Mt. Thom & Squamish Rock Climbing - Sept. 24th and 25th 2022

Mount Thom - September 24th 2022 Originally we had planned to go to Squamish today but when I woke up later than usual I realized it made more sense to go the next day as we had to go to my grandparents in New West for dinner and it would save us some driving. With that in mind we still wanted to get out since it was nice but not for anything too big. After hemming and hawing for a while I mentioned Mount Thom in Chilliwack which is a super easy hike, since I hadn't done it before and it wasn't too far. We left the house pretty late probably around 11:30 and drove over by 12:15. You can basically drive to the top but we chose a longer route about halfway up so we could at least get some excersize. It was a beautiful day and the trail is very well maintained and a gradual uphill. We saw tons of other people and tons of dogs. I would compare this mountain to McKee Peak in Abbotsford in terms of difficulty, popularity etc. It took about an hour to reach the top. Its a broad flat top but heavily vegetated. There is a bunch of trails at the top that takes you around the summit plateau so we followed those to a few viewpoints and had some water. At the very tippy top there were two older gentlemen with what appeared to be some sort of radio equipment. We asked them what they were doing and one of them said something about summit radios but I can't quite remember exactly what. We headed down and stopped at another viewpoint on the way which had absolutely no views. The descent was uneventful and we made it down in around 2 hours roundtrip. On the way home we stopped at Costco for some food and then recycling. The rest of the day we relaxed and I went to the climbing gym. Squamish - September 25th 2022 Waking up late again we hit the road around 9:15. We drove straight to Squamish after some timmies and made it before 11. First stop was at Climb On where I picked up my rope and a nut tool. Saw lots of cool stuff there and I would definitely like to visit it again and look at all the specialized clothes. Next we headed to the Smoke Bluffs for our first time climbing in Squamish ever, woot! We hopped on some easy short bolted sport routes at the Parking Lot Wall for the first two hours. It was very hot with the sun beaming down on us. I think we did a 5.7->5.8 (Coen lead)->5.8->5.10a->5.7 (Coen lead) but they were all super short, like 3 bolts which is why they went so quick. At this point it was ~1:30 and Coen and I headed up to Burgers and Fries and Sam took Jebby for a walk and to get more water. We were planning on setting up a toprope and worried it would be busy but when we got there only one other party of two was in front of us. I scrambled up to the top in my crocs despite the warnings from one of the climbers that it would be difficult and set up the top rope on a long easy looking face. We didn't know exactly what climb it was because I was too lazy to look in depth at the topo on my phone but eventually we learned we were on a 5.7 (Wise Crack). I took my time to do things right (safe) and rappeled down and by that point Sam and Jebby arrived. Coen went first and had no problems, Sam next and me last. At this point we didn't have much time and so we just decided to do another lap on it because it was fun anyways. We did so and headed back to my grandparents for dinner and then home. Oh and we saw an old guy free solo a 5.4 which was fun.... Good (easy) first day climbing in Squamish.