Brandon Pullan Updates...
20th Aug 2011
Here's a report from Brandon Pullan, Wild Country's man on the edge (literally, and nearly all the time) in Canada....
The winter was one of the coldest on record here in the Rockies. It was plagued with heavy snowfall and temps dipping to -40 degrees Celsius for days on end. Near the winters end we managed a few classics: Sea of Vapours (WI6, 150m), Polar Circus (WI5, 700m), Hydrophobia (WI6, 150m) and continued work on a 120m mixed project. The spring has been slow going and with summer here the wet season seems to be giving us few windows.
However I have managed a dozen days on Yamnuska, the classic traditional wall having climbed: Dreambed 5.11b, 200m; Kahl Wall 5.10a, 330m; Red Shirt 5.8, 250m; CMC Wall 5.11c, 300m and a number of other fun routes that take bomber gear! Although sport climbing is not my strong point I am one happy camper as I just climb RAW 512.a at Grassi Lakes, a local pumpfest test piece, the other day.
Where my heart lies is attempting new routes from one pitch to 20 at crags or up high. This spring I have managed 3 new routes already, all worthy of repeats. The first was a 5.8 ridge route on a rarely climbed wall: Goat Wall. It clocked in at a few hundred meters and gave us exactly what we needed after climbing a newer 5.11c 5 pitch route on Yamnuska established by Andy Genereaux, local hardman in the morning. We toped out looked around and spotted this line. After waist deep spring snow post holing we got to the ridge and followed a series of broken cracks to the top of the wall! The next route is nothing special, it is a direct start to Extender (5.11a, 250m) on Yamnuska. I added four new pitches up to 5.10d using only natural protection pitons and camalots to connect to the meandering route of Extender, I named the variation Suspender 5.11a, 250m.
Yesterday was a glorious one. With rain in the afternoon I got off work early (painting exteriors on homes) and headed for the hills with friend Mike Quigley, a local keener. I heard from the guidebook author Chris Perry there was an obvious corner that was wrongly marked as a climbed route in a guidebook and likely had never actually been done so we headed out at 5 in the evening for a look. With a 1 hour approach via a steep rocky ridge we got to the base of the wall in a snowstorm at 6pm. With a huge 800 foot wall above us I wasted no time and racked up. The corner Chris spoke of was indeed unclimbed and offered steep thin climbing with no cracks for pro.
After a near 50 foot fall onto a micro cam I opted out, climbed down 10 feet and traversed left out of the corner onto the face. With a technical tip toe traverse and the snow ending I gained a splitter crack that rose the length of the wall. We climbed this to the top. We toped out at 9:30pm with the sun setting on a beautiful mountain sunset. The snow had stopped and we were amped to have climbed a new wild route on such beautiful rock. We called it Calamari Crack as the infamous Escargot Corner 5.8, 260m climbs to the left of it. The climb went at 5.9 and due to the lack of protection on the traverses I would be tempted to give it an R rating but here in the Rockies everything should get the R rating!!
The summer looks good with many big projects ahead, a few alpine routes calling my name and a fall road trip southward its time to crack open a pint and look at photos!
Read more about Brandon here...
Brandon at the top of Clamari Crack 1st ascent....
