Back in Squamish! Feels great!

We spent three more days in Index before we went to Squamish! After that last rest day we climbed some more classic pitches at the lower and upper wall. The last day we climbed in the
morning and did some rafting in the afternoon!

The rafting was amazing! Because we spent a lot of time in the ‘River house’, the café with all the rafting people, we made a lot of friends over there. The kayakers and rafters are all really nice and friendly. They have a mentality really similar to a climber’s mentality. At the end we knew everybody in the little village, every kayaker and guides! They gave us an offer to do some rafting for a good price, so we took that chance! Our guide was our good friend Pat who gave us a pretty funny rafting tour. The guides told us that the river was extremely high because of the wet spring this year. It was almost a 5th class river and it was quite hard for beginners! That’s why we also flipped our raft in the hard part, called Boulder Drop. There are some really nice pictures. At the one below you can see me hanging on the vertical boat trying to save someone else while we all were capsizing. So the saving didn’t work very well! Those pictures made a good ambiance at the bar that same night.


The next day we left to Squamish. The weather seemed good there so we where psyched to change place again. We climbed two amazing days here in Squamish! It also feels really good to be back in a big climbing area with a lot of people I know from my trip the last few months. I keep on meeting people who know good friends of mine. Squamish is a great area for social contacts. The camping is really fun and social because everyone is eating and chilling together at the same place. After two weeks of climbing in smaller climbing areas with less people it feels good to see so many climbers again! Squamish = good atmosphere!

So our first day here we did a route of 10 pitches called ‘The Northern Lights’, 5.12a. This is a combination of the first 5 pitches, ‘Alaska highway’ (5.11d) and the last 5 pitches, ‘The Calling’ (5.12a). This is by far one of the best lines I did on my trip; I really enjoyed the perfect splitters and corners! Like this perfect corner ( on the picture left! There are lots of structures and different dimensions; I think this is typical for Squamish. You need to look around you and use so many different crack climbing styles in this one route! I on sighted everything free and we made it good to the top.

Yesterday we went up ‘The University wall’; this is the most known multi-pitch in Squamish of his grade (5.12a). This is one of the hard older classics here, a real test piece! Because of the rain last weeks the route was still a little wet. The first two pitches (5.12a) where actually really wet. I on sighted the first pitch, even through the wet part. The second pitch I followed but I fell at the end, really strenuous and the hard layback was also pretty wet. From then on we did a good job to the top. This is a really beautiful line but I think it was still a little bit dirty at the top because we are still early in the season.

It feels good to be in a place I already know for once. It makes some things easier and more acceptable if you’re on the road for a long time. A week ago I had a hard time being on the road because it’s getting long right now. But now here in Squamish it’s going well and the motivation is coming back. It's also nice to come back to the same place where I learned how to place gear! Exactly one year ago I asked Fabian Schillings (The cool German) how to place gear in cracks!!!



Today we had to rest because the muscles where sick of working. The weather forecast isn’t so good for the following days, but I hope we find a way to climb somewhere!

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