Vancouver’s Hardest Sport Crag
Come the dawn of March, I typically find myself bombing northbound up Interstate 5 after a fine winter spent cragging around the desert southwest. As a quintessential “snowbird” it is my annual pilgrimage, a necessary absence from the dank homeland north of the border. This routine has proved convenient in the sense that, assuming they let me back into the country, the dandelions are out and local cragging has just begun.
As I spiral towards middle age, I’m frequently reminded that I’m no young buck anymore, and after two months of pimping on tweaky limestone crimpers, my body was worked. Tendinitis had infiltrated my entire left arm and every time I heaved the cast iron skillet in which I lovingly craft my morning eggs, the sensation of glass shards and electricity swam through every muscle fibre. I’d hit rock bottom when it hurt to raise a beer. Clearly, I needed a break.
Having climbed exclusively on Vancouver’s North Shore for the past couple summers, I was really looking forward to a proper season of Squamish action. Hoping for a prompt return to form, I spent most of April doing physiotherapy. It was around this time that my friend Alex Quiring nudged me with a few photos of a cliff he’d discovered just north of Lions Bay. A victim of curiosity, I agreed to take a closer look, fully aware I might be hosing myself.
Well, the carrot dangled barely 200 metres above the highway, on Crown l and, and with convenient parking, no less. As we scrambled up the steep, forested slope the wall quickly came into view, and when we reached the base my mind melted. We gawked beneath a 60- metre tall, vertical cliff with an attractive, overhanging alcove on the left, the centrepiece of which was a beautiful, orange corner. The stone was a strange form of compact basalt, with some calcification, and had a kaleidoscopic palette of primarily orange and green. It held no moss, and begged to be climbed.
Quiring pointed to the corner, swiftly declaring, “I want to climb that,” while I honed in on a right-trending seam directly to the right. Instantly, I knew my Squamish summer was screwed and several days later we returned armed with all the new routing weaponry one could muster. Of course, our first objective was to install an anchor somewhere up high, from which we could use to scope the rest of the wall. It was obvious that the alcove bore low hanging fruit, so after a quick reconnaissance we committed to a dirty corner festooned with brambles and choss, which led to the top. With the first station established, it was game on.
With beastly abandon, Al attacked the orange corner and quickly dispatched the bouldery Drop Your Gloves 5.13c, inadvertently establishing the North Shore’s first 5.13. Meanwhile, I struggled to regain fitness but eventually fought my way up Overdraft 5.12b, paying homage to the usual state of my bank account. Next up was a marvellous finger crack that shot like lightning up into an overhanging groove. Screaming to be climbed, The Whip 5.12b went quickly – no bolts required. Things were beginning to look like warm ups were scarce, but I was convinced that the right side of the alcove would produce a fine 5.10. No dice, although with good rests between challenging sequences Time Bandits 5.12a settled in as the de facto warm-up.
Perpetually prowling for new routes and crags, North Shore aficionado Shaun Bent caught wind of our momentum and eagerly joined the party. Bent tackled an attractive, overhanging sweep on the left after confessing that he’d scoped this very cliff more than a decade ago. With Catchin’ a Wave 5.12a complete he returned, however, to unfinished business at the Lumberjack Wall, his latest haunt near Porteau Cove. As the summer rolled along Tunnel Point became part church part job site, a place where Quiring and I practiced Zen and the art of vertical construction. It kept giving and giving, and throughout all the landscaping we interrogated battalions of wasps. Every day we’d suffer multiple hits, returning home with swollen hands and unsent projects. Hence, we christened our new crag the Apiary.
Several more routes were added to the alcove before we f inally broke ground on the taller, more vertical cliff to the right. Guarded by a sketchy approach ramp and with radically different character, the Celestial Wall yielded long, technically demanding endurance missions that stretch above the treetops, where epic vistas over Howe Sound greet the tenacious sender. But this wall also produced only heavy hitters. Delicate sequences unlock thin test pieces such as Golden Choice 5.13b/ c and Morning Wood 5.12d, the latter of which enjoys the presence of an enormous cedar tree the entire way up the wall.
With technical, crimpy and powerful routes on gently overhanging stone, Tunnel Point represents a sort of evolution for North Shore rock climbing, since not only has 5.13 f inally arrived, we now have six of them. The crag now sports 18 routes from 5.12a to 5.13c, some of which are more than 30 metres long. This makes it