More Crack and Friction Climbing Action in Squamish!

On August 16th, we went climbing at The Malamute area. It is a nice crag directly above the water of Howe Sound. Plus, there weren’t as many people as in other areas of Squamish, which felt a bit more relaxing. The route we liked the most that day was a crack route called High Mountain Woody. I also tested the new, very thin crack gloves I bought and they worked great.

After that, we went climbing at the Apron again, an area which is part of the Chief. The Calculus Crack Direct 5.9 was an awesome route, from top to bottom almost all crack climbing! Seriously, 4 of the 6 pitches simply follow cracks from finger size to perfect hand jams to stacked hands. It wasn’t as easy as we thought, especially the beginning of the route featured some awkward moves. But such a great experience! Unfortunately, we didn’t take any good pictures there, but there’s a link below from some guys who did a cool bird’s eye view video from the route.

We haven’t had enough after this route and still did 2 more pitches: a very cool 5.10a layback flake followed by a balancy traverse and another long crack (Memorial Crack 5.9). The last one was definitely the hardest trad route I lead in Squamish, because of the finger crack crux at the start. At the end of the day, we were more exhausted than we thought we would be. But we still had to move all our stuff from the campground to the hostel for the last nights in Canada. Without a car, it’s always a little annoying and exhausting to walk around carrying the heavy backpacks plus the other crammed bags.

Click to watch bird’s eye view video of Calculus Crack