[TR] Fluffy Kitten Wall - Squamish- The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers 7/24/2004

[fern]

Climb: Fluffy Kitten Wall - Squamish-The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

 

Date of Climb: 7/24/2004

 

Trip Report:

 

The Fluffy Kitten Wall is 5 miles up the Stawamus road behind the Chief in Squamish, below the north side of Mt. Habrich. Routes are described in the McLane Squamish guide and in the 04/2003 issue of Gripped Magazine.

 

Though I have heard of a few people going up to climb on the Kitten wall I did not have a good idea of how popular it is. After having climbed the "*** 1/2" on the wall I can definitively say that it is NOT popular. Which is too bad, because it is a beautiful setting and nice rock and on these scorcher days it is 7 pitches of shady rock right through the afternoon.

 

TWTAK is a fun route with some long sustained pitches. It is clean enough, though definitely a little dirty and greasy by the Apron or Grand Wall standards. Lots of secure laybacking and freaky barely secure flaring handcracks - great exposure. The granite is super sticky and brilliant clean white on the faces - just dirty in the cracks. It reminded me a bit of the NW corner of Liberty Bell, though longer and harder and better.

 

All the bolts are truck, though it would be worth bringing a little extra tat to retie some of the rap slings and maybe a few rings to replace some rusty quicklinks. There are a bunch of stations in bizarre places (some were installed in winter for a mixed route so they aren't even reachable) and the photo-topo in McLane's book is almost uselessly lacking detail - but just look around for the least grassy cracks. I don't think it would be possible to link any pitches without hanging gear belays, maybe with a 70m?

 

 

Gear Notes:

some long pitches. One gear belay.

 

single set of nuts or less is fine due to flaring nature.

 

double set of cams from #1 tcu to #2 cramalot plus one #3 is lots but one "challenging pitch" doesn't vary much and eats up the finger and hand-sized cams. Hybrids would be cool.

 

Approach Notes:

fun burma bridge over the river! lower part of trail right above river switches back and forth a lot, keep an eye for the flagging tape.

[specialed]

Nice Fern! I've been wanting to go up and check that place out. Cool.

[layton]

is the wall to the east dry yet?

[Mr_Sleazy]

Thats great I was going to write my first trip report ever on this board and I was scooped! Oh well, I guess I will just supplement the report above! Fern we followed your chalk marks all the way up.

 

Climb: Wonderful Thing About Tiggers, Fluffy Kitten Wall, Squamish

 

Climbers: Brian Pegg and Andy Durie,

 

Seven years later, and it was Gr-r-r-reat!

 

Date: July 25, 2004

 

Trip Report:

 

My friend Andy Durie and I managed to put this route up in 1997, and I hadn't climbed it again despite visiting the Kitten numerous times since. The weather lately has been so dry that we felt conditions on the Kitten would be prime, and considering that the Grand and Apron etc. are baking in the sun all afternoon, there was no other route we wanted to be on.

 

Drove up the road early on Sunday morning in my brother's pickup, noticed that one of the washouts on the road is a bit worse than usual due to the rainstorms last October, but overall the road is still drivable with a 2WD as long as you don't care about looking good in your ride on Robson Street. Hiked down and across the rope bridge, still in stable condition, then a sweaty 30 minutes took us to the base of Tiggers.

 

Began racking up around 10:00 in the morn, and right as Andy began leading the first pitch another party showed up to climb our route! Honestly, when there are line-ups at the Fluffy Kitten, things must be desperate down in the valley. The wall gets climbed, but not nearly as often as it deserves.

 

I had forgotten just how excellent the climbing was on this route, with pitch after pitch of full-bore crack climbing on about as natural a line as you can get. Only 3 bolts in seven pitches of climbing (not counting the rap stations). The rock is super friction-y and was dry as old bones, even inside the cracks.

 

Some dry slime is present inside the cracks, especially in the first two pitches, but was no deterrent at all. We scrubbed and crack-picked seven years ago, but even so the route is much cleaner now than when we finished with it then - I can only assume that it is actually cleaning up from all the climbers. But seriously at 1000 m asl on a north-facing wall you can't bitch too much about dirt.

 

Pitch 4 (the "challenging lead") went well, much like Fern says, semi-insecure flaring hand jams but really solid feet, and every 6 or 8 feet a little parallel 'pod' gives you good gear as long as you have a few extra .75" to 1.5" pieces. A gold camalot protects the last few moves to the anchor.

 

The extra bolt stations on this route are from a really bold winter mixed line, and they do unfortunately detract from the route a bit, but the Tiggers anchors must have been buried under ice at the time of the FA. Noticed some of the Tiggers bolt hangers were bent, likely from the spring snow/ice slides on the wall.

 

I led pitch 6 (the crux) as in 1997 I was so scared and tired from bolting on the lead with a stupid hand drill that I didn't free the crux move at the last bolt. This time around, the moves felt much easier, cleaner and safer (well no surprise the bolts are already there) and I struggled up after only one "honest fall". Both Andy and I felt that the hard move on that pitch (at the third bolt) was not 11a, but maybe more like 10c, with the moves leading up to it 10a or 10b. Make it dirty or wet, however, whole different story.

 

Topped out around 2:00, then went down and finished up on "This Ain't No Pussy Crack", a filthy name for an only slightly filthy route. Cleaned out the crack on that one a bit more.

 

I was really happy to see Fern's trip report, as it makes me feel a bit like a proud father when people climb these routes. Plus I hope that word gets around even more about the great climbing up there, yes it can be dirty but won't be for long with more traffic. The entire wall is really dry right now and conditions really could not be better, especially considering the heat wave down low.

 

I would love to see someone else put up a route on this wall, there are about 100 lines just waiting for a scrub brush and a month of weekends. Plus, the big wall to the west (Habrich's north buttress) has only two lines on it so far.

 

Final notes: Use the Gripped article for everything besides Tiggers(including the all-important access) as McLane's book is long out of date for the Kitten. Hopefully that will be rectified in the next edition of Squamish Rock.

[fern]

you are a dirty rotten liar! there are FOUR bolts. one on pitch 5 and three on pitch 6 - and I noticed one chopped stub at the base of the challenging pitch, maybe Bruce put that one in too? I felt that 10c (1pa) was a fair rating to indicate what level you would want to feel solid at comparing it to routes on the Chief, especially as an onsight. I did not lead those crux pitches (I got the odd numbers), and Steve and I both hung a little to figure them out - once you start working the friction it's all ace and nicely 3dimensional. Our friends did Cat O' 9 Tails and reported it challenging and fun too.

 

Thanks for developing the crag Brian, you are right about future potential

[Cairns]

Climb: Wonderful Thing About Tiggers, Fluffy Kitten Wall, Squamish

 

Climbers: Brian Pegg and Andy Durie,

 

Seven years later, and it was Gr-r-r-reat!

 

Date: July 25, 2004

 

Trip Report:

 

My friend Andy Durie and I managed to put this route up in 1997

 

Another vote of thanks. Please post photo of Andy Durie with distinguishing marks for inclusion in the Field Guide to Andys of the PNW. We were missing an Andy D, but now we have Atraslin, Boyd, Cairns, Durie, and many more.

 

Also, for those who don't know, Fluffy Kitten is usually too wet until August because of snow melting above it. It is a great piece of rock but has a limited window, being either too cold (personal view) or too wet most of the year.

[Janez_Ales]

Hi Fluffy Kittens,

 

Thanks to Brian and Andy for putting up a nice route.

 

As I said on the wall I do not argue grades, to me they are more guidelines for nice lines that we choose (or not) to climb.

 

However, I have to point out, that you simply must redpoint the route in order to downgrade it.

 

J.

[Mr_Sleazy]

Aye, Fern I forgot about that bolt.

 

I placed that one after leading that pitch, just because I thought that any cams placed behind that thin flake would not be likely to hold a fall, and may even break off the edge.

 

True, it is unlikely that anyone would fall off there if they already made it through the harder climbing below, but I wanted to make the route real safe.

 

OK so the route has FOUR bolts.

 

The chopped bolt down below was part of an extraneous rap station that I removed to clean up the route - you can easily reach the top of the Scratching Post from the Pitch 4 anchors. In light of all the extra stations present now, I probably did not need to bother.

 

Oh well.

 

Every pitch has some kind of challenge, even if they are not technical cruxes. Pretty sustained route.