The Shadow, Squamish
Squamish’s Most Legendary Pitch
The University Wall was first climbed by Tim Auger, Dan Tate, Hamish Mutch and Glenn Woodsworth in 1966. They were students at the University of British Columbia In 1961, Jim Baldwin and Ed Cooper had climbed a route up the centre of the face and called it the Grand Wall. They took an obvious line but not “the line.” The Grand Wall was striking, undoubtedly, but the trend at the time was to take the most direct line.
Auger and the gang had been climbing on the buildings around campus and even compiled a complete guidebook for bouldering at the school. After nearly getting expelled on a number of occasions, they decided they were ready for Squamish. Their attention was focused on a huge open-book corner system that ran the length of the wall to join the upper half of Baldwin and Cooper’s route at the Roman Chimneys. Over a school year, they pushed their new route through the imposing corner systems using every tactic they had. The called it University Wall.
Fifteen years later, a new generation arrived, a group who were beginning to free the old aid routes. It was also a time when “clean” climbing was taking hold, a step away from the “hammer and nail” approach of old. It was no longer just about chiseling a way up the mountain, it was about climbing in such a way that left as little evidence of your presence behind to preserve a sense of adventure for future generations. The idea resonated with the new generation.
Hamish Fraser, one of the best climbers you’ve never heard about, reflected on an early solo ascent of University Wall: “I didn’t take a hammer or pins to make sure I’d climb it clean. Seemed like a big deal then; chocks and friends were all the rage. Not wailing ever-larger holes in the rock was pretty hip, too.”
Fraser was barely a teenager at the time. He had chosen to walk across town on the morning of the climb, as he was both broke and too young to drive, and as he trotted along the empty highway in the early morning hours with a canvas sack full of gear slung over his shoulder he absent-mindedly stuck a thumb out for an approaching car. The rcmp officer that pulled over was perplexed with this tiny kid wandering the road at 3 a.m., alone with his giant rucksack – a runaway he assumed. After inspecting the contents of the bag and hearing the young boy’s plea, the cop dropped him off at the base of The Chief ahead of schedule.
Fraser sat, patiently waiting for the sun to rise (as he had no headlamp). The climb went smooth but not as fast as he had hoped, “I wish I’d made it to Dance Platform in a day. I bivied on the ledge (and in a crummy hammock) at the base of the secondto-last pitch.”
The evolution in hard bigwall climbing was leading up to the moment when Peter Croft had a vision. It came over him one day while sitting in the downtown Squamish bakery. He said, “I craved an odyssey that required my all – and quite possibly more … I wanted to dive in and draw blood, and it was OK if that blood was my own.” Croft wanted to free University Wall.
In the 1983 Canadian Alpine Journal, Croft reflected on those early days as he wrestled with his own ambition:
“I had daydreamed relentlessly about this climb. Once in a while I’d hike up to it but it would leer at me, overhang and hang over me. And I would flee, casting fearful glances back over my shoulder. A trip to Yosemite in the spring and doing some of the long free climbs there bolstered my confidence but upon returning I found that the huge, steep U Wall corner still had an oppressive power to make a wimp of me. The whole idea was close to
“I craved an odyssey that required my all – and quite possibly more … I wanted to dive in and draw blood, and it was OK if that blood was my own.”—peter Croft 1986
being shelved when the two guys I had been climbing with that summer became(overly) enthusiastic. Hamish Fraser, a non-scottish Scotsman, was very keen and very fit but, being from Victoria and not able to make regular visits to the Squamish Bakery during the long winter months, he suffered severely and did not mature properly. Hence his nickname wee Haggis is sadly very apt. Greg Foweraker, an avid food fan, was also from Victoria but didn’t suffer from his handicap… One intoxicated night the three of us gibbered away in ascending voices like monkeys at the zoo till we’d worked up the courage to commit ourselves to the route.”
After a few days of throwing themselves at the problem, the team had managed to climb the first three pitches and fixed ropes to the ground to facilitate the siege. From there, they decided to continue to the Dance Platform, a huge ledge at two-thirds height, in a push. Above the ledge are the Roman Chimneys (the final pitches of the Grand Wall). Croft and Fraser had already freed the Chimneys earlier in the summer, so all that remained were the five pitches between the top of the ropes and the Dance Platform. Within a day, they freed the entire route.
Croft and Fraser returned for a from-the-ground-to-the-top push with no fixing. Armed with youthful ambition and a backpack full of oranges, the two set off early in the morning to complete a continuous free ascent. Croft’s final line in the journal is “no one will ever know exactly how high we got.”
That generation of climbers, who were pushing it in the ’80s, cared deeply about what they were doing. And not only what, but how. Croft is one of those climbers who continues to examine his behaviour and is not afraid to take his latest, greatest accomplishment and consider that it wasn’t really all that great after all. It could be better. The line that Croft, Foweraker and Fraser had freed is contained within the corners of the original University Wall route, but for those nit-picky rock climbers, enough is never enough. The three had found variations to certain sections of the route, deviating from the “true” line that was climbed by the first ascent party in 1966.
After University Wall, Croft headed south and made a name for himself in the U.S. His appetite for big climbs opened doors and he went on to ditch the rope and gear to move faster. The Sierra Range captured his imagination with its granite ridges and esthetic towers. Squamish still lurked in the back of his mind and five years after the continuous ascent, Croft returned to Squamish and made the first free ascent, onsight, of The Shadow pitch on University Wall. Randy Atkinson, another Squamish climber, reported on the ascent: “It had to happen. The original line of University Wall was finally freed by Peter Croft with Australian, Geoff Weigand. The Shadow, at 5.13a/b, must easily be one of the hardest flashes of a new free route in North America, the fifth pitch was also freed at 5.12c. The Shadow represents a new level of long, difficult route in Squamish – Croft was even sore from the stemming on the second pitch.” Croft had finally done it, after half-a-decade, the project was complete. The original line that Tim Auger, Dan Tate, Hamish Mutch and Glenn Woodsworth had hammered up to escape from the drudgery of academia had evolved, taken on a life of its own, and the door was then open for future generations to access a higher education.
More than 35 years after the Shadow was freed, the effort still resonates and has inspired many climbers to attempt the route. Will Stanhope put it well after his own experience with the Shadow when he wrote: “What makes that lead so impressive is that Peter didn’t so much as give the corner a cursory onceover with a wire brush. He just started up it, into the unknown, running on ability and belief. When the crack petered out into nothingness, he stemmed his way through, battling crusty smears, improvising his way through the intricate movement. Obvious to the naked eye from the pub to the post office, the Shadow was more than a climb, it was an example of perfect style, an ascent that seemed to say: ‘If you believe enough, you can do it.’”