The Dune route at Buffalo Crag is no longer climbable

I climbed with a friend at Buffalo Crag on Saturday Aug. 7, 2010. When my friend was trad leading on the Dune route, she encountered a hornet nest in the upper half of the route. Stung by hornets, she fell about 10 feet and stopped about 20 feet above the ground. Her shoulder was dislocated and she was evacuated.

At the begining of the climb, she mentioned that she would not go up the route the way I did last time (April 18th -- I just found out from my climb log). I looked up and saw the big roof near the top of the climb and remembered that I didn't attempt to surmount that roof (5.9+), and instead traversed left to exit. This time, she was going to follow the route (5.8) as described in the guide book, climbing left way before reaching that roof. We didn't see anything unusual on this route (see picture "General view".)
General View of Dune
I noticed the nest only hours after she was evacuated, when I was about to climb up toprope to retrieve her trad gear. The nest camouflaged so well: it had the same clolour of the rock! See picture "Zoom-in View". Zoom-in View of Nest

I had waited for hours for another friend Alex to bring me thick clothes and mosquito head net. But, in a hurry, he had placed the clothes on the roof of his van and forgot to put them into the van as he drove away -- losing the clothes, and he had also forgotten the net. So, I used a black rope tarp to partially cover my head and neck (see picture "Hood"). "May the force be with you," I uttered and started climbing up.
Hood
The last pro I needed to retrieve was a "green cam" (told by my climbing friend) that was placed in a narrow horizontal pocket one to two feet right underneath the nest! I stood on a small ledge right of the nest, slowly and quietly reached my left hand over to grab the stem of the cam and to pull the trigger to release the cam. It refused to come out. As I giggled the cam without extending my head close to it to look at it, a couple of hornets suddenly appeared and flew to my left hand. I instantly withdrew my left hand to under my hood and leaned to my right to hold still. The hornets circled arouned the nest a few times, then entered the nest through its opening at the bottom tip. But one hornet stayed at the opening, sticking out its head and looking at me, monitoring my movement.

Looking at this hornet, I recalled a similar standoff situation with an elk in the Whistler Campground in Jasper last month. It was dusk. Returning from a public shower building, I noticed a herd of about a dozen elks scattered around several camp sites grazing leisurely. Campers looked on silently, some with cameras on hand. I marveled at how well animals were protected and respected in this park. They had grown to be so accustomed to humans that they had moved into our space.

To put away my food and toothpaste and anything that smell attemptively to bears to my food storage locker, I needed to cross a pass in the middle of the herd. I waited for the herd to move on and way from the path. They were oblivious to my expectation. I wanted to go to bed as early as possible as I had to wake up early the next morning for climbing. I decided to cross the path.

"Since you guys have invaded our human's space here," I thought, "You guys must be okay for our co-existence on the path." I liked the idea of co-existence at the camp better than they taking over the camp and immobilized us humans. As I slowly moved forward towards them, I thought that they would be startled by my approach and ran away. They didn't.

I stepped a little closer to an elk that was grazing right beside the path, hoping it would move away a little, so I wouldn't have to walk pass right beside her. She lifted up her head and looked at me. She looked like a young elk who had grown passed the teenage phase and had not reached the parenting stage. I looked into her eyes and sensed that she was sizing me up. She was much taller and bigger than me. I stood my ground, hoping that she would go back to grazing or walk way. But she moved one step close to me, locking her eyes on me. Pause. Then another step. We were so close that she could lift up her front leg to kick me and send me into the air in an instant. I didn't want to turn back and run, lest that she would chase me. I stepped back slowly. One step. Another step. I noticed a cluster of 2 or 3 trees near my right. As she moved one more step twards me, I began to step back and sideways to the trees. She steped forward again, forcing me to move my body behind the tree trunks. At this point, I had completely surrendered to the contest. She seemed to see this, moved her head left and right while looking at me, then walked a few steps sideways, lowered her head to graze on grass, ocassionally turning her head to look at me as she drifted further away from me. Suddenly, I came to notice that most of the adult elks in the herd looked at me intermittently while they grazed, especially the mother with a few littles ones on an open area that was about 15 metres away from me. Their looking was very subtle. Had I not had this close encounter with that young elk, I wouldn't have noticed. I would have just seen them grazing and stopping for a second once in a while. Now I saw that they were intelligent, yet non-violent species. They knew how to size up me, force me to surrender, and then collectively monitor my behaviour. I felt that I was dealing with a group of non-violent people!

With my newly gained knowledge and respect of these elks, I realized that I had made a mistake to try to force that young elk out of my way. I was aggressive to her and she turned that aggressiveness back to me. If I truly wanted to have a co-existence relationship with them, I should have just walked my way without forcing them away. I stood there, peacefully, looked around without staring at any elk. I relaxed my shoulders and breaths. The mother elk who was looking at me frequently finally turned her head away from me for a long time to graze on the grass. I walked along the path towards her directions without looking at her, at an even pace, with no hesitation or rushing, thinking that I was just minding my own business. I turned left to the storage locker area just about 5 metres before the mother elk. After locking my stuff, I walked back along the same path, through the herd, to my tent. Through the corner of my eyes, I saw the elks were grazing as if they had not noticed my appearance and movement. But I knew they were crystal clear of my movements and intention. They knew that I was just walking my path, minding my own business with no intention to interfere with theirs. They had let me be. I felt I had truely lived a co-existence experience with this herd of elks.

Now looking at the eyes of the hornet that were blinking at and studying me, I felt the intelligence of the hornet. I relaxed my shoulders and my breaths and entered a peaceful stillness to let her know that I wasn't going to do any harm to her nest. She withdrew her head inside, then moments later, sticked out to look at me again. I was still motionless. She repeated such checking a few more times, then, didn't appear for a long time. I slowly moved my head close to the cam and I saw the opening of the pocket was uneven, like an old man's open mouth with crooked teeth. I patiently shifted the cam lopes, ware that my helmet must be really close to the entrance of the hornet nest. Amazingly, not a single wasp came out. Finally, out came the cam lopes. I immediately fell back to put my weight onto the rope while holding the cam in my left hand. Falling away from the cliff, I said to Alex, "Lowering."

After I landed, Alex suggested that we could rappel down from the top and threw a big rock at the nest to knock it down. I had initially asked him to bring a "hornet spray" - a term I heard from a climber who had helped out with the evacuation, so that I could destroy the nest and no other climbers would be hurt on this climb. But Alex never heard such term and didn't think such thing existed and therefore didn't bring one. "That's not a good idea," I replied, "When your'e rappeling, you can't move up to escape." "Yeah, you can't come down either, because the nest will be on the ground," said Alex. "Let's leave it," I concluded.

Let's leave the hornet nest where it is.

On my way up that route, I also noticed a bowl-shaped bird nest on a tiny ledge and there was a small egg in the nest!. The egg seemed to have a small hole on it.

There are so many routes that we can climb. Let's just leave one route out for the wasps and birds. A climber there said that a study had reported that without bees and wasps, we humans could survive only 4 years.