The Finer Points of Climbing From Canoes

Do you ever see a picture of a route and can't get it out of your head?  It plays over and over and beckons you to come and see if you have what it takes.  The first time I experienced this was a photo I saw of this route: Prime Cut 5.10a.

It called to me, and I had to answer the call.  Only one problem: it's on an island.  Not to be deterred, I borrowed a canoe, and Joe and I headed out on yet another fabulous adventure, the kind of experience that my dreams are made of.  Because of my zeal to climb Prime Cut, we loaded the canoe on my Toyota Corolla and drove over to Electric City in April.  Turns out, the weather was awesome, and there were no people.  We stayed in a little campground and paddled in and out of our campsite to the various granite walls that are a bit of an anomaly in a sea of rotten basalt.  It wasn't an hour before one of the bags went in the lake.  Luckily, I had stashed the camera in a Ziplock and managed to fish the bag out before it sank.  Because Banks Lake is a man-made reservoir, many of these cliffs continue below the water's surface to great depths.  If you drop any nuts or cams in the water, you can pretty much kiss them goodbye.  

The bottom of the climb turned out harder than we expected.

But, being the fine 5.10a climbers that we are, we prevailed!  I did enjoy checking off this sweet climb, but at the same time--it was over, and I wasn't sure what to do next.  

Check out this sweet anchor.  Got to love the thin flake that someone incorporated in the anchor, it inspired so much confidence that I was able to hang on the anchor to rappel down.

Mission completed, we began exploring other climbing areas with the canoe.  Many of the climbs, such as Bassomatic 5.9 and Half Bassed 5.8, can only be led by starting from a boat, and this is where our "sink or swim" boat-climbing course began.  One of the first things we learned is that the boat needs to be anchored.  Since Banks Lake is infinitely deep, this required a little head scratching, but we soon were able to get in some gear down low to keep the canoe in position.  The second thing we learned is that when the wind changes direction, before you know it, the canoe has spun round and you are no longer sitting near the rock--and a climber fall would inevitably capsize the boat and send everything in it straight for the underworld.  To avoid the drift, we anchored the canoe from a center point.  This worked well climbing on a wall that was flat, but when we moved to another wall that had a corner, it resulted in the canoe pivoting in the middle and the belayer ending up around the corner from the climber.  We began anchoring both ends of the canoe, which was a little more work but well worth it.  After our first bag-in-the-water episode, we realized the value of making sure everything in the canoe was tethered to something.  In the event of a capsize, you wouldn't actually lose anything.  Also, if you like or depend on chalk, it is not a bad idea to bring an extra and keep it in a plastic bag in the event that your chalk bag ends up like a bag of wet cement.  Speaking from experience.

Me Cleaning Half-Bassed

This was our first canoe anchor, a .75 Cam

Me Belaying Joe up Bassomatic 5.9

Super Joe

Me leading Bassomatic 5.9

 Roadside Rock viewed from Tent & Awning Rock

Parting Shot

Now it was time to load up the canoe and head back to rainy western Washington.  I am always sad when a great adventure comes to a close but usually very ready for my own bed!  As usual, we started planning the next great adventure before we even made it half way home.  I hope you enjoyed this installment of The Edge of Insanity and remember, "Life is better on the Edge."