What the Phoque?

The welcome sign at Cape Spencer isn't the most inspiring.

Last weekends Claw Your Way To The Top event at Cape Spencer was a blast. About 25 of us enjoyed a very low tide, stellar weather,  fresh Bay of Fundy lobster, great company, and a few drinks.  Oh yeah, and some bouldering.

For me, it tipped off a week of high volume climbing that involved at least 40 moderate to hard routes (or problems) and only one fall.  (More accurately, it was one missed attempt on a V4 that I quickly got next try.)  Many were on-sights or flashes.  None of this is particularly impressive, but my composure and consistency has really taken a huge leap forward this year.  I can hang out indefinitely while studying the rock and deducing upcoming sequences.  I'm not getting very pumped even on routes with that reputation.  I've been able to reverse dynamic moves if my initial path has taken me into a dead end.  When a foothold crumbled, or a big stretch with crawling fingers has resulted in a foot slipping from a crack, I've hung on without panic.  I am climbing very well and I credit my off-season, preseason and in-season training programmes for this.  This makes me proud as a strength and conditioning coach, as well as as a climber. (That's a lot of "as".)  Here's hoping tomorrow is dry enough to get on some really hard stuff at Munson Lake.

Back to Cape Spencer:  Fred remembered a few more names, and I snapped a couple more shots for the guide/map.

Sea Creatures Area

Mike's Solo Wall

S Burdett lost his head trying to work his way up the Dihedral on the Backside of the House. He did manage to send it a couple of attempts later.

At the first Claw Your Way To The Top, in 2010, most people stuck around the base of the trail, so this year I was determined to drag at least some of them a little farther.  As we walked out, a few stopped at Mike's Solo Wall and a few others at the Midway Warm-up Wall.  Those that carried on heard me  describe What The Phoque? V2 as one of the nicest problems at the Cape.  It starts inside a steep cave and follows good holds up and right to the lip, then continues along this sloping feature up and left to the top.  

Then as we climbed the slight rise on the approach, we looked into the cave and saw this:

It's a Dodge truck.  Rather, it's most of a Dodge truck.  This rusted mess was perched about 70 meters above the beach the last time I visited.  Then it had a body, tires, and the seats were visible through the broken windows.  Not anymore, though!  It has since tumbled down the steep grass slope that's split by the occasional short cliff or terrace.  Surely the momentum would have carried it over the cave and onto the rocks below, as the gap is not much larger than the vehicle and only accessible from the water side.  Somehow (waves, obviously) it was tossed and rolled back up hill, over a steep 15 foot tall boulder that sits well above the water line, and into the cave.  The power of the Bay, or any large body of water manipulated by the wind and moon, is difficult to imagine.  Seeing this put it into perspective... amazing!  Though not the original inspiration for the name of the boulder problem, our reaction upon seeing this orange mess was, appropriately, "What the phoque?"

Cape Spencer

Cape Spencer sits at the end of the road just beyond Saint John city limits.  It's a beautiful spot for watching marine birds and mammals, and also a pretty cool spot to go bouldering.  The rock type is difficult to categorize, I'm guessing it formed from some sort of volcanic interaction with the neighbouring sedimentary rocks, as it shares some granular crystalline properties of granite, and shows signs of shale-like layering.  In any case, much of it is solid and featured.

In the intertidal (littoral) zone it is hard and can be smooth, or downright slick.  Higher up, quality and is texture is more variable and can be quite abrasive in some places.

I first visited Cape Spencer in the winter about a dozen years ago, and that summer or the next  a number of us spent the weekend putting up problems.  We named many things and did draw out a topo, but didn't claim any of them as first ascents.  Climbers and non-climbers alike had been going there for so long that surely most of the roughly 40 problems from that weekend had been done previously.  We thought it'd be a handy reference to share.  I have no idea what became of that one.

The next flurry of activity there was in 2007.  A crowd of us spend a couple days establishing some harder lines and Fred and I attempted to re-record everything.  I think he lost that copy, he thinks I did.  Throughout the rest of that summer, Ben Blakney put up a bunch of hard problems, many of them at Ben's Beach.  During the winter of 2009, the cliff above collapsed, burying much of it, but stacking some fresh blocks on top.

With the 2012 edition of Claw Your Way To The Top just around the corner, I think it's a good time to put together some sort of guide.  Much of this is from memory, which is not perfect.  I can only recall a small portion of what's there, and don't have photos for all of it either, so this is just a start for now.  You can see it here, and I'll also create a tab at the top of the My Good Acorn blog.

Cory Goodman on the classic Cheeseburger in Paradise.  Photo: F Zambito

Franca  Z on the left side of the Pirates Boulder overhang, as the tide flows in. 

Tom A at the lip of Sniffing Hole

Cory Goodman on I Know How The Pyramids Were Built