Rockin Roadie
Guest Blog: Philippa Brown
Philippa Brown spent a year in Canada working as a ski and snowboard instructor in the Rockies and as a zip line guide in Whistler.
If you are into rock climbing you possibly already know that there’s a little town called Squamish along Canada’s Sea to Sky highway which runs from Vancouver to the mountain town of Whistler.
Squamish is a Mecca for hard-core rock climbers who come from around the world and spend the summer there just camping out all season to have a crack at The Chief. At 2,300ft tall, the staggering mountain’s array of sheer cliff faces offer a variety of rock features and routes that will keep a climber tackling a single route for an entire day.
The climbing in Squamish is mostly “trad” or traditional, where climbers secure themselves by threading their rope through various little contraptions that they wedge into cracks in the rock. Their lives depend on how well they secure these “cams” and “nuts”.
It would only take one big fall for a series of bad placements to come popping right out of the rock like buttons off a shirt that is ripped open.
With that image in mind, we did what no real climbers would do upon arrival in Squamish: we gave The Chief a little nod of respect and kept on driving. We had only been climbing for just over a year, mostly indoors. What we were looking for was some outdoor sport climbing, where we could secure our rope to bolts that have been permanently drilled into the rock face.
With one of the biggest countries in the world stretching out in front of us, we set off on a month-long coast-to-coast road trip to hunt out rock climbs in eight of Canada’s southern provinces. With the exception of super-flat Saskatchewan, there is some amazing climbing to be found all over Canada if you know where to look. Our usual course of action was to find a climbing or camping shop in each new town and ask where the best climbing was nearby.
We were usually given directions along the lines of: “turn off onto Highway 49 and drive for about 5km until you see a pink ribbon tied to a fence post. Park on the gravel pullout just past this ribbon and look for the trail through the trees.” This is how rock climbing led us along the road less travelled, to gorgeous locations that most travellers just pass on by. And nothing beats the view from the top of the climb.
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