On May 27, Nashira and I went for a quick climb at Mt MacDonald. It was my 2nd outdoor climb of the season, so it was great knowing that the weather is warming up. It was raining a little bit lately, but hopefully it will be a better summer than last year!
After the short trek up the mountain, Nashira realized she forgot her climbing shoes. So she had to do a few routes in her bare feet. She toughed it out!
The next two pictures are of Mt Wells. Can you spot the climbers??
Wow, I just realize I forgot to blog about the Rock Reel Film Tour. So that means I’m a couple of weeks late, BUT the tour is still going, so if you get a chance to catch it, go watch it because this is a great film! This all went down at the Vic Theatre. There were a lot of times where I would be sitting on the edge of my seat trying to sit still with my sweating hands, because some of these films were intense!
Big UP Productions, Sender Films, and others team up to showcase six different main films and a bunch of little short films.
Cold: A group of alpinists, Simone Moro, Denis Urubko, and Corey Richards decide to summit an 8,000 meter mountain in Pakistan, Gasherbrum II. -50 degree temperature, avalanches, etc etc.
Project Dawn Wall: Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson goes to Yosemite to attempt to free a route on the Dawn Wall. Check it out as they talk about their adventure of pitch after pitch of 5.14′s.
Ice Revolution: Will Gadd dreamed of ice climbing a place that’s overhang filled with icicles and a lot of difficult ice. After 30+ years of ice climbing, he finally gets to visit such a place that he thought only existed in his mind. So he teams up with Tim Emmett on a crazy adventure to Helmcken Falls.
Sketchy Andy: Andy Lewis got into slacklining, then as he got more into it, he went to the next level and start doing really long high-lines and masters aerial tricks. He’s constantly pushing his confidence to the next level. Some might say he’s crazy…
Race For The Nose: What else is there to say about this? One of the most craziest competitions ever – speed climbing the Nose route of El Capitan in Yosemite. This is where anything goes…. Racing up the 3,000 feet rock face in under three hours.
Origins: Obe And Ashima: Nine year old girl, Ashima Shiraishi from New York City finds her passion in rock climbing. Her coach, Obe Carrion coaches this rock climbing prodigy and takes her to competitions, sending V10′s (if not harder), etc.
Overall, it’s an awesome film. I enjoyed every second of it, and after watching it, I wanted to climb even more. Such inspiration! So check it out if they’re playing near you, or the DVD is coming out soon, I believe… But here’s the trailer if any of you are interested.. Climb on!
This summer was definitely a weird and short one. It rained quite a bit, and we only had about a month of real summer weather. So as you know, you need good weather to go outdoor rock climbing… August was amazing. September it started to rain a little bit. October wasn’t any better, but then I saw a window of opportunity last week. Two days of sun! One day to dry the rock, the other to climb. I NEEDED to squeeze in one more day of climbing before putting my gear into storage. So Nashira and I decided to go for it! I must say… It was such an awesome day of climbing, AND it was a place I’ve never been to! The whole day I had a big smile on my face. Didn’t take many pictures, but at least here’s a few!
A pretty sweet view from the top of the climb!
This next picture is composed of 9 pictures. I wanted to do a panoramic shot but instead of taking the pictures horizontally, I chose to try it vertically. Across from us is Mt Wells where I do a lot of climbing…. Such a beautiful day! And it was warm which is really odd for island weather. Click on the pictures for a higher resolution.
So I’m hoping I’ll be able to squeeze in one or two more climbing days… Crossing my fingers.
Nashira and I went to Mt MacDonald on Monday to do some outdoor rock climbing. So I thought this would be a rad place to take a HDR pic. So this is the view from the top of the climb! Not too bad. A nice view of Mt Wells. I’ll be posting a few more pictures soon!
Over the Labour Day long weekend, a few of my friends decided to come over to Vancouver Island to do some camping! We wanted to check out Horne Lake caves and possibly check out the rock climbing situation there because I’ve heard many amazing things about it.
DAY 1:
We drove out to the Horne Lake campgrounds. There was a few first come first serve spots, so we decided to just give it a shot and check it out. We got there and ended up getting the last overflow site! It was awesome! Here’s our set up… Minus the truck.
After setting up our site, we checked out the area, then the girls did some guided tour of the caves while Peter and I did the self guided tour. It was sweet, but I didn’t take my camera because I’d probably smash it on the rocks a gabillion times.
After a late dinner, we just chilled out on the beach. It was awesome – a few shooting stars!
Yay star photography!
DAY 2:
Time to do some rock climbing and find this amphitheatre I keep hearing about! The hike up to it was pretty steep, but the view was pretty amazing!
I love how there were signs telling you what some of the routes were
Warming up on a 5.10b or something along those lines. Fun climb, but kinda sketchy cause I didn’t fully trust my belayer. But I made it to the top! Was relieved. There were a lot of harder routes around the area, so I figured we would only do this climb and that was it. It was still awesome finally checking out this place!
The crew.
The beautiful, beautiful amphitheatre. Warm up route is a 5.11a. I WILL be back one day! Everything about it looked amazing!
DAY 3:
Time to head back to Victoria… Slowly. We had breakfast, packed up the campsite, and started driving. We decided to make a few stops. First stop was Little Qualicum Falls.
We waded in this area for a bit, then Peter spotted a crayfish. We tried to get the other people and their kids to catch one.
It took them a while, but they finally caught one! That’s a biggy!
Afterwards, we went to Coombs. That place was pretty packed! I LOVE their market there! Didn’t take any pictures though… But yeah, after that, we headed back to Victoria. It was a great long weekend. I definitely needed that since the past month had been hectic. So it was good to just chill out for once. Thanks to all my friends!
Wow… Time to catch up on my HDR photo project! I’m not really sure how I can be so busy when I don’t have a job?? Oh well, the summer has been a blast! And since I haven’t been keeping up with the weekly HDR picture, here’s pictures from three different places.
A bunch of us did a weekend camping trip. We camped at Horne Lake for a couple of days. This first set of pics is from the amphitheatre where there’s some amazing rock climbing! Really really hard routes in here… The warm up is a 5.11a. Woohoo! I’ll definitely be back to climb!
10mm, ISO 1600, F11
10mm, ISO 200, F4
Next picture is from Little Qualicum Falls:
16mm, ISO 200, F5
And last place we went was Coombs. They have an amazing Volkswagen museum there!
12mm, ISO 400, F6.3
10mm, ISO 800, F6.3
Feels good to be finally caught up! I also definitely needed that weekend break. Keep checking back for more updates on the weekend camping trip!
Day 2… Squamish! My friends have never been to Squamish before, so I decided to be the tour guide for the day. We lugged all our gear to almost the top of first peak… And it was crazy! Great views though… I lead the first route and just hung out there for a while to take some pictures and to just chill out. It was good times
Robin climbing up the slab!
Bronwyn makes it to the top! Yay!
Yeah… Not a bad view at all.
Afterwards, we headed for the top and just hung out for a bit, and then we hiked back down to the bottom. We ditched our packs and then I showed them around the bouldering field. It was awesome! Thanks for the great day! I’ll be back for more Squamish adventures! (Hopefully)
FINALLY got good weather in Squamish! Got to do some hiking and rock climbing on Monday and Tuesday. It’s been a really strange summer… Really wet. But when I finally arrived in Squamish, I couldn’t stop smiling.
I’ll be posting more about it when I get caught up with my other posts. Sorry that this post was a day late… Been waaaay too busy with everything.
Last day of camping at Nanaimo River! (sadface). Last night some jerks tried to break into the trunk of my car, but luckily they didn’t succeed. Instead they damaged the lock so now my key doesn’t work in the trunk. It really annoys me people who try to steal and/or break into things… I don’t understand how people can get so desperate… Gah! I can go on about this forever, but I won’t.
Dion and I packed up all our stuff and decided to check out the other side of Nanaimo River (it’s called the Dark Side) for some rock climbing. I’ve never been to the Dark Side before, so I was really excited to check it out.
We parked our car on the other side of the river and started walking to the rock climbing site. It’s such a cool place to hike as there’s parts where the ground is cracked and you can see down to the bottom. We then got to a skinnier trail and then we were greeted by a ladder going down under rocks. At this point I was pretty excited.
Once we got out from under the rocks, we were greeted by rocks on either side of us. It was a corridor. It seemed like something from Lord of the Rings. It was surreal! Everything about it looked beautiful – the rocks, the sights… Everything!
After a bunch of picture taking, we decided to keep on going. But every few steps we took, we kept getting distracted by more amazingness! This tree grew in the crack!
After a few hours of distractions, we were trying to figure out which climbs to do first. The only problem was, a lot of the rock was still a bit damp. So we had no choice but to warm up by lead climbing a 5.10c…. Well… I decided to warm up on it (I’ll update you guys with the name once I get back from Vancouver). This route was AMAZING! It had everything in it. Jugs, big moves, crimps, laybacks, cracks. It was great!
By the end of the route, I was really glad I was able to finish because my confidence isn’t that great yet. So there were a lot of times where I was pretty sketched out because I didn’t want to take a fall. But I think I’m slowly getting more confident every climb!! Afterwards, we attempted a 5.11 but failed miserably because the rock was wet. I ended up smashing my knee into the rock and left some blood behind… Oops! But oh well, we’ll be back for it! Can’t wait to get out there again!
Day two of the trip. Wake up to the sound of the river flowing below us, and boy was it humid there! But hey.. The view we wake up to makes it worth it.
After having an awesome breakfast, we were ready to get our climb on! We were feeling pretty strong, so we went up a few routes to warm up, and then I thought to myself “maybe today is the day where I conquer my summer goal” which is to lead climb a 5.11.
It was such a great route. The first bolt was pretty high, but I felt pretty confident getting there, so that was no problem. The first few moves to the first bolt were pretty straight forward, then the next move was pretty big as it was pretty high up (for a short person). So I had to use anything I could get. Once I got to the second bolt, I was pretty happy because the first two bolts you could still hit the ground if you fell. So after a few breaks, I got to the second bolt and clipped in (phew!!). The rest of the climb was awesome. Nice and crimpy. Excellent route!
Once I got to the top, I let out a huge yell of relief because lead climbing is super scary (in my opinion). Most of it is just psychological… So it was good to conquer this – SUMMER GOAL ACHIEVED!!
This is Dion giving it a try as well.
So overall, it was an amazing day of rock climbing. But right now I’m in Vancouver, so I forget what the name of this route is, and once I get a few more pictures from my friend, I’ll be able to get you all more details about this route.
