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Mikey Schaefer Photo

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do.
I’ve been very busy climbing and guiding and moving and enjoying summertime- and alas- have failed to keep my blog updated. So, over the course of the next few days, I hope to fill in some of the blanks . . .

To start, I must mention The Call of the Granite (IV 5.12 A0), a fabulous climb up a forest service road near Powell River. topo I met up with Kate Rutherford, Mikey Schaefer and Chris Geisler and headed out for a great adventure on the Sunshine Coast. We found our way across multiple ferries, up a long logging road that is closed between 6am and 6pm- and then up to our destination at the base of the West Main Wall.

The Call of the Granite was put up by Aaron Black and Sean Easton- and consisted of four seasons of extended effort. The route ascends up the beautiful and clean granite face for 2,200 feet and requires only a little bushwacking and a tyrolean traverse across the river. The route has many classic steep pitches and a few incredible cracks connected by some slabby pitches requiring jedi knight footwork.

We decided to take a low stress approach and use our first day to scout the approach and climb as high on the wall as sensible to suss out the style of climbing we would be faced with. Afterall, five years had passed since the first ascent and there was no way of knowing weather or not all of the cracks would be filled with foliage and if the climbing would require excessive scrubbing before being climbable. Miraculously, we made our way up the approach without delay (less than 2 hours) and up the first twelve pitches before our time was up. Mikey did an incredible job of sending two of the difficult first pitches- and the cracks were impeccably clean! We got psyched.

The next day, we slept in, went swimming in the river, and strategized. We slept at the base the night before our next attempt hoping to climb the route in two days- allowing enough time to work out as many of the pitches as possible. We hoped to find a ledge to sleep on that appeared to be less than one rope length down and right from pitch 15. We began our journey- cruising through the first pitches where we had been before. This time, we began marvelling at how fun the climbing was- and enjoyed our time immensely. We could not help but shout insults at, Aaron, however for the excessively sandbagged “overlap” pitch and a few slab moves that required more mind control than we knew how to muster.

Miraculously, the ledge we were hoping for materialized into the perfect four person bivy with a lovely cedar providing a boundary between us and the air below.

The next day we mustered the last of our energy and worked our way up the steep headwall of the upper pitches. The climbing was varied and sometimes looser than the first half and sometimes much dirtier- but definitely consisted of some of the most classic pitches on the route. I would highly recommend this route to my friends- and hope to be back sometime when I have my jedi head on!