This weekend my partner and I ticked off a lot of firsts off our summer bucket list:
✓ Our first weekend outside of the house
✓ First time camping in the new normal
✓ First time leaving our dog for the weekend
✓ Adam’s first long multi-pitch climb
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To start the weekend, we dropped our puppy at my parent’s house and headed to the mountains to climb one of Canada’s largest multi-pitch sport climbing routes, the Goat in Marble Canyon Provincial Park.
To avoid climbing at peak times, we reached the base of the climb at 3:30 in the afternoon and started up as the last party of the day. The entire 18-pitch route is all 5.9, or under so the climbing was quick and fun and consistently delivered on views. At the 7th pitch, we opted to climb the 5.11a variation “Billy Goat Gruff,” and after months without gym climbing, we were excited to see we still had what it takes to climb that grade.
As I snapped photos of Adam climbing up to me, I noticed one glaring problem, the grey clouds from the neighbouring valley were slowly but surely making their way to us. We decided to keep climbing and committed to rappelling the route once the rain struck. We wanted to get our fill of climbing in before that happened.
At pitch 12, the rain finally reached us, and we threaded our ropes through the anchors and started our vertical journey back to the ground. An hour later, we returned to our car, our home away from home, and with extra time to spare, we decided to spend it wisely, cooking a warm meal and drinking a few canned cocktails in front of an amazing view. We had planned to spend the next day climbing as well, but the rain didn’t stop, this is the West Wet Coast after all and rainy days are a part of life.
We sipped our coffee in the car, watching the clouds roll by and headed back to the world of cell service and wifi more refreshed than ever.
– Sam
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