Takakkaw Falls

Probably the wackiest rock climb we've ever done. The route has you climbing within metres of raging waterfall and ends with a short, wet, and dark cave pitch that tops out at the very crest of the falls.

We met Brian, Shannon, Deanna and Ross at the Tak Falls campground on Friday night. Brian was on his way to Yellowknife and this was our first chance to meet his lovely partner Shannon. The next morning we made the short hike up to the base of the climb.



The local goat populace gave us some bemused looks and the babies elicited much "oohing" and "aahing" from us in return.



Brian had climbed the route once before so we made good time and linked pitches 1-2 and 3-4.



At one point Ross tried to put in a new direttisima but we convinced him that this was an Unwise Choice and he lowered back down to the belay one camming device lighter.

Thankfully the wind was in our favour and the rock stayed dry but the falls constantly reminded us of its presence with it's thunderous background noise.



I had expected that the cave pitch would be much like other "cave pitches" that we'd climbed through before; a short grunt through a tight squeeze and voilà we'd be on top. I hadn't quite grasped just how cave-like the cave pitch actually would be. The start seems innocent enough.



Soon I found myself forced onto hands and knees in a rapidly constricting, wet, and very dark tunnel. My headlamp flickered a few times just to remind me how long ago it had been since I'd replaced the batteries.



The roof got lower and lower until the only way to move forward was to crawl on our bellies like worms with the boom of the falls vibrating through the rocks. Finally after what seemed like ages, although it was probably no more than 10 minutes, we popped out into the daylight at the top of the falls.



How cool is that? Not the cleanest pitch of rock climbing it must be said.



There is actually one more pitch of climbing above this point but given the size of our group and the darkening clouds we reversed our way back through the cave to begin the rappel gong-show. In fact it did start to rain and thunder shortly after we hit the ground.

Overall the climb is rated at 5.7 but really there's only one short section at this grade and that is well protected with bolts. In fact there are bolts all over the place with well established belay anchors. It's a great day of almost-alpine climbing in a fine setting.