Four Days Climbing in Squamish, British Columbia

Maple syrup time. You know what it's about out here. Canada's also in a heatwave, shocker. We're doing whippets. He doesn't see us. Peep that sweet maple leaf. That's where we were supposed to park. Dang, this ----'s good. I don't know what we're gonna do. We made it to Squamish. We're wandering around trying to find our first climb. Calculus crack. You can barely see the rock. Alright, making our way through the forest approach up to the base of our first climb in Squamish. First time climbing in Canada. First time to Canada in general. Lots of big granite spires. Can't really see how large it all is here. It's big. Came from the road down there. Hiking up. Ready to climb some sweet cracks. Squamish, our first climb up here. Got the nice finger crack after. We are on the chief in the apron, calculus crack. Having fun, moving our way up. It is warm out. We're from Colorado in the States. Thank you. It's our first time in Canada so we're excited. Alright, we are out here on top of pitch 5 calculus crack. It's technically the top because the wrap anchors are up there. Lots of granite flaring cracks which always makes the gear placement scary. So that's fun. A lot of parasailors over in the lake. Pretty beautiful on the chief formation. Jordan was so stoked to find a slackline already set up in Squamish. We need to get some Canadian money so we can sleep here. This is the grand wall. A giant rockfall happened I think a month ago and so there's no climbing on the grand wall but it's ok because they're all hard climbs. And just living life. Canadians are very Canadian. Every stereotype about their accents is 100% true. We met so many wonderful nice Canadians on the climb that were like oh where are you from eh? Even the homeless guy last night that tried to hit on Kristen saw me and was like oh sorry sorry sorry sorry. Apologizing that he offended her They call their Americano Canadiano whatever. It's coffee and it's a shot of maple syrup. Every country has a signature McDonald's item I think it's their Big Mac or something. It's called the Grand Big Mac and it has maple syrup on it. So that's exciting. Basically most of the Squamish rock climbing is called the apron. You can see the shape of it. Peaks where the town is called. Slacklining festival which is my dream and Kristen's absolute worst nightmare. So I'm excited to go at least just check it out. Maybe show off some skills. Who knows? And Kristen might die of embarrassment but that's cool with me. Alright it's day two in British Columbia. We're still in Squamish. We're staying in Squamish for a couple days. It's really smoky out today. There are a ton of wildfires in British Columbia. We thought they were the wildfires from Washington but it turns out it's here and all the smoke's now blowing into Washington instead of the other way around now. We're gonna try to do Skywalker climb today. A little bit nervous because Canada is also in a heatwave. Shocker. We cannot escape the heatwave. So the high I think is around 90 something. Start of Skywalker. Like other than the sheer torturous pain it's like not too hard honestly. Really? Because you can lean in? Yeah like the way I'm doing it's actually pretty nice. Sheer torturous pain. It hurts like crazy. Oh hey. Climbing. Here on top of the third pitch of Skywalker. This is the last pitch there. Some undercling and traversing across that slab over nothing. This is Squamish. You can see the chief over there. This is where we climbed on the lake so I'll be working with you. Alright we topped out on Skywalker. Here's the lake out here in Squamish. There's the chief over there. Those were our top bolts. Just chugged some water. Put our shoes on. Ate some cliff bars and now we're hiking up. I think there's some falls or well we know there's giant waterfalls here but I think there's some pools that everybody's talking about. A few minute hike up out of the top here before we hike back down to the car. After we do that I think we're going to do some other single pitch climbs in the area and then head back and make some lunch. Jordan is starting up Cliff Needy Crack down in Squamish. We're in the Shannon Falls parking lot. You can see this white street. It's the top of a couple pitches. Skywalker. Pretty awesome as you can see it peeking out. Little park at the bottom. And we're heading to town to get some ice cream. Alright. Got the ice cream cone and the chief in the background. Narwhals. It's a pretty awesome little spot to hang out and grab some ice cream. I got blueberry lemon and chocolate hazelnut crunch which is outstanding. Kirsten got double chocolate sea salt caramel. Dang. This ----'s good. Good times. Hot day and climbing. Ice cream. Can't beat it. Alright. So we're out here in Canada and first off peep that sweet maple leaf inside their logo everywhere. I broke and I broke Kirsten with me. I saw that their burgers have maple syrup on them and so that means we're going to town. It doesn't look that good. I don't think either of us have had McDonald's and I don't think I've had it since college. But sweet. Maple syrup burgers. I don't know about it but it sounds delicious. We also bought maple syrup at the store. True Canadian maple syrup we're going to add in our oatmeal in the morning to get the true Canadian experience. Alright. We followed the Big Macs or the sorry maple quarter pounders up with a beautiful healthy salad. So I think those cancel each other out. How good was that burger though? It was really good. That ---- was good. I'm shocked but maple on McDonald's burger is outstanding. Alright. Maple syrup time. Canada grade A amber rich taste ingredient maple syrup. 100% pure. I don't know how much you pour into oatmeal but damn. That's good. Jordan is finishing up Octopus Garden. This is our third day in Squamish. We are at the Smoked Bluffs area. We have climbed a new bunch today. Just a bunch of single pitch routes. Jordan's going to throw the rope down. We're going to top rope this 10A finger crack. But we were over at the Octopus Garden a while earlier. Just doing some fun single pitch. I will say that Octopus Garden which was the classic top 100 was Squamish style. Very flaring, very dirty shallow cracks and we enjoyed the climbs next to it much more. Alright out here at the top of Flying Circus. This single pitch climb in Squamish. We are in the Smoked Bluffs area. This is pretty awesome views of the town. That's the chief that we were on a couple days ago in the waterfall sections over there. See some people climbing in the cliff. It's beautiful. It's smoky out unfortunately but actually really cool. Get a good view of the chief over there. One more day in Squamish and then we start making our way to Alaska. We just got kicked out of the Provincial Park. We went back. They told us we had to leave out of the parking lot even though we've been camping there for two nights straight. Three nights straight. But then when we were there we were like maybe we can park there again. They started towing vans and only vans and there's a million other people in the parking lot like sleeping in their cars like sleeping with their trunk open. That kind of thing. We pull up to the parking lot in Squamish there are like literally 1500 vans parked. They said Squamish has a van life problem and it's clear from the Walmart parking lot. Damn. Alright this is Kristen coming up up to our climb slot machine which is this nice looking crack there. We weren't able to reserve a day pass up for the chief today so that required us sneaking past the big entrance station through the forest. Basically hiked up to the base of the wall we're just scrambling this steep slope waiting for families and stuff to distract the entrance person and then we would keep moving through the forest until we got to those fixed ropes there. Oh man they're like just below and lead us to our climb. So we got a couple pitches of sweet granite cracks and have a good day in Squamish. The second pitch of slot machine which is an awesome crack climb. Right now it ends on this exposed nice unprotected arete classic Squamish style. A lot of the climbs here in Squamish involve what they call jungle nearing to get to and get off of. So it's pretty much all down climbing like steep exposed root systems and moss and all that so yep this is how you get to and get off of all the climbs just sneaking back here in the woods. He doesn't see us we don't have a pass so he can't get mad. We're generally not allowed to be here if we didn't get a day pass. They're all sold out somehow. They're free but they're all sold out. Everyone has to check in down there. But this is how we got to the climb. We snuck up and around through the whole forest so just out here getting it done. Here to get us on the run. Riding our van so hard we needed to get an oil change. He does that for sprinters. It's not cheap. It's about $250 so yoiks. Alright this is time number two at Longwall's ice cream joint. It's their last day of the year open so we had to make our stop for some awesome ice cream before we leave Squamish sadly and make our drive to Alaska. 40 hours. 40 hours to see Anchorage where I see Kristen's uncle. My sister's flying out. Looks very rainy still. This is our last morning in Squamish. It's starting to get super foggy. It's supposed to be rainy today and I think the next couple days you can see the clouds setting in over the top of the wall there. Super pretty as the clouds come in to the valley here. People are starting to pack up. Maybe head to the next area. It's going to be warm for a while. But yeah, sad to be leaving mostly because it's a 40 hour drive from here to Anchorage which is definitely going to test our sanity quite a bit. And because Squamish is super fun. Awesome in Miami. Really fun just community and town. Just really pretty in general. And it's cool to try new things in a different country. About to pack it up and start our journey to the last frontier. Yeah, get going. Alright, right before we leave for Alaska, we stopped at this cool little Adventure Center coffee shop. Cheese in the background there. Canu Chocolat We're doing whippets. Of the Canadian variety. We found these in a gas station. They're not that good. Shockingly, they taste like a power bar, protein bar if you remember those chalky chocolate flavors from back in the day. Doing whippets.