Editors note: To avoid any confusion, Ethan was close to sending Sharma's Dream Catcher, but due to poor weather, he wasn't able to redpoint it.

Squamish, British Columbia

I just realized I'm drinking a beer from my first ever legally purchased six-pack. I choose a wheat beer, a New Belgium brew by the name of Sunshine to mark this occasion. Do you remember what you bought? I bet not. Half of you are probably under the age of 21, anyway... so, oh well. 

Speaking of sunshine, I soaked up a little this morning in the old Pacific, catchin’ some glassy little peelers down at the ‘mar, bra. Chaka. It was therapeutic to say the least. To get in the nice, not so warm water (but still much warmer compared to winter and early spring dawn patrol sessions), after waking up at 5:30 a.m. and making the 15-minute drive to Pacifica. I was glad to see my friend Karl, who just red pointed his first 5.13c, Taste the Pain, out at Donner Summit, already in the line-up, grin on his face.

“Dude, It was so much better the last 45 minutes before you got here, its totally starting to die. ... ” Karl is in the water at 5:30 a.m., every day. What a trooper! 

I just got back from a 10-day (supposed to be 2-week) trip to Squamish, British Columbia, and boy am I wiped out. I made the 18-hour drive with friends from the bay area, Mark “Big-Meal” Heal and Ben “The Claw/Beastman” Eastman. My goal for the trip was to do the spectacular looking sport route established by none other than the "Sharma-nator," Dream Catcher, which checks in around 5.14c/d. The other guys basically just wanted to boulder and maybe get on a rope if inspired to do so, and in Big Meal’s case, think, breathe, obsess over, talk about and live for nothing but bouldering, boulder problems, and their grades. The kid is psyched, to say the least, to the point that is almost annoying, (Sorry, Mark!). But it’s also motivating, I guess. 

By looking at the weather report, I could tell it was going to rain at least a few days, but I thought, what the hell: I’ll go anyway. My reasoning was, the route is overhanging enough that even if it's raining I will still be able to work out the moves and get it dialed. And if I'm close, I can send when it stops raining. Well, I was just a bit mistaken.

When we finally did arrive in Squamish after driving all day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., we realized how wet it really was: saturated. The next day we walked around the soaked forest in the rain, Mark reviewing all the problems on his tick list, until we came to Dream Catcher. It was sopping wet. Small waterfalls were oozing from the pin-scared crack, one large waterfall streaking straight down the overhang from the top of the boulder — straight onto the middle of the climb. Two sections of the route were still dryish looking — the slab and the beginning of the rail traverse up to the juggy part, and the last crux at the corner at the top of the overhang.