Homage to the Spider, III 5.9 -

A very good route. We had troubles finding a good trail past the Kain route and ended up doing a lot of side hilling. We did the lower scramble and was a good appraoch aside from a small down climb that was a bit wet. The climb has been described offten so aside from it being quite a pull at times it is rather stright forward and a very worth while trip.

We took a full double rack to #4 and you will be happy takeing them.

Two old men who should have known better (at least according to their families!) set off a bit later than they might have done, took longer to reach the start of the climbing than expected (as per previous description), found the route a bit of a sandbag (5.10a rather than the anticipated 5.8 in Dougherty's guide) and climbing with full packs proved something of an inconvenience. And it started raining halfway up which slowed them down and added a frisson of uncertainty to the ascent. Thus they ran out of light just below the summit. They sat out the night on a rubble ledge, bouts of uncontrollable shivering interspersed with gentle snoring, fighting off the Columbian ground squirrels who were after the food and hoping the occasional light dirzzle would not turn bad (it didn't). They summited at first light - some of the 'scrambling' was more like climbing and, since it was wet, begged a rope - but were pleasantly surprised after all the hassle to find the rap route much more straightfowrward than alluded to in the guide - all the anchors were in place etc. Since some shitty weather was heading in, and the folks back at the ranch were understandably a llittle concerned - I should have mentioned that these geezers forgot to take a cell-phone so couldn;t let anyopne know where they were -so let Parks Canada know we were overdue. A chopper came a-looking, by which time they were well off the hill. The ride back to HQ was welcome. Butts were duly kicked and hair shirts donned back home. As I said, a bit of an epic! But a fabuloujs route on generally good rock except for the approach and exit scrambling.

Bad ass route, really enjoyed it. I don't give to many 5 stars to routes. Did Gmoser long ago, maybe 6 years, it was alright. Going up and over north to south like that with the cool feature at the top and nice sustained corners and cracks...long approach..setting...just wicked really. I love Louis and I love this route, a must I say. We only did 6 pitches of roped climbing. Watch the loose rock. With Joe A.

The approach was pretty long - I think it took 3 hours to the start of the actual climbing.

There is some loose rock, as you would expect. I thought the 6th pitch was especially bad, but otherwise it is certainly tolerable. There were definitely some long runouts which seems to be typical on Rockies limestone. As for gear, we had a #4 and placed it on virtually every pitch. A "standard rack" to 4 inches is sufficient. Bring lots of slings.

We climbed the 10a version and the grades seemed spot on - certainly not a sandbag by any means.

For the descent, we made more rappels than suggested in Doughertys book. I think it was 5 single rappels, then the 10m scramble up to skiers right, then 3 double rappels. Some of the single rappels could have been avoided by some fairly easy downclimbing.

Have fun!

We did the 5.10a variation and it was stiff for the grade. Very nice route. The medieval alley was very cool and loose rock wasn't a problem. All the anchors are good now and you can actualy rappel all the way with one rope. I'm sure some guides put shiny new stations every 25m down. Summit views were spectacular. One of my faves in the Rockies.