Yesterday a couple friends and I put up three new routes.
My parents have a cottage on a lake about 70km (45miles) north of Ottawa, and I've been going up to the cottage all my life. The back side of the lake is a pretty steep hill with a bunch of cliffs on it. I've hiked up it a lot of times, including doing some scrambling that I maybe should have been roped up for -- but I was a kid and didn't know better.
So, for the last few years now that I've been climbing, and in the last couple, leading on gear, I've been looking at that rock with different eyes. I've been thinking about lines and routes and stuff like that. So, I posted that picture where a couple of my climbing friends could see it, and of course, they bit. Hard. And we made plans for Saturday.
There's some lower rock, just visible through the trees, right near the center of the image. I figured to aim for the base of that, maybe do a pitch up that, some 4th to easy 5th class above it through the trees, then scale the upper face above. Or traverse left to the larger face to the left and scale a route or two up that.
So, we get up early, drive up to the cottage, and load our gear into a couple canoes to paddle accross the lake. It's about a 10-15 minute paddle accross at that point -- so really quite easy. Then, hike upwards towards the lower face.
We get to the lower face, and find it is actually quite a bit taller than we had expected. So much of the face is completely hidden by the trees -- the lower face ends up being about 25m (80') tall. We wander back and forth along the base, looking at various possible lines, looking for protection possibilities, and climbing that won't be too hard. Eventually I pick a line that wanders up a slightly vegetated section with some obvious placements to a small roof with an obvious crack in it, and aiming for one of a couple dihedrals farther up that look hopeful.
I climb, occasionally stopping to wire-brush moss and lichen off bits of climb, and make good progress. At one point, I've got the rope stuck in a crack causing massing rope drag, so I lower back down, clear a couple lower pieces and clear the path for the rope. (We had a 2nd rope, I probably should have been leading on both for just that reason.) Then head back up to my highest point, a slung juncture on a big tree growing up the cliff. And get stopped just above there. Back down, try another route, back down from that, try again the way I was. Eventually commit to climbing up the dihedral with not as much pro as I would like, come out, find another piece, then finish in the trees above the face. I setup an anchor on a couple solid looking trees and lower off.
We decide to climb this route, another one adjacent to it (first one probably around 5.6, 2nd maybe 5.7) and then a slab a little bit farther right along this wall. We setup a top-rope for the slab, both my friends flail on it, but I climb it clean. They figure it's at least a 5.10a -- maybe, though I figure as it gets more cleaned, a few more holds will probably appear and it will drop to about 5.9(+).
The rock is lovely old weathered granite, generally pretty solid -- though we did throw down a few decent chunks of rock. Some on purpose, a couple unexpectedly. (One fragment embedded itself in a tree. That's kind of scary if you think about it hitting flesh.) It is, of course, covered in moss and lichen -- but underneath is generally lovely texture, with some surprising pockets and features.
We ended the day with a swim in the lake.
Not the bottom-to-top climb I had a thought, but a wonderful day on unclimbed before us rock.
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