Several years ago, early on in my outdoor climbing journey, my buddy Adam and I set our eyes on climbing up The Chief, one of the crown jewels of Canadian rock climbing. A granite monolith towering 700m+ above the adventure town of Squamish just an hour north of Vancouver where I live, there are hundreds of routes up the face of it, which attract climbers from all around the world.
At this point, Adam and I had only been climbing outdoors for a couple months, and the highest route that we had climbed was approximately 200m, so climbing the Chief would be a big step up and a major milestone for the both of us. Adam and I had actually met each other while on the trail hiking up the Chief, and from that teamed up as climbing partners as we both wanted to start climbing outside, so this would be sort of a full circle moment for us as well.
On our first attempt, we underestimated how long it would take to climb to the top, started too late in the day, and ended up having to bail on the climb halfway up. Determined to finish it, we decided to make another attempt the following weekend.
As the weekend approached, Vancouver was hit with a heat wave, hitting temperatures of 34C. This might not be considered extreme in many other cities around the world, but because Vancouver is used to moderate temperatures, most buildings don’t have air conditioning, and when heat events do happen, its quite an ordeal. And at the very least, not ideal to be baking with no shade all day on the side of a 700m+ rock face.
But, determined to make up for our previous weekend’s failed mission, we decided not to delay our climb and set out bright and early on the weekend at 9am. The first couple hours went relatively smoothly, and we slowly made our way up the mountain. Eventually, the sun rose directly above our heads and we started to be slammed by the heat with nowhere to hide. Adam informed me that he had run out of water. We were maybe halfway. I gave him half of the remaining water that I had, but 30 minutes later, again told me that he’d run out. He was supposed to ration that for the rest of the climb! I guess we’d have to survive on barely any water for the rest of the climb.
When we reached about 75% of the way to the top, there was a section where we had to scramble up a sketchy exposed area without any protection with a rope. To fall here would be dangerously injuriously if not fatal. Typical practice would have been to coil our rope and put it around our shoulders and then climb through that section, but to save time, we decided to just keep the rope trailing behind us as we climbed the section and then to pull up the rope afterwards.
I felt very sketched out climbing through this section - I didn’t like that I wasn’t protected with a rope. But I made it through and breathed a sigh of relief. Until I went to pull our rope that had been trailing behind us up. The other end of the rope had gotten stuck in a crack, meaning I had to climb back down through the sketchy unprotected section, unstick the rope, and climb back up again. When I first climbed through it, having to climb it 2 more times was the last thing I expected to have to do.
Finally, we had the rope all sorted out, and could continue climbing, but now another concern presented itself. It was starting to get late in the day and we only had a short period of time before it started to get dark. We had to hurry. As relatively inexperienced climbers, we hadn’t predicted even the possibility of ending up in the dark and so we hadn’t packed headlamps with us. If we didn’t make it up before dark, we might end up having to spend the night perched on the side of a mountain.
We climbed faster than we had ever before and managed to make it up to the top just as it was becoming too dark the see the rock features in front of us. Exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated, we nevertheless sighed a sigh of relief. The only thing between us and a big meal was an hour hike back down the mountain. Using our phone flashlights, we slowly snaked our way down and finally got back to the parking lot.
But, as we got closer, it appeared the parking lot gate was closed. A quick google search revealed that the gates closed at 11pm every day, and we were about half an hour past that. Fortunately, Adam was living in Squamish at the time, and we called a taxi to bring us to his place, with a quick stop at McDonalds to refuel after our big day.
In the morning, I woke and went to grab Adam’s bike to bike back to the Chief to retrieve my car. But searching high and low, I couldn’t find my car keys. I finally came to the conclusion that the only point I could have lost them was in the back of the taxi the night before. Calling the taxi driver, I couldn’t get through - clearly he was still asleep after his night shift. In the end, I had to call my parents who were visiting me in Vancouver to drive the extra pair of car keys up for me, finally drawing the adventure to a close.
A day where everything that could have gone wrong pretty much went wrong, the story of the first time we climbed the Chief is one that we cherish and that we’ll be telling and laughing about for the rest of our lives.
- Ivan Chan