Granite Playground

Over the past weekend, Lindsay, Mabel and I took trip up to British Columbia to a small town called Squamish with a big chunk of granite lording over it like big brother. The granite wall is named the Stawamus Chief, and it's the 2nd largest granite monolith in the world (the first being Yosemite's El Capitan). This was our first trip to BC with Mabel, so we weren't sure how the border crossing was going to go with a pet in tow. Everything ended up occuring without a hitch, or kink in the plans. As it turned out, last weekend was the Squamish Mountain Festival, so the little town, that is normally turned on end during peak seasons, was especially busy. Fortunately, we arrived Thursday evening, prior to the hippie masses (we'll get to that in a bit!) arrival.

One thing I continually have to remind myself is that a good nights sleep is few and far between when camping--you take what you can get. Our first night was pretty quiet, aside from the cackling crow that awoke us at the godforesaken hour of 5am! I got up, threw a rock at it, then promptly went back to bed.

That day, we got our first taste of Squamish rock. Our climbing started out at a small and sunny crag right off a nice bike trail. It was aptly named Penny Lane. Nice. We climbed a few routes up there, then moved over to another area and sampled some of the finer and harder crack lines. Our day had dwindled past, we had run out of water, and were getting pretty hungry. We bagged climbing for the day after climbing 7 routes, went back to camp and made fajitas. That evening, we saw the only other car with Vermont plates on it. A couple from Brandon, Vermont had been traveling across the country for the past month and took an Alaskan, then Canadian detour. While Lindsay and I finished off our meal with the requisite S'mores, we imbided in some adult beverages and spoke to the other VTers. They were nice enough, and for about 1/2 hour we shared some laughs and stories about New England and Vermont.

The following day our plan was to get up pretty early, hit the Grand Wall Base Area and bang off a couple of the classic routes we knew would be swarming with people later in the morning. We got there, dispensed with Exasperator Crack and Peasants' Route, then left before we saw anyone.

After deciding to head out for dinner to a local brewery, we returned to our campsite that evening (Saturday to witness what was the beginning of the hippie invasion of Squamish. Our campground was swarming with the smell of campfires (nice), cooking food (even nicer), and the sound of...bongos and guitars (not so nice). Showers then to bed by 9pm, only to be awoken at 3:30am by bongos, guitars, and drunken laughter. What the hell?! Lindsay boiled over, got uo, and marched over to the very receptive drunken partyers, to relay a very polite, but curt message to please cease ansd desist. They did, and subsequently, we slept in later than anticipated the following morning.

Driving home on Sunday lasted longer than expected due to a 50 minute delay at the US border crossing. Lindsay and Mabel napped, I festered.

After thinking it through and talking about it for a while, we decided Mabel had a pretty decent weekend despite all of the hooplah and action at the campground (no growling, barking, or snarling; only one lunge at a bunny that seemed to get a little too close, the unwarranted killing of a small mole at the base of the Grand Wall Saturday morning, and the nipping of a sheepdog's rear end that resulted in Mabel having a mouthful of white sheepdog fur).

***************************************************************************

Now that we are back in Tacoma, we've come to the conclusion that for Lindsay's next assignment (and probably everyone thereafter), she's going to focus more on the quality of the town she choses, and not so much on the quality of the hospital. Sounds a little backwards, but the point of this trip was to enjoy ourselves in places we want to be. More later...