King's Chimney - Mount Yamnuska

King’s Chimney on Mount Yamnuska – September 16, 2007

Route height:                 260 m
Elevation gain:             900 m
Ascent time:                  8:00
Descent time:                1:20

Climbing with Mark.

I’ve always considered our 2003 ascent of Wasootch Tower to be our first trad climb. However, after completing King’s Chimney on Mount Yamnuska, I may have to reconsider that milestone. Both routes share a similar climbing grade (5.5 for Wasootch and 5.6 for King’s Chimney), but that’s where the similarity ends. The overall experience of the two routes is like night and day and the 60 m route up poor Wasootch Tower seems almost trivial when compared to 260 m up King’s Chimney. Nevertheless, Wasootch Tower remains as an enjoyable and relatively stress-free climb that I would happily repeat anytime. Back to King’s Chimney…

Actually, the route we intended to do was Easy Street, described as the easiest route on Yamnuska and the best introductory climb to the mountain. This would be our first attempt of a route on Yamnuska and the easiest one sounded good to us. We arrived at Windy Slabs, roped up and started up the 5.5 section. Immediately I was struck by the difficulty of the climbing in comparison to the 5.5 climbing on Wasootch. It was steeper, far more exposed and where the heck were all the jug-holds I was expecting?! Only a couple of metres up, I backed down in fear we were on the wrong section on the route. After re-reading the description and searching around, we determined that this was in fact the start of Windy Slabs (which is the way to get to Easy Street) and I tried again. Thankfully a couple of climbers came by in short order and confirmed that we were on the correct route.

Although I had done Wasootch Tower in rock shoes, Mark had done the entire ascent in approach shoes and had no problems climbing the terrain. Therefore we decided to use the same strategy: I would do the Easy Street ascent in rock shoes and Mark would wear his approach shoes. However, as I made my way slowly up the first pitch, I thought to myself that there was no way I could climb this terrain in approach shoes and wondered if Mark was going to have difficulties. After what seemed like an eternity of exposed, steep climbing (in actual fact it was a mere 25 metres and probably very easy by climber’s standards), I reached the first bolted belay station and happily clipped in.

I hoped I was going to be wrong about the approach shoes, but unfortunately Mark almost immediately informed me that he was having difficulties. The approach shoes were simply too bulky for the tiny foot ledges that the first pitch was comprised of. Mark stopped about halfway up the pitch and we proceeded to have a ten minute debate on what to do. Obviously in approach shoes Mark was not going to be able to lead any of the pitches of the climb and even this first pitch was a far more serious endeavour than anything we encountered a week earlier and fours years ago on Wasootch Tower. We decided to have Mark come up to the first belay station and we would make the decision from there.

He arrived at the bolts and another debate ensued. Finally we agreed to check out the next pitch and then bail if it proved to be as troublesome as the first pitch. Fortunately, it wasn’t troublesome at all and felt more like difficult scrambling than climbing. Once again the pitch terminated with two shiny new bolted rings – always a welcome sight!

At this point, we were at the bottom of King’s Chimney. The route described a ledge a short ways up the Chimney that led to Easy Street. I couldn’t find the ledge, but continuing right up the Chimney looked like a very pleasant alternative and that’s what we did. The Chimney was great – exposed in places without being nail-biting, solid rock with good holds, and numerous opportunities to stem the sides of the Chimney. Mark climbed the second, third, and fourth pitches with relative ease in his approach shoes.

At the top of King’s Chimney we ran into the climbers who had helped us earlier. They were doing a pretty intense 5.10 route right up the face. Again, they were more than helpful and directed us the right direction towards the BBQ Ledge. This involved a very exposed traverse across a narrow ledge. Pitons lined the route, however, providing some semblance of security. The crux of the pitch was having to step down onto a down-sloping ledge with a horrendous drop below. My rock shoes gripped the rock well, but I knew immediately that this was going to be an issue for Mark. A slip would result in a huge pendulum fall and swing across the face. When he did get to the step down, he left a quickdraw around a piton close-by to avoid a pendulum fall and then he completed the traverse. I was then able to go back to retrieve the quickdraw as my shoes felt pretty solid on the ledge.

The BBQ Ledge is essentially the top of climb for a number of routes, including Easy Street and King’s Chimney. From there it is easy to escape around the north side of the mountain to the scramble route. That, or another 55 metres of climbing to a higher point on the ridge. We were both fairly pumped about having completed the King’s Chimney route, especially when we were considering bailing within the first ten minutes. The additional 55 metres looked straightforward and so we went up that route. The route was easy to follow, but actually had some of the more difficult moves of the entire day. Near the top I was a little distressed to run into a nut and a sling, which seemed to indicate that parties had bailed here. That was not the case and the top of the route was only a few metres away. Mark came up and we celebrated the climb with yet another boring cheese sandwich. Completing this route felt really, really good.

Neither of us had any desire to continue on to the summit Yamnuska and just used the east west side descent route. A magnificent day on a terrific route.