Saturday Nov 2 2013. Climbing again...yay

This day was a bit of a contradictory day with some things working and some not. The weather was good so I decided to head back out to the bluffs on the south side of the highway by Campbell Lake again; did some clearing of the ubiquitous willows from the base of some of the areas I want to work on first and then brought up the drill etc. Unfortunately through a communication error the old drill came up the Dempster and not the new one. It just is not effective on the rock and in the cold so, not many holes drilled and hence no fixing anchors on the big roof. Well, Plan B then, I walked south along the cliff band and found a nice corner leading to a small bulgy roof. It has a couple of trees above it so I figured might be able to fix a rope on it. So around to the top where I set a main anchor as I needed to rap down to access the trees which are right on the edge of the cliff. I set a redirect and rapped down to the base (Spruce trees are really dense wood with exceedingly small growth rings and make exceptionally convenient anchors when present - even if they look like anemic versions of their southern cousins that would not hold much of anything). Nice clean rock with a widening crack through the overlap then strong moves should lead to the anchors; again very featured and clean limestone. If this bluff was anywhere else it would have at least 30 summer routes on this section, and mixed climbing would verboten. But it’s here and there is nary another route developer within between here and the Arctic Circle and probably Whitehorse so what the heck, lol. In reality there could be really fun routes here which would likely be in good condition for rock shoes 2 to 3 months a year, between temps and bugs and muddy roads. Though the bugs have not been bad every time I have been in the Arctic in the summer and they weren’t bad here this fall. The start turned out to be a bit interesting with several high steps with OK tool placements to sinker placements in a hidden crack. Turned out in the end it is easier to layback this feature as opposed to trying to span the crack by torqueing the tool fully sideways. Worked out some stem moves to reach the overlap then a long reach to an incut hold covered in frozen moss gives nice exit moves – very fun given the location. Self belaying takes some effort and attention but pulling a second jumar is only slightly problematic. Not an ideal system but is workable given the gear I have. Ended up doing it 3 times at which point I was pumped. Did some more brushing and looked at some more sections of cliff then headed back to town. Nice temp at -8 , bluff is sheltered from wind too so pleasant conditions.

On the way out I stopped at airport lake and took some dawn (11 AM, lol) shots from the bluff above the quarry. Open water and cold humid air by the lake.