The Gunslinger (14a/8b+ R)

I first visited Squamish in the Summer of 2024. Over the course of 3 weeks, my girlfriend Rebecca packed in as many varied but “quintessentially Squamish” experiences as possible. Bouldering below the Grand Wall, doing “Majestic” over the water, climbing a few Chief routes, and getting pumped at Paradise Valley. It was more than climbing, too. We biked, paddled, sauna-d, and swam. We ate fresh pastries from Purebread, had coffee at Fox and Oak, and ice cream from Alice and Brohm. 

Fox and Oak treats from my first visit

On one of the days that trip, we walked around Murrin Park and climbed at Pet Wall. While walking about, I saw a black rope fixed along a sort of upside-down L feature, nicely chalked on very smooth looking stone. I later learned that this was The Gunslinger.

We borrowed a crash pad from Re’s friend Chris later that trip, and learned that it was his rope on the route, actually. Fast forward to Re and I’s Spring Break trip to the New River Gorge, and I exchanged my first few messages with Nat, who I’d never met, but understood to be a pretty motivated and exceptional trad climber (among other things). Again, I’d later learn that Nat was Chris’s main partner trying The Gunslinger, and eventually snagged the 5th ascent. 

To my knowledge - and this is all word of mouth, so take it with a grain of salt - The Gunslinger was put up as an aid route, and eventually saw some free climbing effort from Will Stanhope. A strong, young Ben Harnden (who I first heard about in Bishop in 2019 whilst climbing with my Kiwi friend Josh Cornah) was fresh off some very strong ascents. When he caught wind of this project, he snaked Will from making the first ascent - resulting in a bit of a tussle. Perhaps as a final slight, Ben graded the route a tongue-in-cheek “13d”. This was 2012. 

Again, this is all second/thirdhand information, but I find it fascinating to document some of the lore I’ve heard surrounding 20 meters of granite tucked away in the forest. 

Will climbed the route immediately after for its 2nd ascent. Sonnie Trotter made the 3rd ascent, and then, the route laid dormant for quite some time. Last year, Nat Bailey and Connor Herson made the 4th and 5th ascents of the route. 

I wasn’t particularly motivated to try the route, having kept my eye on more “iconic” lines around town. If I was going to try to climb 5.14 trad in Squamish, surely it ought to be the Cobra Crack. For better or worse, I tore my MCL (trying to ski for the first time…) in March, sidelining me from pretty much anything for 2-3 weeks. The bigger consequence of this injury, though, was that I couldn’t take lead falls, long walks, or cross steep/uneven terrain for at least 2 months. Despite nearing the peak of my Cobra training, it was out of the question. 

My very swollen MCL

And so began my roadside toproping season. I started “teeing up” certain routes for when I was ready to lead again. Some of the routes I toproped were “Prince Among Thieves” (12b), Sixty Nine (13b/c), Spirit of the West (14a), and The Gunslinger (14a). Of those, the only one I returned to was The Gunslinger. 

My first session I went solo. I took ages accessing the anchor (hint: come in from the left, not right), but eventually got on the route. I didn’t find the bottom very difficult, but the traverse halfway up the route stumped me. I spent nearly an hour trying to make roughly 2 leftward moves, but eventually succeeded. The headwall after the traverse seemed pretty difficult as well, though not quite as extreme. 

I returned to the route the next day with my friend Ben. This felt like quite a breakthrough day, because the crux traverse went from being two moves that took an hour to solve, to being a sequence I climbed through from the ground! I was quite shocked, and fell moving into the headwall after it. This is when I realized “ok, I’m not ‘just having a play’ anymore”.

The Gunslinger in filtered morning sun

I returned to the route a few days later with Pat, a friend visiting from Calgary. Again, I was climbing through the crux traverse from the ground, but now consistently struggling to wrap my fingers around a particular “ear” hold in the upper crack. It’s a very cool moment on the route, where I reach up to just below an “ear” with my front two fingers downpulling a slopey feature, bump my left foot to a small smear, and then wrap my back two fingers around the ear as a gaston. So not only are your front and back two fingers split, they are pulling different directions! 

From the ground, I was consistently pumping off trying to wrap these back two fingers. 

A couple of weeks went by, and I messaged Chris about the route. I hadn’t realized that he was actively trying it too! And so we locked in to trying the route together. Our first joint session on the route, we had a mutually-validating experience of seeing the other person climb the bulk of the route with exactly the same beta, despite having developed our sequences independently. The only exception was the traverse, for which we shared NO moves at all. I felt too weak to do what Chris did, and Chris felt too weak to do what I did. Didn’t matter - we were both consistent climbing through this traverse.

By the time we were both ready for another session, we had to bail due to the tragic drowning of a couple paddleboarding at Murrin Park, leaving the area closed. As another 2 weeks went by, 2 big things happened. First, I was cleared to hike up to the Cobra Crack. Second, I was cleared to take lead falls. There was so much pent up psych to release, and I definitely had a really good time taking advantage of both of these. My first 2 sessions at Cobra went pretty well, and I spent one rainy day onsighting at the Circus wall, doing two 12c’s and three 12d’s.

Nonetheless, I eventually made my way back to The Gunslinger, on a warm Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t sure whether I’d feel ready to lead it, but I knew there was a chance. So, I texted Chris to make sure I had the right gear in mind to protect it. I spent that whole morning doing house chores, walking the dog, and doing a bit of coaching work from home. At 3, I left with my rope, an unusual rack of gear, and my women’s Miura VS - the best shoe I’d found for the terrible crystals I stand on through the crux traverse. I warmed up at the Coop downtown, progressing through some edge lifts on the 10mm, doing a few push and pull progressions, and one 5-ish minute set of ARCing, incorporating more time on underclings than usual to make it more specific to the rests on The Gunslinger. 

The Coop

From the Coop, I drove back to the creek near our apartment, where Rebecca was lounging with Ellie, our 7-month old pup. I picked Ellie up, and drove south to Murrin. Despite arriving around 4pm, it took me another 15 minutes looping the parking lot endlessly until I found a parking spot.

When I got to the base, Chris and Jake had already set up the toprope. We all needed a break - them more than me, having been out for an afternoon of highballing and filming just before. We caught up while having a sit. I congratulated Jake on a recent FA of his which he’d poured a lot of effort into. Jake is by far the most prolific developer in Squamish at the moment, with no one else really coming close to my knowledge.

I offered to have the first toprope go, and tried placing gear to simulate the lead. It all went pretty well, and I fell bumping into a fingerlock on the headwall. I finished my lap with only one fall, and gave it a good brush coming down. 

Jake went next, and Chris after. As Chris was finishing up his lap, and hanging on the rope, I asked him how he chose whether to lead it or not. He said he’d gotten just as close toproping the route as he had leading it, so in some sense he’d lead it on occasion simply to break out of routine. I asked him whether he thought the route was a safe lead, and we had a good conversation around this. The bottom 12+ section was one of the most dangerous, with only one very small cam protecting it. This didn’t intimidate me, as the moves, although not “easy”, were quite secure. 

Climbing can be protected with skill, just as with gear. I trusted my skill gave me sufficient margin through this section. Next was the traverse crux. This section was probably a hard v8 boulder, on extremely small feet that could sometimes blow unexpectedly. This was protected by 2 small, nested cams - one .1 Z4, and one purple C3, both very good. Below these was a fixed nut, which has stayed in place ever since the FA, I believe. So, although this is some of the smallest gear on the route, it also feels like some of the safest climbing. 

Once you finish the traverse, there’s a kneebar rest from which you can sort of “back place” some gear in the underclings you just used. First, I place a red c3 quite far back. Next, I place a black totem and orange totem in the underclings nearest to me. When Nat was trying the route, he’d tested a normal number 2 (rather than orange totem) by dropping a back of rocks onto it, and it had ripped. The orange totem had consistently held, however. 

This story gave me pause, but knowing that the totem had held, and was backed up by two more pretty good cams, helped me rationalize that the headwall was actually safe to a point. Around the fingerlock, from which you go to the “ear” hold, you would start to enter a sort of “red zone”. Your belayer would need to quickly pull in slack as you fell, and if the orange and black totems ripped, the pieces backing them up would probably be too far to keep you off the ground. 

One placement of note is that Nat and Connor both placed an offset cam a few moves into the headwall, but it presented a few issues to me. First, it blocked a fingerlock/sidepull I used (I think they only used their back two fingers in the lock and never flipped it as a sidepull). Second, when Connor had placed it, he’d fallen just after and ripped it out. So, it was a placement I never really considered. 

For the final three moves, you have one marginal position from which you could stop and place a final piece. When I’d toproped the route, however, I felt too pumped to stop here, so I was nervous I wouldn’t have the juice to place gear when leading. I told myself that I’d always keep the piece on me, in case I did have the juice. I really wanted to believe that I would. 

So Chris made the very valid point that the route IS quite safe until the last few moves. I could try the route, and if or once I got to the fingerlock, I’d have to decide whether to jump off safely, or keep going. I really liked that this didn’t put any pressure on me to send. I was just going up for a try, and didn’t even have to decide whether this was a send go until high on the route. 

I played J. Cole’s “Birthday Blizzard 26” Mixtape on my phone’s speaker as I got ready. It had come out during my last trip to the states, and I’d also played it right before sending The Golden Bullet - another headpoint style route I’d done in the New River Gorge earlier this year. The first track - Bronx Zoo Freestyle - starts off so strong. I love the feeling of total confidence emanating from these bars. It makes me so sure of myself, and connects me to my roots in long distance trail running - where sheer confidence in your ability to not give up gets you REALLY far. 

Just when you thought that your boy was completely dead,

Boom, walked out that tomb like Matthew said that Jesus did

With the hold game on his shoulders, not even strainin’ to hold it

Though not at all what he meant, I felt a little part of my story in these bars. I thought I was out due to my knee injury - questioning how I’d feel hiking, leading, and extending the range of my left leg - and instead wanted to walk out of this proverbial mental tomb and play the game with confidence. 

We brought Jakes crash pad to the base. Shoes and kneepad went on, rack in order and on the proper side, helmet strapped. It was quite hot and I wanted to take my shirt off, but there’s a hold to crawl into after the first boulder, and I didn’t want to get in there bare-skin. Liquid chalk went on. 

The next bars to come out of J. Cole’s freestyle were

The top ain’t really what I thought it would be 

So I jumped off and landed back at the bottom

I didn’t actually hear these, as my mind was focused elsewhere. I cut the music and started climbing. 

Everything felt rather smooth. The bottom felt safe and easy. The traverse felt safe but hard. The kneebar rest, where I usually take both hands off for a few seconds, felt restful but not completely so. As I set off on the headwall, it didn’t really feel like I was having a play. I was on mental autopilot, giving lots of beans but not thinking about anything. When I got to the marginal position 3 moves from the top, I immediately went to place the last piece. My elbow started to chickenwing ever so slightly, and I was tunnel visioned so much that I couldn’t place the piece exactly as I wanted. I gave it a few tugs to test it, clipped, and noticed the rope catch on the gate. I smacked it shut, and let out a nervous “Watch me….f***.”

I chalked up, committed to the high left foot, and lunged for the crimp at the top of the wall. Watching the video, I can see Chris’s arm all the way up the rope, stanced perfectly to take in as much rope as possible if I were to blow it. 

And I didn’t blow it! I snagged the crimp, grabbed the anchor jug, and waited for Jake to untie the toprope so that I could clip them. 

I felt relief, pride, and joy - I think in that order. In the days since, one thing that’s given me a little bit of pause was hearing a friend of mine take a nasty fall on a different route, on the same day. It was odd to hear, because it felt like we’d both flipped a coin, only I’d had the good luck of not getting hurt. I’d like to think I was rational in my risk management - I toproped it repeatedly, waited until I’d sent on TR, practice placing the gear, spoken with Chris (who knows the route better than anyone), and gone up with a plan/understanding of when I’d be pushing into the red. But you can never control everything, can you?

Now onto summer! Safer and harder routes are on the horizon :)