The Hunkster's/Youngster's Roof
A summary of the 2nd Ascent of Hunkster's, and First Ascent of Youngster's. Photos by Jake Scharfman.
I can feel the sharp grains of the holds biting down, keeping me on the wall. My heel is sunk on the rail, everything feels passive as I set up for the start of the crux. My mind is still, not trying to think about what to do, but instead allowing my body to execute. I stick the hold on the lip and set my feet up, they pull me under the wall as I pull what must be a lot on the flat 90 ° lip hold, mere texture allowing me to be there. Here, where it seems like I should be trying hard, I find the feeling I’ve come to love about Squamish Bouldering. I feel weightless, my body becoming a part of the stone as I nestle into its cryptic positions. I stay in this place of balance to chalk my hand up before finding the right crystals of the crux wrap hold. My feet dance around the walls, allowing my shoulders to burn for 2 more hand moves, and soon after, I find myself on top of The Hunkster’s Roof.
It must have been on my 2nd summer trip to Squamish in 2021 when I looked at the Hunkster’s roof for the first time. I would’ve been 19 then and had no idea how to use my feet well, let alone on technical granite problems. So, a roof labelled “hard project” in the guidebook seemed worth a look to a strong, arrogant, up-and-comer. Little did I know at the time the roof would require technique I was years away from, and Tim Doyle did the first ascent 6 years before I had gotten there. When I moved to Squamish the next spring, The Hunkster’s Roof remained in my mind as elusive and mysterious as Tim himself. I had brief encounters with both, yet never really got close enough to understand their mysteries.
Over the past 3 years living in Squamish, I’ve had the privilege to get closer to Tim, often through board sessions and friendly banter at the Grand Wall Bouldering Coop. As I spent more time climbing with him, I learned so much about movement and style. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a boulder with Tim, you’ll know what I mean. There’s an element of mastery and calmness to his movements, body tension is everything, and he rarely moves out of control. His style and movement patterns speak to how much time he has spent bouldering in Squamish, navigating a sea of crystals to find holds and getting creative to find the right body positions to execute a sequence. It’s inspiring to watch someone move like that, and as I found out, a necessity for climbing on The Hunkster’s.
In the Spring of 2023, I ran into Tim outside my work a few days after a brief and frustrating Hunkster’s session. We chatted about it, and I tried to get any beta out of him, hoping that something would set me on the right path. Unlike other times, he offered to share a video. Tim doesn’t have a phone, so we returned to his work office and dug up this clip. He opened his laptop, and to my delight, a video file named “The Hunkster’s Roof”.
I had heard rumours from others that despite the lack of Tim’s internet presence, he had footage of some of what he’s climbed. And finally, here I was watching a video I didn’t think existed, seeing a sequence executed that I couldn’t comprehend, and it was done with absolute control, not one error or slip from what I remember. I was blown away and went back to Hunkster’s, only to get shut down again. The boulder in that video and the one in front of me did not seem to be the same. It would take some more growth as a boulderer before they became one in my mind.
I thought about Squamish a lot while climbing/living in Bishop with my trusty 2002 Subaru Outback this winter. The sharp crimps, orange rock, wide open spaces, sagebrush and so much more were a stark contrast to the place I call home. I longed for holds that most would call texture, I missed heel hooking and weird sequences, I wanted to feel weightless in these bizarre positions due to creativity and belief in my mind, I no longer only wanted to crimp, and I wanted to be under the dense canopy of trees. I dreamt of all the things I wanted to try when I got home, and it took a while before I thought about Hunkster’s again. But, the seed was planted and I knew it was worth another round of effort despite having written it off, and never having much fun there. I got back to Squamish as the wet season ended and one of the best spring seasons began. It felt like arriving home and finding the lights left on for you with dinner on the table. And so, I dove into exactly what I was missing in my time south, weird heel hooks, lots of body tension, bigger holds that all face the wrong way.
It didn’t take long for me to start enjoying my time at Hunkster’s, sitting in the afternoon breeze, listening to Pacific Wrens sing, laying on a couch shaped rock blanketed in soft moss, and every 10- 15 minutes pulling onto the roof to try and execute a sequence with perfection. One of those afternoons stretched into night with some very close attempts from the start, I stubbornly kept trying, but came up short. I should’ve left an hour earlier so I could get dinner groceries, but kept giving “one more try” until arriving home at 11 pm with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s I picked up at the drug store. I hadn’t climbed at night in the forest in a while, it takes me being really psyched to do so. Sitting there working my way to the bottom of the pint, I recognized that a psych I hadn’t felt in the boulders here for some time was finally back.
I took 1 rest day before returning, feeling hopeful about my odds after falling at the end of a handful of times. But it was also the hottest day of the year thus far, a scorching 24deg, and my dumbass was so psyched to climb that I clocked out of work at 3 pm instead of waiting until nightfall. It was horrible timing as I spent about 4 hours sliding off the grips, feeling as if it was 2023 again, and I was nowhere close to climbing out of this roof. The disbelief stayed with me until it was time to give my last try of the day (I had forgotten to get dinner groceries again, save on closes at 9pm, and it was currently 8:25pm, and I wanted to eat a real dinner instead of another pint). My skin was thin and pink, my flood light slowly dying, and my arms still lightly pumped from falling on the move into the “V3” exit - “Hulkmania”. Everything made me doubt how possible it would be right now, it just didn’t feel right.
But I ignored it all, sat with my hands on the fan and listened to the whirling white noise as my mind relaxed into the place I found at Hunkster’s. There is no fear there, there are no thoughts, I am simply there and stay there until I fall off the wall, or summit. In this mindset, I feel a power I don’t normally feel when climbing, there is a confidence that cannot be explained, there is calmness that I don’t find elsewhere. I pulled on and executed the movements perfectly, fingertips finding each crystal quickly, legs dancing around the walls as if they had a mind of their own, and then it was over. Laying in the moss on top, I felt that for a moment in the roof I became the Tim I saw climbing in that Hunkster’s video years ago. Sure, I had gotten stronger, but it took becoming a much better Squamish Boulderer to be able to lay where I was. With the Hunkster’s Roof, I can feel growth in my climbing heavily influenced by the complexity of problems here, but more importantly, the people who unlocked their mysteries before me, leaving behind a challenge and pieces of a puzzle that becomes something more than a boulder.
Hunkster’s was so much fun that I returned for a few more sessions to try and climb it from a sit start. This adds 2 moves, but they're fun and shouldery, making the end crux even more of a shoulder burner than before. The hand moves on Hunkster’s were harder being a bit more fatigued, but the real crux came from the feet, which were even harder to place precisely coming from the sit start. On May 18th, I slipped back into that mindset I found within at Hunkster’s, and pulled onto the sit start. I climbed faster than ever, somehow not sacrificing precision while doing so. I don’t think any bit of the ascent could have been done better, which is my favourite way to end things with a project. And so now I get to leave behind a challenge for others, and help close another chapter under this roof, leaving space for others to interpret the story for themselves.
P.S: I decided to give the sit start the cheeky, yet fitting name “The Youngster’s Roof”. I’m a bit unsure about the V15 grade, but having done most of the V14s here now, I feel confident in saying that Youngster’s is a step up in difficulty, and on par with the other V15 I recently opened (more about that next week).
Thanks to Antigrav, La Sportiva, Black Diamond, Rhino Skin Solutions, and 1914 Coffee Co for supporting me.
Nice1 Ethan! Psyched to check these out some day 🙏🏻
Sick man!! rad.