Holy smokes how time flies! We've been on the road for nearly three months now and its been filled with heaps of climbing, meeting some great new friends & loads of fun adventures. Just getting into Canada was a big adventure! Mars was nearly taken in by the border security guys. They asked me whether I had any firearms on board the van and I reached over and grabbed Mars' arm and said, "just these cannons!". That boy is getting stronger!
Since my last update, we've spent several weeks climbing at Smith Rock (Oregon), Skaha (Canada) and we are now nearing the end of five weeks in Squamish. This blog update comes to you live from the public library in beautiful downtown Squamish, British Columbia, Canada.
I'm loving Canada a lot. Simply gorgeous/stunning/dramatic/majestic landscape. The campground and bouldering are in these amazing forests that get beautiful shafts of sunlight through the canopy. To top it all off, we are surrounded by the most beautiful snow capped mountains. Not even the pics do this place justice. The only downside are the powerlines right near the campground.
I've been through here a couple of times before, but driving into Squamish as a climber, I was in awe of the first views of The Chief. I'll quickly add that I was/still am a little intimidated by the sheer scale of the walls. They are long, steep and some look particularly featureless. Up close, its a shock to realise that some walls ARE featureless! Its been quite the slab climbing education - no holds for hands or feet, just friction. Luckily, the friction on the rock is mostly good and a quick goggle of "slab climbing technique" has made all the difference!! Still, its quite weird to think halfway up a climb "how the hell am I staying on this??". For the climbers: we did get quite the treat and got to see Alex Honnold and several of his buddies in action out at Cheakamus Canyon. They definitely climb hard. I think they set a new record for a speed ascent of The Grand Wall as well.
I think we've settled into the simplicity of life on the road pretty well. The only big decisions are what to climb for that day and what to make for dinner. Thinking about how simple life is, I did realise that we did in fact have four (yes, four) different cheeses in our little fridge. Not so simple, eh? But a life without deadlines, alarm clocks/watches, TV and phone calls is just brilliant! Its not so brilliant when the propane runs out right in the middle of cooking dinner though.
Finally, of course, there is the climbing. Far too much detail to go into, so will let the pics do the talking. In the three months we've been on the road we managed to climb ourselves into a bit of a heap, so we finally took a brief three day "holiday from the holiday" up at Whistler, which was fun.
We leave Canada next week and make our way back down to San Fran to pick up the other half of this climbing troupe - Chris & Alyssa. No doubt the peace & wilderness experience will be destroyed (in a good way) and my next blog update is likely to be coming to you from jail with those two around.
I'll post pics separately until i work out how to link the two :(
