BENEATH THE MOSS
SALT SPRING ISLAND CONGLOMERATE
There is a good reason climbing on Mount Maxwell didn’t hit its stride until well into the 1990s. In 1922, a climber by the name of Capt. Horace Westmorland celebrated his first ascent of the scenic 200 m bluff with bully beef, cucumber sandwiches and a cup of tea, but he summed up the climbing as unpleasant, treacherous and insecure. It was also raining. “We cannot recommend it as a rock climb in the future,” he wrote in the Victoria Daily Colonist soon after his climb.
Lousy conditions aside, Westmorland admitted to a “cur ious sense of enjoyment to be der ived from being wet through and very tired.” By today’s standards, it sounds as though the captain’s early exploration of Salt Spr ing Island, between Vancouver and Victor ia in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands, was what weekend warriors of the 21st century would consider solid type-two fun, hellish in the present, but not nearly as bad after a touch of bully beef.
Mount Maxwell’s notorious reputation for mossy-bluffs of loose conglomerate would persist for 75 years, until Peter Mede, a carpenter who’d taken up gym climbing, after moving to the West Coast from Edmonton in the 1990s, decided it was time to branch out and up the challenge factor.
“I wondered why nobody was ever climbing outside,” he said, in an interview from his home in the small eastern Vancouver Island community of Crofton, a mill town that’s a 25- minute ferry r ide from Salt Spr ing.
When he started to ask around, people said it was too dangerous, too mossy and overgrown, too loose and too wet. Mede learned an undaunted few had started projects, but given up in bloody-knuckled disgust after getting chewed up on the approach and dr iven back by loose rock and lichen. For years, the verdict was clear: Mount Maxwell was much better suited for throwing yourself off than trying to climb to the top. Captain Westmorland’s early lesson had registered loud and clear among the local gym rats that made up Salt Spr ing’s fledgling climbing community.
“There was absolutely nothing whatsoever in ter ms of established climbs, but I didn’t believe it when they said it couldn’t be done. We said, ‘How bad can it be?’ and realized it’s not bad at all,” Mede recalled.
Mede and a handful of local climbers started with areas that have come to be known as Nothing Shocking, Dead Ents and Fussy Parts. Their first climbs were topropes with gangly anchors that extended more than 45 metres from the cliffs to the wide trunks of the nearest Douglas firs.
“The anchors were longer than the climbs,” said Gus Oliveira, one of the early climbers who went on to write the Salt Spring Rock Climbs Guidebook.
The top-rope access gave the new generation a taste of some prospective routes; they cleaned away swathes of moss and knocked down some of the insecure loose rock. Eventually, they got around to bolting anchor stations closer to the edge and it was only a matter of time before they were putting up routes with a dr ill, powered by a bulky backpack generator.
“All the topropes would take a long time to set up but that was climbing on Salt Spr ing. Eventually we bought a cordless hammer dr ill and that was it,” Oliveira said. “Everyone would just pass all these walls and then, one day, we just stopped and kept climbing.
“There’s still much more up there to unearth.”
Oliveira’s book is in its second edition and can be found in climbing shops on Vancouver Island, B.C.’s Lower Mainland and a couple of places on Salt Spring.The book covers more than 35 routes put up during the early to mid- 2000s. It was considered the dawn of island rock climbing, when Oliveira, Mede and fellow climbers Sam Ellison, Paul Campbell, Ken Danner and Mike Levy, among others, devoted summers to developing the bluffs on Mount Maxwell’s scenic western aspect.
When there weren’t enough climbers around, Mede headed for the base of the bluffs, single-handedly solving no fewer than 47 problems in the labyrinthine Burgoyne boulder field.
The main climbing is based around eight developed outcrops in the Maxwell bluffs, a 20- minute walk from the end of the dirt road that winds its way up the opposite side of the mountain. These range from the 17- metre Baby Wall, with its forgiving Brazilian Wax Job, 5.8, and Baby Shoe, 5.9, to the more challenging Askin’ For It Wall, eight routes up to 20 metres up to 5.12a. For those who seek to get out in the open, there’s the 60- metre Cankers Wall with its twinpitched Cankers, 5.10a, and Buns in the Oven, 5.10b.
When it comes to commitment, there’s always My Best Friend’s Girlfriend, a dirty moss-infested 180- metre, five-pitch climb that Oliveira’s book describes as an “epic adventure,” only climbed twice in its entirety. It’s akin to something Captain Westmorland may have been talking about when, in 1922, he spoke of his early climb as “almost Dolomitten in the sheerness of the direct plunge downwards of over 200 m.” There’s also the boulder field and a newer area to the west of the summit’s parking lot called the Calvin and Hobbes walls. “If you are a climber and in the area you could probably climb there
for five days and never get tired,” Mede said. “There’s very little crack climbing, but there are plenty of interesting features. If you don’t like it, just move three feet over and you’ll have something totally different. You’ve got to think your way through it, it’s cerebral. Climbing through the conglomerate is like puzzle solving.”
Jack Rosen, the owner of an island-based kayak shop and guiding outfit who was instrumental in the construction of Salt Spr ing’s modest climbing wall in 1992, said Maxwell conglomerate is unique because of its special sandstone mix.
“Most conglomerates fall apart, but the conglomerate on Maxwell is quite solid and typically, if you’re scraping it and getting the moss off, what falls off is all that’s going to,” he said. “It’s rare that you’re going to have anything fall off after about the third or fourth time you’ve used the route so it makes for good conglomerate climbing.”
Despite the rapid rise of outdoor routes around Mount Maxwell, the island’s climbing wall is still the crucible for a new generation of climbers, more than 20 years after it was built with a small town’s worth of volunteer labour, and no more than $ 21,000 in funding from donors.
Rosen, who then worked as a youth counsellor, decided to build the wall to give the island’s youth an activity other than getting into trouble during the long winter months. It may only be seven-metres high, with a floor space slightly larger than a big-city elevator, but it was popular the day it opened and continues to operate. People can climb there at least two evenings a week, thanks to a crew of volunteer climbers through the local community services society.
It introduced a new generation to what was, in the early 1990s, an up-and-coming sport, and offered Salt Spr ing’s marooned climbing community a place to gravitate, meet up, and challenge one another. “Climbing gyms are a great place to stay in shape for climbing, to get your hands and your muscles and your legs ready for getting out on the rock. That was the emphasis, but it became more of a social meeting ground for people that enjoy the outdoors and tr ips to Squamish and tr ips to Vancouver Island climbing sites happened. Eventually, it led to the development of climbing on Mount Maxwell, it was great,” said Rosen.
With enthusiasm, effort, the new routes and Oliveira’s guidebook thrown in for good measure, many in Salt Spring’s climbing scene anticipated climbers from near and far would descend upon the bucolic island, known more for its tie-dye and patchouli than for chalk bags and quick draws. The climbers never came and as Salt Spring’s climbers moved to other projects and locales, nature took over, especially on some of the harder-to-reach areas. Once trodden routes grew over and the local stoke dwindled. For a community of 10,000 people with world-class climbing like Squamish near-by and well-trafficked Vancouver Island haunts like Victoria’s Fleming Beach, the Nanaimo Crags and Crest Creek, west of Campbell River, Salt Spring’s climbing community could not keep up with the moss growth. “I think the dirt and debris is really a Pacific Northwest kind of thing. We’re basically in the rainforest,” said Nigel Elliott, a 30- something island-born climber who’s picked up the drill and got big plans for the Maxwell area.
Elliott strapped himself into his first harness at the gym, but decided climbing was for him after a tr ip to Joshua Tree. On a tr ip to Smith Rock, he realized Mount Maxwell, his backyard crag, needed revitalization. “Smith Rock really made me think about what’s possible on Salt Spr ing, because it’s chossy,” he said, over a couple of pints of Salt Spr ing’s local brew. Elliott had the enthusiasm that Mede had when the pioneer ing climbers were sending Maxwell’s first sport climbs. What’s different is that Elliott doesn’t need to worry about the long anchors, hauling a generator in his backpack and the kind of unknowns faced by the intrepid captain back in August, 1922. He’s just got to climb. “I think there’s potential and would really like to start bolting some of the larger walls. That’s one of the good and the bad things about conglomerate, it isn’t always obvious where the holds are or what the route is, but you can blast a path anywhere if you can climb hard enough,” said Elliot.