Every story’s got a moral and mine does too
It ain’t nobody’s business whatever you do
All of us got weird notions of time
The Lord only knows that I sure got mine
I’m public enemy number one
All because I wanna have too much fun
Too much fun, that’s news to me
Too much fun, there must be
A whole lotta things that I never done
But I ain’t never had too much
– Too Much Fun (Kirchen/Farlow)
You probably shouldn’t try this at home…
You may recall Bruce from other ramblings of mine. He was the guy I did most of my technical climbing and technical drinking with back in the day. One particular Saturday night as was our want, we were holed up in the American Hotel, which was a real sleazy biker bar in the Skid Row district of Vancouver. We loved this place, because it had so much character, and characters, and often really good music. Many a great adventure was hatched in this place over the years, and this particular night was no exception.
The night began, pretty much as they all did here, ordering two beers apiece, and just shooting the shit. I always downed the first one fast so I could balance the empty glass on its edge on the red terrycloth table cover. (something about simple pleasures and simple minds) A few rounds later and we were talking about climbing, which of course was no surprise, because we were climbers after all. I can’t recall exactly how the subject came up, or who mentioned it first, but that doesn’t really matter in any event. The conversation involved discussing how cool it would be to climb a route a Squamish at night, in the dark. We both agreed that this would be a gnarly thing to do one day. (Gnarly wasn’t common vernacular in those days, so we probably used some other word or phrase like ‘far-out’) Yes we would most definitely get to this one of these days. Another round please. The conversation kept coming back to this topic, and all of a sudden we stopped talking and just sort of looked each other in the eye with that mischievous alcohol fueled look that said…. Why wait, why not right now, tonight? Another round.
Really? Yes really. We grabbed our helmets from the tar bender (there was some house rule that motorbike helmets had to be checked at the bar or left outside on the bikes, lest they be used as weapons in the numerous scuffles that occurred in this fine establishment) and headed out to the bikes. Bruce had his trusty 850 Commando and I was riding a souped-up 250 two-stroke café racer. We fired them up and raced back to the house we were sharing. Probably broke some speed limits, and some blood alcohol limits, along the way, but then again we were young and had a calling.
It took all of about five minutes to throw a rope, rack, and the other gear into Bruce’s’ van (yes a vintage 1960 Volkswagen painted red white and blue). Before long we were barreling up the Squamish highway… or what passes for barreling in a 1960 Volkswagen van. What fun.
Now we may have been a bit irresponsible in all this drinking and motorbikes, and driving ancient Volkswagens up mountain roads and all. But we did at least have the sense to realize that we should probably climb something that we had done before and that we had wired. Without much discussion, good old Banana Peel was the chosen route. We could climb that with our eyes closed, which was just as well as it was going to be close to midnight by the time we pulled into the empty apron parking lot. We did bring head- torches, but surprisingly we didn’t need to use them on the ascent. There was a very low overcast; which of course is not an unusual event in Squamish. This might have been a drag in the daytime, but it turned out to be a real boon at night. All of the lights of the town and especially the port were reflected off of that cloud cover resulting in more than enough light to climb by.
The climbing went off without a hitch (clove or otherwise) and in no time we had climbed the seven pitches to Broadway. A brief note on the actual climb for those who are interested: The first two pitches are not really pitches per se, as they are sort of horizontal in nature, and not really very protectable. We would normally just scamper across these un-roped as we did in this occasion. The climb is rated at 5.7 but the 5.7 bits are only two moves and the majority of the climb clocks in at 5.4 or less. It’s a bit run-out in sections, but as indicated the climbing is mostly very easy. We did don our head-torches for the descent down the forest trail, and for navigating through the large maze of boulders before you reach psyche ledge.
We got back to the van and drove home to Vancouver without incident. We grabbed a few hours of sleep and woke up still a bit giddy from our caper; the best way to celebrate we thought, was to throw the gear in the van and to head back up to Squamish for a day’s climbing, so we did exactly that.
Note: the author wants to make it abundantly clear that neither he nor PGH in any way shape or form endorse driving a vehicle or climbing while under the influence of alcohol or any other mind altering substances, and that this story merely illustrates the acts of highly irresponsible youths.