes in cracks, trees or other features of the wall.

With all of his experience, useless to say that we felt safe being taught lead climbing by him! John taught us everything we had to know about climbing outdoors and lead climbing, from setting our anchors to belaying lead, the correct ways of clipping in and different mistakes to avoid when doing so. Overall, John is a great teacher, and incredibly generous to show us all of this for free. We definitely had to buy him a beer after this !

Howe Sound Brewery

After a great afternoon learning to climb outside and lead climbing, we jumped into the lake at Murrin park and decided to grab some food and a beer at Howe Sound Brewery with our new friend John, to whom we were so grateful. We shared our stories about climbing and John told us about the different mountains and rock faces in the area. All in all we had a great time and stepped out of the brewery as the setting sun was shining a golden light on Goat Ridge, behind the Stawamus Chief, Squamish’s famous multi pitch rock face, a wall we definitely want to climb the next time we’re here !

Coming back down

After such a great day, we had to find ourselves a camping spot for the night. Having camped in Squamish a week ago, we thought that we’d stay at the same place we’d stayed last time, since it was such a nice and peaceful camp site. Things turned out differently once we arrived there however.

The moment we arrived at the Raffuse Creek Recreational Area, we figured things would be a bit different. The parking was pretty much full this time around, whereas there was only one or two cars a week ago, we still did not know how bad things would go. There was still a free parking spot, so we figured there would still be at least one free campsite, having made our way up 8km of forestry service road, we didn’t really want to turn around without having a look for a campsite first, and it being already around 10:30 in the evening we hoped we wouldn’t have to find another place to sleep.

Events unfolded swiftly after that. We got out of the car to prepare our bags, opened the trunk to get our things. As soon as Marty donned his headlamp, three guys stormed out of the woods brandishing baseball bats and screaming nonsense at us. They went to Marty at first and were blinded by his headlamp, then went on to Tim spouting nonsense about Squamish people and bears and proceeded to cross check him with a baseball bat. They then continued their way screaming and swinging their bats at nearby cars, breaking taillights.

At that point we immediately jumped back into the car and got away. Halfway down the mountain road we decided to call the police, as we figured things were still dangerous for the people at the recreational area. After a short talk with the dispatcher, we were put through to a RCMP agent to whom we explained the situation and wanted to meet us at the RCMP station.

We met up with RCMP agents to explain the situation more in detail, but unfortunately, they couldn’t do much about it. the campsite we’d been to was about 30 minutes away up a pretty rough road and the agents figured it was too risky for them to get up there.

We then asked the agents if they knew any place where we could set up our tents for the night, as it was nearly midnight at this point. They suggested we sleep at the nearby Walmart parking lot, and so we did. That was definitely the worse night of the entire trip!