Ecstall River Walls.

[robotsweat]

Hey I am curious if anyone here has ever seen or heard any word about this feature on the Ecstall river I found the other night playing on google earth.

 

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/287041

 

Pretty sweet south facing wall if you ask me...

 

I worked one summer at a BC Hydro generation facility and there were lots more awesome featured walls out there, but nothing that large that I saw on the flight in.

 

 

matt cooper

[Bigtree]

Robotsweat, there's a number of fine walls with potential climbing opportunities along the Ecstall including the one in your photo. There is a shorter wall on the south side of Cuthbert Cr. (roughly 12 km down the Ecstall on the east side - look for the old log dump/road/cut-blocks) that I used to look at /ponder all the time when work used to take me there.

 

As you likely know already, jet boat access is the way to go from Hwy 16 boat ramp, but watch out for the sandbars - I've spent more hours than I care to remember stuck on them.

 

I also assume that you're aware of the place we used to call the Tyee Bluffs just above the train tracks immediately east of the the bridge where hwy 16 meets the Skeena (look for the aboriginal pictograph). Lots of great single-pitch climbs there ranging from 5.6 to 5.10+.

 

Cheers.

[G-spotter]

Isn't there some 12 pitch route on the Ecstall wall written up on rockclimbing.com crag database?

[Bigtree]

G-spotter, was just snooping on Rockclimbing.com. I saw a few routes for the Tyee area I mentioned above, but nothing for the Ecstall (no pics in my files either I'm afraid). The crack on the left (5.8ish) and the route with the roofs (5.10ish) were always my favs (I can't recall what we used to call either - other than good fun):

[G-spotter]

Maybe I'm thinking of the Exstew or the Exchamsiks then.

 

I wish we could use BC river names for Scrabble words...

[G-spotter]

This is the one I was thinking of. I heard it is pretty good.

http://www.rockclimbing.com/routes/North_America/Canada/British_Columbia/NorthWest/Exchamsiks_Valley/Salvus_Dome/Moonraker_63924.html

[robotsweat]

There is another potential route just to the east of the moonraker (never been up that). I have a couple shots of it:

 

There is a bolt (pretty sure) to the left of the crack, and we found slings and fixed (?) ropes on the approach, the buttress that this is on is the backside of the exchamsiks wall.