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For the Tick-List: Les Grands Galets 5.12d at Cap Trinité, Quebec

The eight-pitch free climb has sustained pitches and powerful crack cruxes

Cap Trinité is one of Eastern Canada’s most classic big walls. Located above the Saguenay River, Quebec, it has solid granite with splitters and big features. The oragne rock can be a little flakey, but overall the quality is world-class.

Routes range from 150 metres to 300 metres, with most route having hard some hard 5.12 climbing. There’s a lot of aid pitches and a portaledge is useful on a few routes.

Les Grands Galets is an eight-pitch 5.12d, which was first climbed by Léopold Nadeau and Claude Bérubé in October 1974 and first freed by Jean-François Beaulieu and Jean-Pierre Ouellet in September 1999.

Top Canadian trad climber Jerome St-Michel, said, “We took a seven days trip to climb the route and freed the whole route over five days, spending three nights on the wall. This is truly a masterpiece of hard trad climbing.”

Les Grands Galets is the must-try hard route on Cap Trinité. Every pitch would be a classic route at a crag. The crack sections are burly and the face climbing follows a nice natural line.

You can rappel the route with one 60-metre rope. For gear, bring doubles micro-cams to three inches, triples of 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 1, offset cams and micro to medium (regular and offset) nuts.

A few years ago, Em Pellerin, Gasper Pintar and Patrick Brouillard climbed Les Grands Galets 5.12d on Cap Trinité, Quebec. Watch a video below where a cam rips when Pellerin takes a whipper.

Les Grands Galets is one of Canada’s best multi-pitch granite 5.12s, and one for the tick-list in 2021.

Les Grands Galets 5.12d, 8 pitches

Les Grands Galets on Cap Trinité  Photo Jerome St-Michel

Pitch one: Up a flake to a groove and a ledge with a tree (5.8R 40m)
Pitch two: Up a stem corner thru two “pods” into pin scars and hard stemming. Through a roof to the crux traverse and downclimb to anchor (5.12d 35m)
Pitch three: Up the hand crack to a good ledge under a roof (5.10a 30m)
Pitch four: Climb easy but runout terrain to reach a flake. Head left on face hols to another layback flake and a hanging belay (5.12a 30m)
Pitch five: Tight hands tapers to flaring fingers. An endurance pitch (5.11d/12a 30m)
Pitch six: Up the crack to big flakes and good jams. A crux up the face to bolts to a bury roof crack (5.12c 30m)
Pitch seven: Up the blocks to a corner and a traverse crux under a roof. Past the roof into a corner and hanging belay (5.12b 30m)
Pitch eight: Layback corner with small gear to easier ground. Head to a corner and to the top (5.12a 30m)

Pellerin Whipper

For the Tick-List

Crime of the Century 5.11c in Squamish
Gooseberry 5.8 in Banff
Pennylane 5.9 in Squamish
Exasperator 5.10c in Squamish
Sunshine Crack in the Bugaboos
Five Val-David routes in Quebec
Northeast Face of Ha Ling in Canmore
Slab Alley in Squamish 
The Colossus and Titon Crack in Ontario
Bottom Line 5.12 in Skaha

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