The Story So Far

Mission – Cirque Of Unclimbable's.

What Is The Mission

A higly accommodated set of UK English climbers have set out to the YUKON in Canadas North West Territories to attempt a series of big wall climbs, in an area of the Yukon known as the - Cirque of Unclimbable's.
To get to this remote and very unique part of the planet will require all forms of transport Plane - Buses - Hitching - Hiking - Float plane etc.

Who's The Team

 Sam Hamer

Sponsor -  berghaus 

Born -  1989

Favourite food In a moment of hardship – Biltong (beaf jerky)

Favourite climb – Fiesta de los biceps 7a (Riglos, Spain)

Hardest Climb – Gaia (peakdistrict)

Why Cirque Of The Unclimbables? Huge wall in the middle of nowhere. Always wanted to go on a big expedition. 

Relevant Links : Hamerboys.blogspot.co.uk 

Finn Mccann

Sponsor – Mammut

Born -  1989

Favourite food in a moment of hardship – Snickers

Favourite climb – il y o stazi ( Nesscliffe U.K )  8A / E8

Hardest Climb – North Face Eiger

Why Cirque Of The Unclimbables? Cause his climbing logbook given by dad at the age of 15 had a photo on of the south face of Mt Proboscis ( In the Cirque ) 

Relevant Links :            

FinnMcCannadventures.com

Talk on the wild side.com

Wilko

Born -  1976

Favourite food In A Moment Of Hardship – Sticky toffee pudding with custard

Favourite climb – The moon ( Gogath – Wales ) 5C – E3

Hardest Climb – The North Face Eiger

Why Cirque Of The Unclimbables? Cause Its remote and hard 

Murray S

Born -  1984

Favourite food In A Moment Of Hardship – Jaffa Cakes ( relaese energy quicker than a banana )

Favourite climb – Climbing Jesus ( Rio Djaniero, Brazil ) 

Hardest Climb – Last Week 

Why Cirque Of The Unclimbables? cause i for better or worse instinctively typed the simple word of  'YES' when Finn asked me.

Sponsors - Flysurfer - Garmin - Ellis Brigham

' I woke up as a small child had taken it upon himself to end my moment of re-laxation on the terminal departures floor, by kicking me in the ribs. Lifting my head from the floor it turned out that the terminal was no longer empty, more of an insane hive of activity as people as weary as me dashed through the doors only to wait impatiently in rapidly growing queues.'

Why and how had had I ended up on the floor? This I would like to say was an easy answer, but seemingly as I don’t like to make anything easy in my life I will proceed to outline the circumstances.

27 / 06 / 2013

4:00pm square away work, camper van a.k.a. home. 

5:00pm Find and Pack all necessary items for a month long expedition

5:06pm Get a swift mushroom bruchetta dinner from Bayards Cove ( Dartmouth ) 

5:10 Jump in car to train station

5:45 Go to buy ticket to Poole to pick up satellite  phone from Totnes only to find out that its going to take over 6 hours, gutted !

This is where epic friends come in Chris B and Kimmy R ‘ Yeah we’ll just drive ya ‘

10:00 Rock up to Poole to pick up sat phone and wave Kim and Chris off 

10;30 No trains to London apparently but can make it to Southampton

11:00 Walk from Southampton train station to coach station.

11:30 nap in coach station

03:00 Get on coach to Gatwick

04:30 ArrIve at Gatwick and locate immediate napping spot

07:30 Get physically abused buy a small child.

09:00 Get on a plane to Vancouver 

JOB DONE.. 

28 / 06 / 2013

After landing in Vancouver a very trippy 8 hours before I left, it was time to hit out of the airport and find somewhere to stay to kick back until the rest of the team turned up the following afternoon .
Where to stay? If in doubt,  do as they do in the movies, jump in a cab and say ‘Down town’ then proceed to get chatty with the taxi driver, and get a download of superior local knowledge.
As it was ‘Barry ‘ approved of my random downtown direction and a landed a super sweet hotel in the very centre of the very sunny and surprisingly hot and humid city.
Being Friday night the plan was to grab some grub, get chatty and enjoy some night life, only downer I made the schoolboy error of having a shower and lie on the hotel bed horizontally knocking me out for a clear 13 hours.. 

29 / 06 / 2013

Rising incredibly refreshed  at 05:00 I chucked some clothes on ( some, later I discovered backwards)  and decided on taking a morning stroll. The sun out and the beautiful streets of Vancouver empty and void of all human activity. 

That is until turning a corner only to find the only crazy man for 50 miles picking on another unsuspecting tourist who was half the size of even me, after a brief word or two he decided it wasn’t for him and decided to take out his frustrations on a nearby unsuspecting dustbin instead. 

Strolling for hours around the historically beautiful sunlit streets I managed to find a morning mocha hit and felt ever increasingly metropolitan, only to throw half of it two minutes later down white shorts.

11:00 and time to hit out to the airport to pick up the lads.

Handshakes and smiles all round we lugged our copius amounts of kit to the hotel bar, where the action plan was formulated.

We are due to be flying into the Cirque of Unclmbables on the 06/07/2012 so that has left us perfectly time to travel 2 hours north of Vancouver to a mountain town called Squarmish and to stretch our legs with with a climb of the big wall and route known as ‘The Chief ‘ 

We excitedly smashed all our kit into what we thought HUGE rental car until we actually left the carpark to discover that we were a SMART car in comparison to the rest of the SUV’s that like Americans Canadians drive.

Vancouver is magnificent city outlined by mountains as- well as oceans on its borders, however when you start to dive out of town, it just gets better and better!

We pitched a tent in a wooded campsite just outside town and jumped in the car to grab beers and munch. 

Finding a bar ‘ Quacking Duck ‘ the bar maid was delighted to have Brits in town and so did one of her eccentric chatty customers of the older persuasion .who proceeded to ask to feel Finns biceps only to casually grab his man tackle instead.

Finn extremely casually considering the spontaneity of the situation  decided she should be corrected in her knowledge of the male anatomy  with the reply ‘ that is not my bicep’

After escaping the clutches of her tender gaze, we legged it!

We were all well in need of some ZZZZ’s and hit the hay. This is when I discovered Finn snores worse than his brother!

30 / 07 /2013

Some of us woke fresh and full of beans and we hit out to a local breakfast bar to eat in true Canadian style  copius amounts of shiny gooey food from piles of Eggs Benny to Pyramids of Waffles with lashings of Auntie Gemima maple syrup.

Before hitting up the our main objective the ‘ 300m Chief ‘ it was concluded that it would be wise to get our eye in with a small multi-pitch known as the ‘Exasisibator’

After a brief conflict with the car and a sign post that lost the fight we hit up the route to get to the base of the pitch requires a walk through some stunning woodland with world class bouldering ( ground climbing ).

The Exsaspirator consists of a 55m almost vertical granite face that has a very obvious route up.

It turned into a great day out with a some supreme bouldering in the afternoon, with Sam completing a 5.13.b = around 8a ( british ) a.k.a very very hard. 

31 / 07 / 13

Climbing Knowledge 

Pitch = The distance at which you can cover due to the length of rope you have, before you have to 

We awoke at 04:30 to jump in the car and excitedly head to the wall..

Through the trees, over logs and up embankments we got to the end of trail we traversed in trail shoes  along a 6 inch ledge 20m up to the foot of the climb.

Talking over the climb it was decided that speed was important cause as soon as the sun hit the black rock as the previous day demonstrated de-hydration hit rapidly hard.

Kited up we started the climb. Sam and Wilki pairing up, me with Finn leading. First three pitches were relatively standard, vertical granite small cracks with a mixture of smearing and holds.

The third was to be my forst traversing pitch.. Finn’S super human skills led him out of site and up the other side of the cliff.Theirs no doubt theirs something rather strange yet satisfying about a huge drop beneath you, and the rope attatched to you disappearing into know where, yet knowing theors a dude relying on you and you on him somewhere attatched to the other end. 

Anyhoos up and away we went their was a brief moment that I found myself in a rather comfortable tree on the side of a flat cliff, which proved perfect for tieing up some loose ends back at hoe and arranging some logistics for the main expedition.

Hitting 1:00 we were making good progress and the sun had not hit us yet, however 5 hours in and another more human problem hit home.. that of stretched bladders.

Now whilst this isn’t usualy a problem it became rather an awkward one as Wilki let loose only to here the irate disgust of some Californinan climbers below!

Wilki made a convenient swift departure on his next pitch, leaving me to stand awkwardly on a belay ledge with the dripping angry climbers from below..

Anyhoos cracking on we ended up tackling some epic lean back crags and the boys absolutely nailed a overhanging crag traverse which is hard to fathom even in the photo.

This particular ledge was a chance to practice a new technique that will prove useful yet not attractive to me in probably many situations in the future, the art of Dumaring.

In a nutshell if theirs a section too nails to climb theirs a couple of devices you can attatch to the rope and yourself and in a sense create your own step ladder. Whilst this would seem the easier option, especially as not practiced it is more like doing a chin up mixed with pushup every foot you cover up the rope.

Absolutely parched with feet destroyed from tight re-strictive shoes we made it to the top and thinking it was the end donned some trail shoes ( trainers ) 

This was to however prove for everyone a more surprising and exciting decent.

As the photos demonstrate.

01 / 06 / 2013

Drive back to Vancouver collect a new filming tool and drive All over trying to find a solar charging solution..

 A great catch-up / stay with some of Finn’s mates.. Massive thanks to Polly and James for letting us crash the pad and feeding us copious amounts of nachos and chicken wings.

02 / 06 /2013 

We dropped off the re-modeled car to the rental dudes,

and caught a 5 hour flight to the northern territory of White Horse a small ex-mining town.. Rocking up early evening we grabbed a place to stay at – The Family Hotel and brokered a deal that we could leave any un-necessary items to be packed for our onward journey to be picked up on our return.

03 / 06 / 2013

A day of relative rest or so we thought, turns out food shopping for 3 weeks in the middle of nowhere with minimal cooking re-sources is actually quite tough, however I assured the boys, as long as we have enough popcorn and gummy bears we’ll be fine. 

04 / 06 / 2013

Our float plane into the Cirque was due to leave on the 5^th / 06 /2013, which would mean we had to make a 7 hour pilgrimage to a lake up north called lake Watson.The only trial being that their was no bus and a taxi would cost 800 pounds.

The backup plan – HITCH. How hard can it be up here the country’s full of the friendlies people on the planet – Canadaians.

After a brief glimmer of hope when a car pulled over only to tell us ‘ im only going 5k down the road’ the highlight being he gave us a cold slice of pizza to share and a piece of cardboard to write a sign.

Seven hours later we were defeated! Burnt and bitten by mosquitos we called it a day and headed back into town for beers and to call the pilot that we’d have to put back the flight by a day so we could catch the Gray hound bus.

As luck would have it theirs been a mammoth forest fire that has ceased all flights in anyway, so noi time lost.

05 / 06 / 2013

Poaking our heads out the tent with slight moans of fuzzy pain we flicked through the photos with giiggles of immature delight as the following 01:00 alternative climb photos were produced . ( It never gets dark here ) 

On to the bus and a 6 hour drive stopping at service stations with less and less people yet a ever increasing mosquito population.

We hopped off the bus into teh night and into a cloud of smiling mosquitos, we pitched the tents in a record time in a kidz playground 10 meters from the bus station, for a night of scratching and slaps.

To be continued.....