Have You Ever Been This Pumped? Climber Throws Up Mid-Pitch

On July 21, Rhys Bennett went out after work with a few buddies to climb The Great Arch 5.12d in Squamish. Bennett and his friends Nicolas Clarke and Abbi Chapman recently started Granite Threads, a project creating T-shirts that celebrate classic, hand-drawn climbing guidebook art. They decided to hit up the Arch that day to snap some photos for their new venture.

The Great Arch is a Squamish mega-classic. The 35-metre pitch works its way up a sweeping dihedral on pristine granite. The first half is characterized by intense stemming, requiring tension throughout the whole body. The climb then morphs to strenuous underclings and laybacks as the dihedral curves leftward to the chains.

It was Bennett’s first time on the route and he decided to give it an honest go. The physical exertion combined with the stifling summer heat led to Bennett’s pinkpoint attempt not going as expected. As he neared the chains, his stomach called it quits and he began to vomit into the gully below. Clarke, who was hanging out at the chains, captured the whole ordeal on camera.

A warning, the video is nasty, but also it’s kind of hilarious. Squamish now has it’s second gross-out climbing film, the first being the infamous Boogie Til You Poop starring Jason Kruk and Cedar Wright.

To learn more about Bennett’s wild time on The Great Arch, I reached out to him with a few questions, which you can read below.

What was the temperature outside the day you got on The Great Arch?  The afternoon was one of those hot days around 30ºC. The Great Arch has a reputation for being relatively cool on a hot day because it’s north-facing in the South Gully. But the short shady hike was still super sweaty and we knew that hard climbing was going to be a little rough.

Were you feeling normal beforehand?  I was feeling completely normal. This was after working in a comfortable office all day. Not after a night out or a day of sun exposure or anything like that.

Why do you think you threw up?  The route has about an eight-metre section of pure feet and palm stemming. I was stemming as wide as I could with my feet because the stiffness at the limit of my mobility added a little security to the wild moves. Wow – it was a full-body effort every time I moved a foot! My legs and upper body throbbed from the exertion through that section. I think it’s rare to have such a full-body workout while climbing. Usually your forearms or hands pump out before your big muscles can get really worked like that.

I threw up in grade eight from over exertion during the beep test in gym class, so the Great Arch is like the beep test in terms of how sustained it is. I did a little research after and it turns out the body’s physiological response to that level of exertion is to divert blood away from your organs and into your muscles. Eventually your stomach stops digestion and may decide to vacate to avoid complications until it can resume normal operations.

When did you realize things were going south?  I was really slow going through the stemming with no secure-feeling holds. When I got to the laybacking and some good jams, the guys encouraged me to punch it! Within five or six feet of punching it on the tenuous laybacks, a wave of aches and nausea rushed over me and I announced that I thought I was going to puke from effort. The guys laughed and encouraged me even louder. Nic started filming, probably expecting a good whip rather than the great barf!

So are you going to get back on the route?  I’m definitely going to get back. The next day I climbed Mushy Peas [5.11c], which has some wide sections. I cheated the offwidth sections by stemming wide and was wowed by how great the stemming felt compared to the Great Arch. I’ve done relatively little pure hard palm stemming so my stemming technique experienced some noob gains from those eight metres on the Great Arch. It would be so cool to master that section and climb it calmly and I think it will be really helpful for improving my stemming technique.