Page 15 - 2009 AMA Winter

for a way ahead. Everything creaked and as he reached for a flake it came free. A one metre square of white granite whizzed down past Andy and down the chimney fol- lowed by their urgent calls of “BELOW!”
Not knowing the problems unfolding below they pushed on to the corner crack, the hardest pitch so far. Lacking energy, Henry was forced to run it out without his sac, too tired to place gear. Some hours later he dropped a line and half hauled the three of us up, the efforts of the day etched on our faces.
Without hesitation Nic lead off up the remaining section of the chimney. We must have taken an age to get ourselves togeth- er as it was now dark. 23 hours of daylight at this latitude meant we had not carried head torches and we cursed our luck.
Nic lead out sixty metres in the dark on two cut ropes and placed no more than half a dozen pieces. Baz and I followed, radioing up to the team ahead to fix a rope down from the half way ledge so that we could Jumar up. After what can only be described as another heroic lead by Nic, towing a half conscious climber, we reached their rope and a very wel- come flat, comfortable, secure, free from stone fall ledge. We slept!
With a number of teams above them, Will and Jon had decided to climb to the base of the chimney and fix their ropes for a single day push the following morning. Bivvying at the base they made great time the following day passing us on our descent.
They met up later with Nic and Henry who had decided to wait for Jon, our best
climber to arrive to tackle the crux pitch above. 5.9+ on the topo, it was the opinion of every team in the Cirque to be 5.10b or harder and sustained for 40m! A few more pitches on and into the head-wall ‘train tracks’ - shallow, full of moss and present- ing the age old question of gear or hand- hold(?!) and decided to call it a day.
The LFT was not going to go this time; nei- ther did it for the Americans. The whole team now made a retreat, confidant that it was the right decision to do so.
The early dawn came bright and welcome. Looking up at the perfect cracks and chick- en-heads on the Xenolith Wall above we recognised that some things you cannot change. The 3 star pitches above that we had come to climb are 50m long, now
much longer than our ropes and we had lost a lot of lead gear that was clipped to the belay the night before. After a quick change around of teams, Andy having reached his ceiling and Nic still keen to push on, three of us wished Henry and Nic luck and left them on the ledge to begin an exhausting 7 hour descent down the route, on much shortened ropes and natural anchors, abseiling past knots on almost every pitch.
Back at base camp, laughing, we opened a bottle of Champagne and discussed our options. We were all alive, wiser and with time left in Canada.
What about Squamish...
Anyone for golf?!
Henry climbing 'what isn't there' Squamish
ARMY MOUNTAINEER 13
Some of the boulders in the Cirque have been bolted to form some excellent routes