The Crack of Destiny: In COD We Trust

    Up until last week, I was in the voluntary thick of it on another rock climb: The Crack of Destiny, affectionately known as C.O.D, but pronounced like the fish. Not Cee Oh Dee, but COD, as in "Oh my COD, that might be the best finger crack on the planet." And it really might be. I was fortunate enough to spend thirty-or-so days on it over the last three summers before I redpointed. Thirty-odd mornings spent with, if I count right, nine different friends that belayed me, one girlfriend-turned-wife, and two friends that either took photos or shot video. I never regretted hiking up there.

    Up where? The COD is situated on Third Peak of the Stawamus Chief, just to the left of the classic 5.13 trad testpiece, North Star. The hike is a little over an hour to the rim, and then you rappel into a comfortable ledge to access the climbs. The routes get sun around 2:00pm in the summer, which means that an early start is mandatory (Squamish hates two things: early starts, and hiking; while the ledge fills up fast, you're more than likely to find yourself alone up there). It doesn't get more obvious, or aesthetic than the COD, but the route mostly laid dormant until Didier Berthod freed it in 2023, which I wrote more about here. My understanding is that there was dogma around the crack petering out at the top, and thus, not quite being a complete line. I sure am glad Didier found a way to karate-kick back into North Star, because, and I cannot say this enough, the COD is an unbelievable pitch of climbing. For me, it was an experience where climbing felt very logical and inherently inspiring. As long as I had my coffee and my morning poop (and, actually, even when I horribly mistimed my morning bowel schedule and shit myself on the route), I was grateful to be hiking up to the COD, and to slowly piece it together. Climbing is best when it feels like an artistic pursuit, and for me, a lot of this has to do with the line. When the line is beautiful, everything else feels like a privilege and not a chore, and, albeit very slowly for me, eventually falls into place; there was no way I was ever going to spend a nice Saturday summer morning on something other than the COD. It really was like interacting with a piece of art, suspended hundreds of metres above the rainforest. With the COD, the rock is the star.

    The route breaks down as such. It begins up an easy, car-sized flake (The Flake of Destiny, or even the FOD, if you will) shared with North Star. Once you leave the flake, the steepness of the crack is abruptly apparent. After an initial crux there is a long, sustained section of more secure but pumpy finger-crack climbing. The technicality ramps up again before you karate kick back into North Star, another crux. After a rest, you finish on the crux of North Star. There is a finger-lock for everybody on the COD, and an infinite combination of locks to make a sequence. Memory, in fact, is a crux in itself. Memory, execution, and endurance; there's no move sequence harder than V7 on the whole pitch. 

    I knew of the COD since 2018. When I first moved to Squamish, my friends Jordan and Anthony and I saw a photo of North Star (and, to the side, the COD, completely stealing the show), and decided to rappel in, mostly for the adventure of hiking to the top of the chief and rappelling over the lip. It was profoundly out of reach then, and, being unclimbed at the time, was overwhelmingly, mystically difficult in the eyes of the kid that just took a 30-footer on Angel's Crest. Fast forward a few years to 2022, and I belayed Didier a handful of days while he was working the route and I was climbing on North Star. His energy toward the pitch was infectious, but I was busy with another dream line. In 2023, after climbing Cobra, I checked out the COD a bit with my friends Connor and Ben. I shot Connor doing the second ascent, and can clearly picture him bat-hanging from the route, with Mt. Garibaldi in the distance and Squamish well below him. Unfortunately, I was so excited watching Connor climb that I couldn't hold the camera straight, and the footage is nauseating to watch. Ben and I were psyched, and we vowed to return the following year.

    2024 started off as a great summer. Hoai-Nam and I had moved into a room and out of the van. I was working three days per week and milking my increasingly anorexic student loans. Ben and I were psyched on the COD, and we bonded while we walked, sorted out the sequences, and watched countless people climb Angel's Crest below us. Even when I lost a bet and had to snort Gatorade before the hike (that isn't a euphemism for another substance, I literally snorted Gatorade at 7:00am, perhaps my last early-twenties idiot-skin that I needed to shed, or so I hope) and became too sick to rappel in, Ben was willing to keep hanging out. In retrospect, he didn't really have much of a choice, but hey, we ARE friends. Seriously though, climbing with Ben is so much fun. You learn about new genres of music, fine woodworking, and oh my COD do you learn about footwork. He is so excellent at rock climbing, which is a marvel that I got a full season out of him before he sent. I made good progress too, but was never super close to redpointing. I'm glad for my chapter up there with Ben. He was patient, gracious when I cried at the top thinking about my friend David Tan, and just very, very funny. The longer I spend as a hamster on this wheel of rock climbing, the more I realize that these routes are sort of time capsules for our lives. I wasn't sure what I would do the following summer without a solid friend to try with.

Quentin and Jordi

     I slung the COD like I was at a Seattle fish market but had no luck finding a partner. For all but a few of us, things have to line up for routes like the COD to be climbed. Blowing by the mass of good fortune and privilege you need to spend even a part of your life rock climbing, there are a lot of factors that come into play: you need (or at least should try) to balance being a good partner/friend/in-my-case-dog-dad; there can't be another route that captures your focus and inspiration; you need to stay healthy; you need to be motivated; you need to stay in the same place for long enough or be willing to return. And, of course, if you're trying to climb something at your own personal limit, it is going to inherently be very hard. The list could go on. The stars need to align! And they did, for me. While there was nobody to try the COD with, North Star, and Tainted Love, in the other corner over, brought a stream of people that would become friends. A brilliant filmmaker named Jordi saw me climbing on the COD from Angel's Crest, and asked to film me on it. He came up 11 of the 12 weekends last summer and was very gracious. I was really happy to have Jordi up there, and am happier to have a new friend. Amongst the rotating cast of friends, it was a gift to see Jordi every morning in the parking lot. Thank you for all the coffee, Jordi, and for cleaning my cams when my fingers were too mangled to keep climbing.

     It was another great chapter, mostly with my friend Sarah, who was chipping away at Tainted Love. I got quite close last year, climbing past the kick back into North Star and falling on the last boulder a handful of times. Each time, I lacked fitness and (mostly) gumption, and though I looked close to doing the route, never really felt that close. There was no question I was going to return, but I needed to learn how to properly rest in North Star before the last boulder. There is a kneebar and a stem option, but neither felt very restful. In this pursuit, I spent many winter evenings at the Grand Wall Bouldering Coop, climbing Moon Board problems and resting on a jug in between efforts. The next time I make it through the kick, I am not letting go.

Me and the COD and the FOD 

    This spring, I jumped the gun a bit and started going up too early--flabbergasted, I found that the COD was slightly smaller. I was ready to gaslight myself into this being an excuse, and then found that my cams were also not fitting. It was a very bizarre, interesting experience! My best guess is that the crack sort of breathes, it slightly shrinks with cooler overnight temperatures, and expands with warmer ones. I'd be curious to learn more about this! At any rate, the first handful of sessions were fun, but a bit of a wash. June brought heat, and the heat returned the COD to the route that I remembered. My sequence was once again solid. Soon I was linking to near the kick, and then, one day, through the kick. I had made myself a promise that I was going to make it count.  I am here. This is my moment. I am not letting go. What's more, my training had worked, and I was actually recovering well at the rest! I was ready to do the COD. As if, bitch! My heart rate spiked with nerves as I left the rest and the pump came back with vengeance. I fell off, again, in the North Star boulder. I am not above frustration, but it is hard to be frustrated on a route like the COD. Once the sequence was sorted, it was so fun to climb on. I was also just having a lot of fun with Sarah, my friend Aiden (who is very close on North Star), and Hoai-Nam when she wasn't working on the weekends. Like the Cobra, I was aware that this little piece of my life would one day be over, and that I would have mixed feelings about it. I also knew that I was fit enough this year, and that there was just a little bit left to learn.

    My next attempt I once again climbed through the kick and into the rest on North Star. I was trying to think about nothing, but a few things were passing through my mind. A few of my friends had recently recommended Andre Agassi's autobiography, Open. I resonated with his sentiments on, well, giving up, and how in many matches he would notice a point where he gave maybe 90%, maybe even 99%, but not 100%. I don't think athletes want to talk about it, but it is very difficult to tap into a complete and fulsome effort; I almost certainly let go more than I actually fall. It's a lesson I re-learn again and again, trying to be able to tap into a higher level of effort a little bit more consistently. The other thing is so boyish it is embarrassing. I had been texting with my friend Adrian about my experience on the route, and he recommended watching some old videos of Adam Ondra, watching his breathing and focus, and trying to emulate that. I was somewhat skeptical, but did just that and found myself energized and ready to have a gameplan: I needed to stay relaxed longer, through the more moderate climbing after the rest, and then intentionally exaggerate my breathing and effort in the few hard moves of the last crux, when it really mattered.

    I did just that, and soon found myself holding on to the jug that marked the end of the difficulty, screaming. I calmed down, slowed down my heart rate, and mantled the lip of the chief. My time on the COD was over.

    Amidst the vastness of life, I'm grateful to have something like rock climbing: A hobby, and all of the good things that come with them--purpose, friendship, exercise, craftsmanship. Anyway you spin it, it is a selfish pursuit, but I think it is healthy to have a personal world you can step into, so long as you don't get lost in it. Lately, I've been leaning a bit away from the profundity, and into the fact that it is just really damn fun to go climbing with your friends. It is an unbelievable privilege that our local climbing in Squamish is multiple lifetimes worth of world-class lines. I'm grateful for all my mornings on the COD. To Hoai-Nam, Jordi, Ben, Sean, Sarah, Aiden, Tyson, Quentin, Bea, Braden, Tim, Dan, Connor, Ben (two Bens), Eric, Victoria, Tempei, and anyone else I spent time up there with, thank you.