Chameleon

Chameleon was Nova Scotia's first and only 5.13 sport route for many years. Sean Cassidy first climbed the route in 1999. The route went unrepeated for 12 years.

Here is what Sean said about the route:

"When did I put it up? ....when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. Ha!ha!

Nov.22/99 was the date. I think Therien belayed me. Good temps.

Almost sent it earlier that year (got through the first two cruxes with a taped split tip), but my finger tape slipped off when I was in the middle of the top slab crux. Blood doesn’t provide good friction, as it turns out.

I bolted it in spring/summer 99 (pretty sure). It took me about 3 frustrating visits to bolt it (at that time we had to rent drills and their batteries totally sucked), which was a major motivator for our work in getting a drill for CNS."

Needing a little change from working my usual projects, I made it a goal to repeat the route. Ben Smith and I worked the route this past Saturday and then went back an both made ascents of the route last night - the first repeats.

Now I am going to move on to a couple of unclimbed sport projects in the Halifax area. Maybe we will find the areas first 5.14....