Climbing the Bulletheads: A Week of Wildness - Part 3
- Greg Luesink
- Jun 13, 2023
- 5 min read
TLDR: I encountered the my limits of recovery after 3 last minute trips and not a ton of sleep between. Sleep is important, to say the least. Here's how Part 3 played out.
If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2, you click the buttons below to read them:
After climbing Dairyland followed shortly by Mt Rainier, I worked at Mt Waddingtons for the weekend, and didn't get much sleep each night. But, Monday was once again forecasted to be impeccable weather, so Mike and I linked up again. This time, our goal was to climb the Chief in Squamish.
Mike picked me up around 4 am and we he drove us out to Squamish. I napped in the car since I was quite exhausted after working on the weekend and recovering from basically not sleeping from 8am on Wednesday until 1 am on Friday morning (about 40 hours with maximum 1 hour of continuous sleep).
Anyways, we rolled up to the base of the Chief with intentions of climbing Bulletheads East, a classic route on the right side of the Chief, and linking into Stairway to Heaven to the summit.
Bullethead East
After consulting the guidebook, we arrived at the base of our climb. Pitch 1 was my lead, a meandering 5.9 up discontinuous flakes and ledges. It was hard to anticipate when to place an alpine draw extension, so there was quite a bit of rope-drag. After a while, I got to the top and hollered down to Mike that I was safe and he was on belay. Not long after, Mike was standing at the belay.
We were at a fairly large and long treed ledge, so we unroped and searched for the next pitch. Mike checked his phone to determine which crack was the next pitch, a 5.10c. After some humming and having, we flaked the rope below Pitch 2, a slabby section of rock with a thin crack. Mike racked up and started climbing. About halfway up, he discovered the think finger crack to be a bit wet, so he was extra cautious and aid climbed through the crux. As Mike pulled in the excess rope and I prepared to climb, I mentally readied myself to try hard. Just as I started climbing, another climbing party arrived at the broad ledge, also climbing Bullethead East.
Halfway up the Pitch, just below the crux, I stepped to rest on a small ledge to shake out. With a little extra energy regained, I stepped back into the finger crack. I pulled hard through the crux and managed to do the moves without falling, thanks to the mental reassurance of being on top rope. From below, I heard one of the climbers call up,
"You know you're on a 5.11a pitch called Black Book, right?"
Oh shoot! That's why it felt so hard... Come to think of it, I was starting to feel my right shoulder ache, presumably from the pop I felt while pulling the crux move. Mike and I chuckled about our blunder as we clambered up to the base of Pitch 3.
I was ridiculously pumped in my forearms after the 5.11a pitch, so Mike led a really spectacular 5.10c pitch with fun stemming and solid crack climbing. This was the most enjoyable pitch of the route.
The other group was climbing parallel to us on a variation of the route... er, maybe we were on a variation of the route. Regardless, we were all having a splendid time!
We arrived at another spacious ledge, and I surveyed the next pitch to climb, my lead this time.
Rather than climb a tricky looking finger crack, I opted for a hand crack into a chimney, rated 5.10b. "Doesn't look too bad," I thought to myself...
Around the start of the chimney, I quickly realized I could not wear my backpack, so I clipped it to a carabiner for Mike to bring up with him. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that my chimney climbing skills were virtually non-existent. Floundering in the off-width crack whilst messing around with different methods of wedging my body between the gritty stone, I ended up bludgeoning my knee. I'd been sandwiching my knee and heel between the rock to stop myself from slipping down, and opened up a scab. Meanwhile, I was alternating pulling on cams and resting on the rope through the tapered chimney. After perhaps 30 minutes of grovelling my way up the pitch, knee scumming, aid climbing, and faffing around, I was at the top. It wasn't pretty, but I got it done!
I put Mike on belay, and he elegantly pranced up the pitch behind me. Just kidding. He scuffed his knee up pretty good, too. From here it was a short hike to "Belly Good Ledge," where we would traverse to the base of the sport climbing pitches to continue up to the summit of the Chief. I was feeling pretty exhausted, so we took a good snack break in the shade before continuing.
As soon as we arrived at Belly Good Ledge, I knew I was going to use my "veto vote". Staring down at 200 metres of empty space to the base of the Chief, I knew I was far too taxed to crawl across the exposed ledge. Mike was understandably disappointed, but he was gracious and didn't hesitate to turn around to walk down the trail to the car, satisfied that I was trusting my gut to be safe.
We ended up going for a nice swim in a stream and Mike worked on some single pitch projects while I belayed for the rest of the day. All in all, it was quite the adventure for my first time climbing on the Chief, and while I didn't make it to the top, it was a very memorable experience!
Reflections of a Week of Wildness
After climbing Dairyland with Mike (15 hours), climbing Mt Rainier with Blake and co. (17 hours), and climbing Bullethead East (7.5 hours) in the span of 8 days, I hit a wall of exhaustion. I had the willpower to keep doing things, but my body was sounding off alarm bells.
I had truly found my limits of recovering from adventure. Although all of these things were exceptionally memorable and fun, I discovered that I hadn't paid enough attention to sleep, and was suffering for it. I made a mental note after climbing the Bulletheads with Mike that I needed to focus more on getting enough rest after big mountain days.
As you will find as you read subsequent posts, this wisdom is easier said than done...
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