Last Thursday was the penultimate day of classes for this semester, my only class for the day was cancelled so I headed out with Kelsie from the city to meet Maria, Matt and Trent at Wasootch slabs down in Kananaksis.
Me leading the very run-out C16, 5.7.I gave a bit of an overviews of Wasootch a few weeks ago when I was there with Joe and Frank so read that for the basic information. This time I took my rack along to do some of the trad routes listed in the guide - which itself is a little odd being entitled 'Sport Climbs in the Canadian Rockies' but actually containing a great number of the traditional routes, denoting this by placing the word gear by the grade! Anyhow if my memory serves correct we did 5 routes in the 5.6-5.8 range which in British standards is up to about HS/VS, not quite where I was at at the end of last summer but not bad for the first days proper climbing of the summer.
I'm British, and by nature a traditional climber. I probably led 100 gear routes before I actually went to a actual sport crag. Anybody that knows me will know I am advocate of clean climbing, not really because of the concept of keeping the crags clean but if your bolting stuff then your effectively, in my eyes anyhow bringing the mountain down to your level. I feel it also takes away some of the satisfaction I get from climbing a route, I enjoy placing the gear, setting up the stations dealing with problems - its fun. Now I have been sport climbing, I've done it in several venues across the UK and in Europe and out here in North America, and a lot of the time I have enjoyed it, and there are areas that deserve to be bolted due to the nature of the geology, or other reasons.
Wasootch in some respects is a good example of this, its compact and carboniferous in nature, meaning there isn't a huge amount of placements, its also composed of lots of very blank slabs which are separated by several smaller, steeper more featured buttresses which will take gear. The issue I have is that whoever bolted the area (I believe it was TABVAR) seems to have been lacking in a bit of common sense, there are lines which are easily protect-able by a set of chocks and perhaps the odd cam which are laced with bolts, in some places the bolting is so aggressive that theres less than a meter between bolts. Thankfully one or two of these lines have been left untouched but I wouldn't be surprised if they soon see some iron work.
One of the last routes we climbed was C16, a 5.7 route listed a trad in the guidebook which consisted of some pleasant climbing up a flake lying on top of slab before a mantle move to ledge, a further very run-out slab led up to below an overhang where an fun move, the crux over the overhang led you to the upper slab which was again run-out, finishing at a bolt anchor, around 40m in total. Now anybody with any sense could see from looking at the route that the second two slab sections were seriously run-out, being about 10m each, the topo however suggested there was a bolt in place immediately below the overhang and above it so I decided to give it a go. When I reached the bolts though I was a little hesitant to trust them, looking pretty old, brittle and very rusty. I managed to get a no1. cam under the roof to back it up and made the move, clipped the one above that was in a similar state and finished the runout slab above. I did the route, its was little bit scary, if I had slipped on the slabs I may have decked or a least gone a very long way but I didn't because the climbing was comfortably within my limits - other people might not of be so fortunate.
So my natural conclusion drawn from the selection of routes I climbed is that whoever is bolting these areas should be using a bit more common sense, the guide suggests that the area is used by both trad and sport climbers so bolt the routes (properly) like C16 which are run-out on gear and leave the ones (B slab area) that can be protected naturally alone. Simply bolt what needs bolting and don't what doesn't!
Loweing off, Wasootch Tower in the background.I get the feeling that Wasootch is catering for gym climbing, latest five-ten shoe wearing, Prana dressed Chris Sharma want-to-bes that climb outside once or twice a year to justify to themselves that they are real climbers. Well perhaps thats a little harsh, and maybe I'm being a little bit elitist by suggesting that that why so many of the lines have been aggressively bolted and that the city-slicker should stick to their gyms, but this is just my opinion. Hopefully I don't come across as too pretentious here, after-all I am new to this area, and bolts are pretty commonplace across North America, so feel free to put me in my place! I just think its bit of a shame that what is a nice little venue has been tainted a little by bolts.
Photos courtesy of Maria.
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