Here are few words from Will Stanhope on his free ascent of the Tom Egan Memorial Route via The Bird @ Arc’teryx
I first visited the Bugaboos in 2008 with under-the-radar alpine climbing legend Chris Brazeau. Upon arriving at Applebee Dome Campground, I was awestruck by the place: a cirque of mint granite spires poking out of the glacier. The next day, we hiked up to attempt a route called ‘The Power of Lard’, on the right side of the East Face of Snowpatch Spire. On the way over, I spied a singular crack line splitting the most gorgeous diamond shaped chunk of granite I’d ever seen. “What’s THAT???” I remember asking Chris.
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Will Stanhope pitch 2 of the headwall ‘Blood on the Crack’. Photo by Tim Kemple ©
“Tom Egan Memorial Route,” answered Braz. “Daryl Hatten FA from the seventies.” Apparently John Simpson and Daryl Hatten had established the route in 1978. Tom Egan was a friend of theirs who had passed away in a plane crash.
Two years later I was again in the Bugaboos with visiting Brit Hazel Findlay. We climbed the Power of Lard again, and I traversed into the top of that Tom Egan Headwall, armed with a handful of quarter inch bolts to beef out the old belays. Rapping down the wall, I was even more blown away by what I saw. This was truly the wildest, most splitter crack line I’d ever seen. The first 30 feet of crack was too thin to freeclimb, of that I was sure. If there was going to be a way to climb it, there had to be a magic line of face holds coming in either from Sweet Sylvia or The Power of Lard. I vowed to return and attempt the route in earnest.
As I sit typing this now it’s the tail end of summer number 4 trying this route. The last week we made a ground up push on the wall, arriving at the crux face pitch with butterflies in our stomachs. I got very lucky and on my second try I sent the pitch, putting Matt in a most unenviable, uncomfortable position.
For the full article, please visit the Arc’teryx blog The Bird
