Mouses Tooth

[jmace]

Bruce Kay put up a new line in the North Joffre Creek area, most notably an ice climbing venue and now also a summer climbing area.

 

Rock is awesome and I climbed the line on Thursday.

 

Here is the topo what he has to say about it and some pics

 

Myself and a few friends have been working on a new supply of squamish quality granite located in the alpine terrain of North Joffre creek. It has gotten to point where it would be nice to see more people sampling the goods and maybe creating a few more routes. Also we need a herd of elephants to hammer in the trail!

 

We have one bottom to top line established that has some of the finest granite crack climbing you're ever likely to find in the south coast range. Some of the cracks are perfect razor cut flush face cracks to rival anything on the Rostrum or Cookie cliff. The stone is remarkable clean for around here and tends to require minimal gardening or scrubbing.

 

I will attach a topo here but here's some beta:

 

Turn off Duffy lake road at NJC FSR. 150 meters later take right hand spur road. The drive in is 2WD except for the final 1/2 km at 4WD. A new trail has been cut and can be found starting at the very end of the FSR (beyond obvious creek washout). Look for yellow flagging tape and odd cairn to stay on track. It does a gradual ascending then horizontal traverse across alternating talus and slide alder on the right side of the valley. 99% of the trail is cut but take a hand saw for the final alder patch. 2 hours to base of crag. a ski pole is handy.

 

The climbing: The existing route is 11 pitches, all pitches being 3 star or better except for the first two. These two have a distinct mountaineering flavor and should weed out the sport twinkies. If anyone would like to do a huge community service some alternate starts look much more attractive but will likely require bolts. We stopped at the snow leading to the summit and rapped the route almost exclusively from trees. Some pitches have a fixed pin otherwise a rack of doubles to a blue ( including small greys and purples) and a single set of wires works for everything including stations. The existing route took 16 hours car to car but you can rap off from anywhere. I compare it favorably to Sunshine on Snowpatch spire!

 

Ethics: Nothing out of the ordinary so far. I think that bolting will have to occur at some point as many of the potential routes may wind up in cruel shoes sort of terrain. That said i suggest a minimalist approach. The stone quality is so good that i think a no bolt ethic would be silly. The other thing is if you would be so kind as to respect others projects, no matter how tempting. The only things we currently request that you stay off for now are the obvious sweet looking cracks off the main ledge at pitch 4. We have invested some scrubbing and flying time into them and would like our just deserts. Anyway theres other options.

 

 

 

 

Top of the fourth pitch is under the roof at the obvious crack heading up and over. This fifth pitch is BD blue cam size for 30m

 

 

 

Bring some tat and rings/mallions to beef up the raps if you go. Double ropes to get off, almost every pitch is 50m

 

Have fun

 

[DRep]

Wow, looks great!

 

 

Edited July 29, 2011 by DRep

[Sol]

I'm in!! Thx for sharing.

[wayne]

Wow Jesse, Thanks! that looks real good

[jmace]

What I should have said is I climbed 8 of the 11 pitches on Thursday

 

We chose a turn around time of 5 pm since finding the trail entry point through the alder paths in the scree fields would be impossible in the dark.

 

This turned out to be a wise choice, we had a reasonable amount of trouble in the fading light and the rain that also started. Two poles are highly recommended and lots of time.

 

Wayne, right up your alley man!!

 

 

 

[wayne]

The route is completely updated with anchors and the like, oh and it is as amazing as they say! Report here:https://waynewallace.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/mighty-mouse/