Conditions in Squamish?

[sparkytheflash]

my buddy and i are heading up to squish this weekend and we were thinking of getting on Angels Crest and i was curious how wet it still was and/or how long it takes to dry out? i realize it has been less than ideal up there lately as far as weather. can it dry out in a day? also we were wondering about the grand wall but i imagine that probably drys out much faster. any info.

 

dave

Edited May 23, 2007 by sparkytheflash

[bigwallben]

The 'grand' dries super fast...not so sure about the other. Do cruel shoes through the grand Dave. Classic. The upper pitches on the Black Dike however...are not classic.

 

Ben

[sparkytheflash]

thanks for the input.

[cfire]

My experience through the years with Angels Crest at this time of year is the 3rd pitch @ 10B will be damp and the 5.9 corner with the offwidth next to it will be damp. Both are doable when wet and the rest should be dry. Go for it..it's good. Just get an early start as it can be crowded.

 

Grand Wall...dry, dry, dry

[jmace]

watch the weather, its a changin..may be better to stick around W wasgington for the long weekend

 

or just wait till the last minute,then decide

[Sol]

The upper pitches on the Black Dike however...are not classic.

I'll second that. WHEN IT"S OPEN, I highly recommend the upper pitches of millenium falcon. Mostly quality and varied face climbing in a great position off of bellygood.(4p11b) Or, for a bit easier alternative, finish up the suggested link up for stairway to heaven which i beleive shares some pitches with the upper MF (5p 10c).

 

Edited May 24, 2007 by frosty_the_tradman

[G-spotter]

Roman Chimneys

[jmace]

Millenium Falcon is CLOSED

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/680731/page/1#Post680731

[sparkytheflash]

i don't know i watch weatherunderground.com and it has been pretty reliable for me and they are calling for no rain on fri, only 20% chance on sat, no rain on sun, and no rain on mon. you guys should head up. unless you are planning to get on angels crest and the grand wall, then ya it's going to rain and maybe you should stay down here. just kidding. it's going to be a zoo no matter what anyway.

 

http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/get

Forecast?query=squamish%2C+bc

 

dave

[jmace]

hahaha,

 

your best bet for forecasts for BC is Environment Canada or the WeatherNetwork, EC is the equivalent of the NOAA.

 

Friday good, sat should be fine: weak cold front. Sunday is the iffy day with an upper level low swing by..could go either way as far as showers or just cloud. Monday is good.

 

I live in Van so its a bit closer of trek for me, thats why I was givin you the heads up.

 

I may head to angels crest via BL on sat, may see you there.

Cheers

 

Environment Canada

 

Weather Network

 

 

[catbirdseat]

Well Jeff Renner said all the bad weather was going up north of Seattle. He looks trustworthy. How can you not go with a TV weatherman who looks so weathermanlike?

[jmace]

I believe he is a meteorologist...?

[bstach]

Forecast is 100% chance of tourist hordes. Get there early if you are climbing Diedre.

[sparkytheflash]

well we made it to squish this weekend despite not having a passport or being able to find my birth certificate. we called customs and they said that i might be able to get back in with a series of questions and that the chances of me getting held up were slim. in fact that was the quickest i've ever gotten back in the states. the canadians were non to pleased but they let me in with a stern warning.

 

so we got up there late like 1:15am or so and were held up by construction just before squamish for 45 min and with a straight view of the chief, that was torture.

 

we threw down on some gravel road below angels crest since that's what we were doing the next day. we woke up late 7 or 7:30 am. we wanted to get up early because we wanted to do other stuff after angels crest. we got to the base at like 8:30am and we finished at 3:30pm. we weren't super stoked with our time but my partner had only done it once and i had never done it so we didn't really have our system down for doing it fast. we got passed by a local climber and his partner somewhere around pitch 6 that were simulclimbing almost the entire thing, ya they were solid. there was only one saucy spot and it was on the third pitch where you faceclimb past two bolts and the crux hold was completely wet living up to the guide books statement of that section being slow to dry. scott did it with out falling but i slipped off and then dumped half my chalk bag on the hold to try to dry it out. acrophobe tower was awsome. i never thought a pitch so easy could be so stunning. the second to the last pitch was incredible as well. then we finished, took some pics and decended.

 

when we got down we decided to go do Diedre. we linked the 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th with some simulclimbing, then the 7th which allowed us to finish in an hour and a half. the entire day the weather was awsome.

 

on sat we were less than motivated for the grand wall since it was looking a little gray. we didn't get to the parking lot until like 8 or 9am and who knows when we got to the base. there was one team on the route and they were moving pretty quickly and we weren't so i wasn't worried.

 

we started on apron strings and i got my ass kicked on that first pitch. then we noticed when we were up higher that there was a trail that one could use to approach merci me allowing you to save your energy for the grand. we linked merci me into one pitch and i had to simulclimb with scott leading that last traverse with some of the moves going for the anchor that were totally sauced.

 

we got to the split and i led that with quite a bit of leapfrogging and sliding of gear as well as alot of taking to keep myself fresh for the final moves. i got up to the chimney and i thought i was suposed to go inside and that was just not working. consequently i found out when i was done that squeezing myself into that chimney broke the lcd screen on my camera. bummer.

 

after getting nowhere with that chimney i realized that the way was to lay it back like the rest of the route grab the jug and grunt my way up on top of the pillar and then i proceded to flop myself up onto the ledge like the beached whale that i am half the time due to my paranoia of being that far above my pro. i brought my partner up and he lost motivation for doing the sword and i wasn't sure i was going to be able to do perry's lieback at the rate i was going. so we bailed. it sprinkl;ed a few drops throughout the day so we thought we would add weather to our list of excuses, but really the weather was pretty good. we both kind of knew that we weren't ready but we just wanted to go and check it out and see it for ourselves.

 

after we bailed we played around at the base of the exasperator. i led the first pitch in relatively good form but i didn't feel like getting a beat down by the second pitch so i decided to leave that for another day.

 

sat night it rained pretty hard and we thought we would be screwed. we decided to head to the starbucks and wait and see what might happen. finally we decided to head to the smoke bluffs and check out the scene. we got to penny lane and the rock was drying out nicely since the sun was out and it was really warm and really windy. so we decided to do penny lane and then brutalize ourselves by toproping crime of the century.

 

mon was supposed to be really good weather up there though but after we were done with a fine day of climbing scott and i both were pretty worked and we kept talking about how we needed to get on this or that at index to build us up for squamish and finally we were thinking well why don't we just beat the holiday traffic and head back and go to index, so that's what we did.

 

the crowds weren't bad and we were able to work with the weather. you all should have gone it was a steller weekend.

 

dave

 

Edited May 29, 2007 by sparkytheflash