Superbok is one of the most classic ice climbs in the range. Not far away, a massive rock roof forms huge hanging daggers every year. You would think someone would have climbed it by now, given how accessible it is, and that it’s visible from the highway.
Nope! Raph Slawinski invited me to take a crack at exploring it, and I was keen. Another route, “Cragganmore”, served as approach ice.
We arrived at the base of the wall to find an existing two-bolt anchor. It wasn’t recent, and we pondered whether the line had already been climbed. We couldn’t imagine someone having established it without anyone knowing.
Raph moves through unclimbed terrain as quickly as most people move through established routes. He climbed the first pitch primarily on clean gear, pausing to tag the drill up when the protection got unreasonably sparse. A short time later, he had a belay established below the roof, and he told me that my job was to clean all the loose rock. And there was plenty of it. I went at it with a hammer, and soon we were sharing the belay.
Establishing the next pitch might have been more strenuous than climbing the previous one. Raph would clip into a bolt, reach as far as humanely possible, and place the next bolt. The nature of the climbing being what it was, this spacing was quite appropriate. Partway through the roof, Raph started to encounter rusty bolts from a previous attempt. The mystery was solved; someone had explored the line by rappelling in from above and given up on their efforts. It was our turn to take up the torch!
Eventually, he reached the ice, and it was time to reverse the sequence. Aiding backward across a roof is almost as hard as aiding it forward. We didn’t have time to take a crack at actually climbing the second pitch that day.
We returned, and I had the honour of leading the first pitch cleanly. It went smoothly, and soon we were again staring out horizontally across the roof.
Raph has climbed through many eras of mixed, including heel spurs and figure fours. But neither of those tactics has been a part of his arsenal recently. He had earned the first go at the crux pitch, and he worked it in DTS (no figures) style. It made for a very technical sequence, with tricky footwork. He would climb and whip, working the beta. At one point, a tool stayed behind on the wall when we fell, and when his tether came tight, it snapped, and his tool was sling shotted off the wall. It plopped into the snow 30 meters below. I sent him one of my tools on the tag line, and eventually, he cracked the beta and sent the sequence without figures.
I have not climbed through many eras of mixed, but figure fours are definitely part of my current toolbox. I like to climb DTS, but to me, this sequence called for upside-down wiggling. I climbed the initial ice before reaching for the first placement out in the roof. Rather than launch straight into figures, I found a slot between two icicles and wedged the ankle of my boot between them, pushing against them with my other foot. Essentially, the ice climbing version of bicycling with a toe-hook on rock.
I reached out deeper into the horizontal roof. Now it was time for figures. It only took a couple of them before it was time to transition to the ice. How do you grade that? Despite the exertion being relatively brief, I was jittery as I established myself on the ice curtain. It could be that I was hanging onto the side of a monster of a free-hanging dagger. I made my way up the ice, relishing the wild position as I did.
Our line complete, our eyes turned upwards, to another dagger, in another roof, higher above. But that’s a story for another day.
Topo provided on Frozen Limestone’s Updates Page by Nick Baggaley. Direct link
