Jen and I have been doing our Squamish/Whistler trip for about ten years now, only missing a few—once because we went to Europe, once because we went to Banff, and last year because the whole dam world shut down. But when Canada re-opened the boarder on the 9th of August, we immediately jumped at the chance to get back to our favorite place on earth.
Crossing the border wasn’t nearly as bad as we expected. You had to be vaccinated, have a negative test within 72 hours, and have a place where you could quarantine if you tested positive at a random screening when you went though. There was basically no one there, and even with all the added steps it was our fastest crossing yet.
We always break the trip into two parts—climbing and biking. We’ve found that it’s important to do the climbing half first, so if you get broken off while riding it doesn’t cost you the climbing part of the trip as well. So, we started our two week trip on the amazing granite around Squamish.
It was a bit different than our last trip. The Chief was closed due to massive rockfall, and a lot of new routes have gone in over the last couple years. So many that there’s a whole new guidebook which is about 30% thicker than the old one. We spent a day warming up in the Smoke Bluffs and then started picking off the new long moderates. The amount of cleaning that must have gone into establishing these routes is mind blowing, and the results were excellent. Huge hats off to all the route developers up here.
There was some rain, which lead to a rare day of sport climbing. The Arc’teryx climbers festival was going on, so we got to hang out with some old friends and meet a few new one in the evenings. And other than a single full-on rain day the weather was perfect from start to finish. I also got a chance to get on the pitch I had been dreaming of for the last two years, and it was everything I hoped it would be. All in all, it was an amazing week. Missing out on last year was a real bummer, but Squamish is worth the wait.
I’m marking up the tick list for next year already. Hopefully the world stays together long enough for us to get back up here again.
