Inner Fire is a New 5.12 Multi-pitch Squamish Slab

Drew Marshall and Jacob Cook finished a new ground-up slab route they had been projecting above Bellygood Ledge on The Chief in Squamish. They named it Inner Fire 5.12d. “This climb has taken two years to make and I am both very happy with the finished route and a little sad now it’s over,” said Cook, who started the project with Tony Mclane last summer, bolting from natural stances on lead. “Sometimes the stances were very poor indeed. We inched up the wall discovering its intricacies slowly, bolt by bolt. The process was mentally challenging but very satisfying.” Marshall joined Cook this year and they managed to climb through the stoppercrux and drill a bolt from a small stance after the hardest moves. “We wrote the final chapter by making a continuous ascent of all five pitches,” said Cook. “The route is very similar in character to Marcandre Leclerc’s Labyrinth on the Tantalus Wall and I’m proud to contribute in a small way to the history of ground-up slab climbing in Squamish.”