This was my 4th day leading trad ever.
Maddy's brother was visiting from Toronto, so we decided to take him up the Chief. After getting my 2" cam stuck at Murrin Park last Tuesday, we made a "quick" stop Saturday morning to retrieve it. But as anybody who's ever done a trip with me knows, that meant we didn't start climbing till 11:30am. We skipped the Apron by walking up the 3rd class slabs to Broadway Ledge. Since Austin (Maddy's bro) needed to see Vancouver we went for a walk up Granville st:
We wandered up through the trees and sat in line to get on the buttress. I managed to struggle with a 5.8 face move (sometimes I miss "those sporty kicks"). But after much tele-whacker style on rock I got past that and continued up the Butt.
The first pitch of the Butt Face was the best. It was steep, but had a fairly nice crack with some decent finger jams, and lots of positive edges everywhere else.
Easy ledges led past a bolted belay to a tree belay, where the last pitch was. It started off with an easy mantle and went into a big curving crack. Maddy got a picture of Austin following
3rd class ledges led the rest of the way to the top. It was definitely a fun bypass if the normal buttress route has a line-up at the 10c pitch... but I can't really compare it to that pitch, since I haven't done it yet.
