Climbing the Stawamus Chief - Calculus Crack to Squamish Butt Face

Last week I finally climbed a route to the summit of the Stawamus Chief in Squamish. I climbed it by arguably the easiest possible route, but it was still 12 pitches and 2000ft of climbing so it made for a great day trip to Squamish.

We started on Calculus Crack, a route I had tried to climb before but accidentally climbed a route next to it. The first pitch was jungle climbing up some cracks to a nice belay ledge. P2 was 5.7 and started up a hand crack before stepping out onto a slab with two parallel finger cracks. After I had stepped over to the finger cracks and as I was looking for a spot to place a piece, suddenly my foot skidded off the glassy smear and I took a decent whip. The catch was pleasant and after gathering myself I pulled myself back up and finished the pitch with relative ease. 

The next pitch was the money pitch, two parallel splitter hand cracks for 100 feet. Jacob cruised up the cracks but another party was blocking the belay ledge. We ended up waiting for an hour before Jacob could build an anchor and bring me up. P5 was a steep fun finger crack with great locks and grippy smears. P5 was a rope stretcher, a hand crack leading to a runout slab that got us to the top of Calculus Crack. The route was great aside from so much waiting, but that was kinda expected.

Our plan was to climb Memorial Crack, a 5.9 finger crack, to connect the to of Calculus Crack to the bottom of Squamish Buttress, but I got us lost and we ended up climbing the last two pitches of Long Time No See instead. This was a fun variation though. Jacob's black totem almost got stuck, but by hammering with his nut tool he eventually got it out.

Once we reached Broadway ledge we hiked for longer than I expected up through the trees to the base of Squamish Buttress. There were so many trees that it was easy to forget we were halfway up a 2000ft climbing route. I linked P1&2 of Squamish Buttress. The route started with juggy climbing and a thoughtful slab move before clipping the first bolt pretty high off the ledge. I placed an offset nut below the roof but it was more mental pro than anything else. There was a few harder slab moves after clipping the bolt and then fun easy slab for 150ft, I probably placed 3 cams between the bolted slab and the anchor. Jacob linked the next two pitches, some easier terrain with a few bulges. After taking so long on Calculus Crack we were pretty tired so we decided to climb the easier Butt Face, rather than the 10c crux of Squamish Buttress.

We moved the belay to the base of the 5.9 crux pitch of the Butt Face. I climbed up thin cracks and incut crimps to a bolted crux. To be honest this pitch felt easier than P2 of Calculus Crack, but maybe it's just in my style. After the crux you follow a long ledge system to the base of an intimidating chimney. Jacob lead the chimney, which was the hardest pitch of the day for both of us. I followed with our pack between my legs, the pitch took a lot of effort even on top rope. After this there was one pitch of low 5th class left, I quickly lead it and from that anchor we scrambled to the top. 

The route was great, fun cruxes and a moderate grade to top out the Chief. It was also so nice to walk off, no rappels to stress about. The hike down involves a short via ferrata and then follows the trail down. We stopped at a waterfall to cool off. Overall an awesome day of climbing.