Sonnie Trotter

Day Ja Vooooo!

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

The last time I was in lovely Quebec, was September, 2005.  My climbing partner Nick Sagar and I attempted to free climb the big beautiful walls of Cap Trinite, north of Quebec City.  We woke up nearly every morning to the sound of rain hammering on our tents and wet snow drowning our efforts.  It got so wet and cold in fact, that along with Mike Landkroon, we broke into the men’s public washroom and rigged the thermostat with a pocket knife, we ran extension cords inside so we could watch movies on the laptop and drink wine with thawed fingers.  T’was a low point in me life.  If we didn’t have to go back up and retrieve our gear, we would have left days before – it was hurricane season on the Atlantic Ocean, and we were in the heavy wash cycle.  When I got home, I swore to myself the next road trip I took would be to Utah, or Nevada, or Arizona.  “Fuck this suffering shit”, I thought, I live in Squamish, I get enough H2O, who needs to travel across the country for more?

How soon we forget?

I’m back now, trying to climb at Val David with my buddy Pee Wee Ouellet.  I had a pipe dream that I could climb a route that is notorious for being wet,  La Zebree, 5.14a, but alas, it is (and was) a vertical river hanging over us.  Yesterday it started raining again, Hurricane Nicole is on the loose, and there is no sight of her letting up.  At all.

Andrew Burr earlier in the day, St.Catherines street if my memory serves me correct.

A smoke shop, selling more than just fine cigars.  We have some friends in the climbing world who might actually put this sort of contraption to good use:)

Evening is upon us, we haven’t had dinner, only coffee.  I’m dancing in my chair.  Loosing my marbles.  Thinking about beer, but too dehydrated to move.  Rain was sideways, roads were rivers, and our new project is somewhere out there getting pissed on.  I don’t ask for much, (okay I do) but today I begged for sun, and wind, and a timeshare in Flagstaff.

Cap Trinite, the cliff we failed to climb back in the day.  We made it all the way to just below those orange roofs before we pulled the plug.  Landkroon Photo.

Drive safely y’all.  Hmmmm, I wonder if Pee Wee has a kayak?

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Rain! Argh!

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

I love the rain, I do, I swear.  I love the sun more of course,  I rarely bitch about too many sunny days in a row, who would?  It’s no wonder California has 39 million, 961 thousand and 664 legal citizens,  while the entire country of Canada is struggling to hit 34 million.  But that’s irrelevant right now, what is relevant, is the fact that it’s SLASHING rain here in Montreal at this very minute.  So I brew tea, stretch, drink coffee, make friends on facebook, think about playing chess but never do, write and watch climbing movies.  This reminds me of Scotland.  ha ha ha.  But I am appreciative of Pee Wee and his wonderful girlfriend Nadine for their hospitality, their home is warm, dry and beautiful, much better than sitting in a wet tent somewhere in the dark.

Okay, to re-cap, we are here to climb at Val David.  I haven’t climbed Quebec rock since about 2001 when I came here to boulder, which was very fun.  The rock is great, the town is quaint, but I didn’t realize at the time, that there was such an amazing collection of hard trad routes here as well.  Sort of looks like Bohuslän in Sweden.  The prize line is called La Zebree, but it has a reputation of gushing water.  It seems like every drop of moisture from the area joins forces and deposits itself out of the rock through this incredible splitter crack.  Thus creating the stripes.  My heart sank when I saw that it was dripping wet.   It’s like having the keys to a sexy new ferrari in your hand, a wide open road, and no gas.  Almost painful.  So, we tried an open project instead, a desperate roof that Pee Wee left behind four years ago.  I got on it once, figured out all the moves, and realized it would go.  Hard, but very possible.  Then Pee Wee tried it, did nearly the same thing, but soon large drops of water met him at the lip.  Our day was done.

Hopefully, we can go back, but after today’s downpour, I’m not so sure about our chances.  I have my fingers tightly crossed.  I’ll tape them together that way tonight and sleep on it.  Please please please.  I wanna climb some Quebec rock.   Until then, I’ll leave you with some point and shoot pictures I took form the Nor’Easter event this weekend,  don’t get excited, I didn’t pull out my Canon that often, but here’s what I got.

Joe Kinder can climb 5.14, and paint a mural like it’s nobody’s business.

Ronnie Jenkins discovers my new Nano 9.2 (AKA: THE EXTENSION CORD) and falls in love.

A terrible photograph of Mega classic ‘Predator’, 5.13b.    It’s cool, because you have to climb a pitch to get to it, making it airy from the get go.

Ronnie doing “what not to do” when un-coiling the cord.  ha ha ha.  What’s 15 minutes in the grand scheme of things?

This is me clipping the chains at the end.  I blew the warm up onsight at the lip when my foot slipped, DOH!  What will 8a.com think of me?

The Black Diamond boys do not fuck around.  Russ Clune and crew making new friends at the Booth with grilled Moose Meat and beer.

Unfortunately, I think we drank all the Beer, and so lucky for me and Adam Chamberlain, the tent was open for business.

One of many KICK ASS bands, rocking hard into the night.  Thank you Pete, Jason and Eastern Mountain Sports.

Pee Wee Oullette, crushing Dark Star 5.13c – he fell, but he still crushed it.  And lets take a close look at those five ten shoes…

Ooooooo so sexy.  For more info on these new downturned baby’s, keep checking the fiveten website.  Seriously, these shoes have changed my climbing style over night.  I got a bit more lucky here, I managed a very scrappy 2 try ascent of Dark Star, and it’s technical extension which I forgot the name of, 5.13d,  both of which were of high grade free range organic quality.  VERY recommended.  Rumney is full on KICK ASS!  Dave Graham wasn’t shitting us when he raved about it back in tha day.  Too bad he already did everything,  he still loves it.

PEACE.

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Can’t believe it’s nearly Oct?

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

What happened to Sept?  I’m here now in Portland, Maine after a sluggish day of flying across the country.  Great city, very charming.  I just pulled back a sweet pint of IPA from some micro brewery and couldn’t stop thinking about Lobster for some reason, ha ha, ha.  I’m sorry for my lack of activity here, it’s been a busy month.  I did however manage to pull off a new route recently, something I’ve been dabbling with for a while.  It’s certainly not the hardest thing I’ve ever climbed, but I am especially proud of this line, it’s absolutely brilliant.  If I do say so myself.  I hope to share lots more about this soon, and a recap of this coming weekend at the Nor’Easter event and the climbing we get up to while being here, Rumney might happen, North Conway, then up to Val David for some poutine and rain.  Wish us luck.  Until then I’ll leave you with a high res picture of the wall we climbed.  It’s such terrific granite, and the climb is of the highest quality.  What makes this golden 4 pitch line unique, is that it traverses for nearly 200 feet.  Look closely, you’ll see a STRIKING seam that runs from right to left,  that’s the line, er well,  some of it anyway.

It’s called the Intrepid Traverse,  and goes at a reasonable and alluring grade of 5.13b/c.  Intrepid means : invulnerable to fear or intimidation and although nothing about this climb is very scary, it’s still a traverse and leaves you hanging out over the edge of the world.  Click to enlarge.  For those who can,  trust me, this thing is a mega classic.  Like MEGA MEGA.

Okay, it’s fuggin late, enjoy the snaps, I gotta go, 7 am wake-up call and a tour of the Sterling Rope Factory with Chris Sharma, Daila Ojeda and Joey Kinder tomorrow.  Should be fun.  I hope they like beer as much as I do, we’re in MAINE after all.

S.

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