Climbing the Chief in Squamish, BC
I’d never taken a trip to Squamish, but kept hearing about how awesome it was! So during my summer of unemployment and travel, it was high up on the list. Squamish is an hour north of Vancouver, and it’s known for towering granite walls that almost make it the Yosemite of Canada.
Alex and I drove up from Seattle for the week. While we climbed a lot of cool routes (see the end of the post for more!), our big goal was to climb the Stawamus Chief, a very prominent dome that stands 2000 feet above the Howe Sound.
Grade: 5.9
Time: 11 hours (base to top), 13 hours (car to car)
The Chief has one of the easiest approaches to a long multipitch climb that you will ever find. We parked at the base at 6am, walked on a trail for about 10 minutes, and were on the wall at 6:20am.
The Chief is tiered in multiple levels, so first we climbed a route on the lower level, called “The Apron”. The Apron is a large triangular/apron shaped piece of rock. After climbing the Apron, you reach a section of forest to walk through to reach the upper section of the wall, and from there you can climb to the top.
Calculus Crack
Calculus Crack is a 6 pitch 5.8 with some great hand and finger cracks to climb.
Alex took the first lead, and we swung leads from there. I led both 5.8 finger crack pitches (pitches 2 and 4), which I found to be a lot of fun! Alex fell while following pitch 2 on a tricky finger crack section, which he was sad about.
One interesting thing about Calculus Crack is that it uses natural/gear anchors, as opposed to most climbs in Squamish, which seem to have bolted anchors.
“Pitch 6” is marked as 5.0 on Mountain Project, but you could just walk up..I placed 2 pieces just because I had them. Not sure what’s up with Squamish final pitches since we found this was the case with several other routes too.
Memorial Crack
After finishing Calculus Crack, we ended up on a big ledge called Broadway Ledge. It was now 10am, and we took a snack break here, then scrambled up an awkward gully to reach Memorial Ledge. (The scramble can be avoided by climbing a 5.10a pitch, which I hope to do next time! But this time, we wanted to focus on getting to the top.)
On Memorial Ledge, we waited for another group to finish for a bit, then I started leading Memorial Crack, a single pitch 5.9 (10a in the guidebook!) that climbs a double crack system. This was my favorite pitch of the day! The climb starts on the left finger crack, then stems between the left and right finger cracks for several moves, and finally moves to the right crack. The right crack continues upwards and eventually widens into a hand/fist crack. It’s quite a long pitch, pretty sustained, and I placed most of the double rack that I had. The “topout” move exiting the crack onto a ledge was fairly strenuous after having climbed for 80 feet already with minimal rests.
Squamish Buttress / Butt Lite
After Memorial Crack, we ended up in a large forested section of the Chief around noon. We hiked for around 15-20 minutes upwards on trails to reach the base of the Squamish Buttress. The Squamish Buttress is 6 pitches, and we took the popular “Butt Lite” variation to reduce the grade from 5.10c to 5.9.
We were playing to our strengths for this climb, so while I had taken all of the finger cracks, Alex led the 5.8 slab first pitch. After that, we had a couple of unremarkable pitches until reaching the start of the Butt Lite variation. We had to wait several times for the party in front of us, but that’s to be expected on a climb this popular.
Since I had led the cruxes of the other 2 climbs, Alex took the crux pitch of Butt Lite. It’s a striking pitch, with a pumpy 5.9 bolted traverse over featured blocks.
Next, I led the chimney pitch. I had chatted with another climber earlier in the day, and after hearing that we were doing Butt Lite, he had commented “I love that route as long as I don’t have to lead the chimney.” Hmmm.
It starts with a mantle to a ledge, then traverses the ledge and climbs an awkward offwidth/chimney for about 15 feet. I was a little worried not to have a #5 cam, but I managed to protect the chimney ok with a #0.4 and a black totem placed in the back. After the chimney, I mantled out over the top to another ledge, and proceeded to mantle another 10 times over easy ledges, picking up huge amounts of rope drag.
After belaying Alex up, we looked around for the “7th” pitch mentioned on Mountain Project, but there was no more climbing to be found, so we walked/scrambled up to the top of the Chief from there! There was a slightly scary 5th class slab section at the end, but it was only about 4 moves and then became lower angle. I’m sure it’s possible to avoid that section, but we didn’t know how (why is there no description anywhere other than “scramble to the top”?).
We topped out at 5:30pm, about 11 hours after leaving the ground at the start of Calculus Crack! We spent probably about an hour taking breaks and another hour waiting for parties ahead of us, so say about 9 hours of climbing.
Descent
The Chief has a hiking trail that goes to the top, which also serves as a nice descent trail for climbers. It’s quite steep, though, and after having climbed all day, going down stairs for an hour was not my idea of fun. Nevertheless, we made it back down in not too long and headed into town for some dinner!
Bonus Squamish stuff
Here are the other climbs we did + assorted photos!
- Skywalker 5.8
- Spirit of Squamish 5.8
- Flying Circus 5.10a (my first 10a lead on gear!)
- Majestic V6 (did not complete but had fun trying. does bouldering count as a rest day? 🤔)
- Star Chek 5.9
