Thursday, May 20, 2010

Blue Jeans - great new challenge on Yam

This picure of Yamnuska was taken a couple of weeks ago after our last upslope storm, thankfully it has changed a lot over the last week and we enjoyed some fine spring weather.
Yesterday I had my first outing on Yamnuska for the season. Derek got hooked on a project left of East End Boys and I thought I offer him some belay time. To my surprise I was getting a lot of climbing in myself, I thought it would be way harder and was expecting to jumar most of the way. The route is a pure multi pitch sport climb and was put up a couple years ago by Nick "Pump" with rappel bolting techniques. After initial checkouts by strong climbers it was rumored to be in the 5.14 range, but so far it checks in at a fairly "moderate" grade. Yesterday we freed the first 4 pitches, which go something like 5.12-, 5.12+, 5.12+ and 5.13-. It was the second time for Derek on the route and if it would not have been for a broken foothold, he would have red pointed up to this point. There is another hard pitch above that, which nobody has really touched so far. I'm sure (or hopeful) Derek will unlock the sequences through the massive overhang fairly quick, which should open the door for a continues red point attempt on one of Yam's hardest rigs. I also selfishly hope that the unknown pitch is no harder than 13-, so I can have a go at this appealing line in the future. Thanks to Nick for all the hard work he put into this route, it takes a lot of will power and vision.

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