John’s first day at the Gunks

Atop the Madame G's buttress waiting to rappel

John’s taken the belay class at the gym and climbed there twice so it was time to let him have a taste of real rock.  The way he took to the crack at the gym–executing a backstep foot jam move I’ve never actually seen before–suggested he’d be a natural, and his total lack of regard for his own body points to a future career as an off-width climber.  

He climbed Northern Pillar in style and got most of the way up Shockley’s Ceiling.  Thankfully Brien and Dave were at the belay with him when it turned out he couldn’t finish the roof.  They graciously did a partner swap and John got to finish the day on Shockley’s Without.  Since I’ve never done Shockley’s Without, he’s now one up on me.   

Add to that a couple of hairy rappels (imagine doing Madame G’s as your first ever rappel) and he had full value for the day.  On the way home he was ruminating about how he could have made it over the roof if he’d only done this or that different and I thought: a climber is born.  He’s already got a climber’s conscience too–worrying that people will see the photos and assume he made it over the roof.  I have a feeling it won’t be long before he’s making me look bad but, more importantly, he’s already making me feel good.  It’s fun to have fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm for a long time favorite place.  

On Northern Pillar

One heck of a first rappel

Approaching the first Shockley's belay

At the first Shockley's belay.

Launching into the roof. Note the nice foot jam.

All squashed up and nowhere to go.

Dangling in space - a big surprise on your first day out.

September 4, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

Farley with the folks

Went to Farley with Dan and Christine and Eric and Jack. I’d tell you what we climbed but I don’t really know. Much of it I’d done before but there was a 5.12 roof to the left of a 5.8 which I hadn’t (for obvious reasons). The approach to the 5.12 roof was supposed to be 5.10 but I found it harder than that, or I’m just out of practice. The 5.12 roof itself wasn’t going to go but the first bolt was very clippable and the falls were all clean from there so I took a couple. Christine was the only one to get up it clean. Eric took the biggest ride.  The batteries in the camera died while I was taking the nine millionth photo of one of us on that route, so all the photos are of that route, but we did climb other things.

August 14, 2010   Posted in: Farley Ledge MA  No Comments

Climbing with the Colorado folks

High E, 5.6 (Dawn & Steven)
Bonnie’s Roof, 5.8 (P1: Tom, P2: Shelly)
Pink Laurel, 5.9 (Dawn)
Classic, 5.7 (Tom)
Jackie, 5.5 (Steven)

August 12, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

Thursday with Todd

Birdie Party, 5.8 (P1 & 2: Dawn)
Interstice, 5.10 (TR)
MF Direct, 5.10 (Todd)
Mother’s Day Party, 5.10 (TR)

July 15, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

Devil’s Tower and some quick Colorado climbs

Saturday at Devil’s Tower
New Wave (P1: Steven, P2: Dawn)
Everlasting P1 (Dawn)
Mystic and the Mulchers (Dawn)

Sunday at Devil’s Tower
Soler (P1: Dawn, P2: Steven)
El Cracko Diablo (P1: Dawn, P2: Steven)

Tuesday at Devil’s Tower
Durrance (Approach pitch: Steven, Leaning column/Durrance crack: Dawn, Cussing Crack/Flake Crack: Steven, Chockstone Crack: Steven, Bailey Direct: Dawn)

Wednesday at Devil’s Tower
Broken Tree (P1: Dawn, P2: Steven)
Assembly Line (Dawn)
McCarthy North Face P1 (Dawn)

Friday at El Dorado Canyon
Bastille Crack (P1/2: Dawn, P3/4: Mark, P5: Steven)

Saturday at Boulder Canyon
Owl (P1: Mark, P2 5.9+ variation: Steven)
Empor (P1/2: Dawn)

July 9, 2010   Posted in: Boulder Canyon, Devil's Tower, El Dorado Canyon  No Comments

A short diversion

Romy and I took a little side trip to Rumney on lovely Spring day. I’ll be heading out shortly for Devil’s Tower so a day of easy bolt clipping was a nice diversion.

Egg McMeadows, 10a
Holderness Arete, 10b
Med Dose Madness, 10b
Bonehead Roof, 10c
Hippos on Parade, 8+
Lies & Propaganda, 5.9
Milktoast, 10d
The Terrace, 5.8

May 19, 2010   Posted in: Rumney  No Comments

Coasting

I took advantage of being with someone who is easy to please yesterday by doing a little coasting – no hard, scary lead for me.  Mike got his in to start the day and then I put up a couple of familiar 9s he wanted to do.  Having no agenda makes me relaxed and unattached from outcomes, but it doesn’t get me up hard routes. Then again, hard routes aren’t the challenge I’m working on just now.  Putting up something for a grateful friend is a more worthy endeavor than chasing glory.  I’m only fearful of not being prepared for Devil’s Tower in a couple of weeks.  At least I’ve been doing a lot of stemming and a wee bit of jamming.

Coronary, 5.10 (Mike)
Ant’s Line, 5.9 (Dawn)
Ent’s Line, 5.11- (TR)
Jean, 5.9 (Dawn)

May 11, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

A quiet wait in the woods

I’d always heard the Gunks are deserted on a weekday, but I guess I’ve been so much a part of the crowd-that-wasn’t-there that I’ve never seen it for myself.  Mark, Mike and I had the Seasons area–normally a circus of dogs, babies and spectators–to ourselves all day.  It wasn’t a productive day, an efficient day, or a heroic day, but it was a beautiful day.  I sat on Mike’s bouldering pad in the shade and wrote while Mark and Mike supported each others’ best efforts for the day.  It’s sweet to see these two climb together.  I’m definitely not the nicest partner you could have.  Faster, though.

Simple Suff, 10a (Mark)
Spring P1, 5.9 (Dawn)
Manly, Yes, But I Like It Too, 5.10 (TR)
Climb and Punishment, 5.11 (failed siege)

May 6, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

Fear doesn’t equal danger; Danger doesn’t equal fear

Far from onsighting new routes with a strange partner, today I’m trying to lead my nemesis Cris Cross Direct with my two oldest partners.  Steven and Todd and I have a lot of history and so do Cris Cross Direct and I.  Let me start by saying that I know of no route called Cris Cross.  Apparently you either go direct or go home.  I’d like to go home.

I’m not climbing the route well and I’m not conducting myself well either–crying, whining, freaking out over a perfectly safe situation.  I know all the falls on this route are safe because I’ve caught them (over and over, in some instances).  My emotion is coming not from the physical circumstances in front of me but from the mental circumstances behind me.  I’m replaying old memories and old patterns of behavior.  This route has made me feel bad, and Steven and Todd can be counted on to try to make me feel good.  I surrender to the comfort of being tended for past wounds instead of addressing the challenge in front of me–this move, this day.

Eventually I find a way through the opening sequence which I’ll record here, not because it’s the right sequence but because it’s what works for me and I’d like to remember it:  #1 as high as I can get it, right hand jams below it, left hand laybacks above it, step up on smears until left foot can get on lowest broken point of the arete.

From there I can see that I’m at the level of my gear and that brings a fresh wave of fear, but I stay with it to get the pin clipped and backed up and then stand up to where the real crux is.  In most recent toprope attempts at this route, I haven’t had trouble with the 5.10 move, but it does involve standing on a glassy smear from fingertip crimps with your gear at your feet, and so on lead I’m freaked again.  My mouth spews non-stop pleas for help and predictions of eminent death while my lower body remains calmly in place and my hands frantically touch every piece of rock within reach.  In other words, I’m clearly fine, just not willing to take that one second leap of faith onto my right foot to be done with the crux.

I millimeter my way to the finishing holds and pop in a new piece.  The drama is over for the day.  I’ve led Cris Cross Direct for the first time.  By some definitions, I’ve even led it cleanly, since each attempt (of about twelve) started from the ground, but I don’t think I’ll cris-cross it off the list just yet.  I’ve also embarrassed myself again, added to the legacy of agony and disappointment already accumulated on this route.  But today I recognize that burden is mine and doesn’t belong to the route at all.

Cris Cross Direct is a piece of rock–sometimes damp, sometimes slick, sometimes lacking in features, but never harming or judging.  The route holds no emotion.  All that resentment, shame and fear is in me.  I bring these emotions to it; it doesn’t bring them out in me.  This is a pattern of behavior I’m learning to break, though I can only claim progress, not perfection.  I look forward to being without unreasoned fear in the future.

It’s on the next route that someone almost dies.  Which goes to show that danger and fear are not that closely linked.  Out of a clear blue sky, Todd came within an instinct’s instant of falling directly to our feet in a replay of the Le Plie accident.  All three of us are familiar with the details of that accident.  If we hadn’t been doing something a little bit different, we would have known we were doing something dangerous.  But the seeming simplicity of what we were doing–top-roping a 5.8 we’d all led innumerable times–combined with the relief of being free at last from my hysterical lead and a desire to make setup slightly more convenient, kept us from analyzing the consequences of the deviation from normal procedure we were taking.  Don’t improvise!

I’ve accepted the fact that I might be involved in an accident some day, but I imagine a lead fall, maybe pulled gear or a swing into a corner.  There’s first aid, a carry-out.  Someone needs to go to the hospital.  I don’t imagine a friend’s body landing with a single sickening thud at my feet from eighty feet up.  That isn’t something I like to imagine because I imagine I’m immune from it.  There were over forty years of climbing experience standing there making the choices that were prevented from ending in death only by Todd’s body awareness at the last second, by the fact that hadn’t committed his weight to a useless rope before he had that moment to realize that something didn’t feel right.  I thank God for that moment and for his innate kinetic intelligence.  I won’t stop climbing over this, but I’ll remember to be careful of improvisations.  I’ll also remember that the danger isn’t always where the fear is.

Birdland P1, 5.8 (Dawn)
Transcontinental Nailway, 5.10b (Todd)
Cris Cross Direct, 10a (Dawn)
Broken Sling, 5.8 (Steven)
Inverted Layback, 5.9 (Todd)

May 4, 2010   Posted in: Gunks  No Comments

Sometimes the universe has other plans

Sometimes the universe has other plans and usually it’s best to go along with them.  I asked a friend to climb Friday.  It was supposed to be a beautiful day and I wasn’t working.  He said yes and then mentioned another friend who had asked the same thing.  So now there were three of us and we cast about for a fourth.  The third soon called with news that he’d found one, and I happily drove up Friday morning anticipating a great day.

The dominoes fell in the same order they’d been stacked.  I’ve experienced this before.  When you have a bunch of partners, each feels individually less responsible, and people who would never normally bail on me for anything less than hospitalization were now jumping ship like rats.  About twenty minutes outside of New Paltz, I was completely deserted.

Trying to salvage what I could from the drive, I figured I’d go to Rock & Snow and buy the new pair of rock shoes I needed for our Devil’s Tower trip and then get in a run at the Preserve.  I was glad I kept running shoes and writing materials in the car as I entertained myself waiting for Rock & Snow to open.  I also made a quick call to Todd to see if he was available.  He wasn’t, but he suggested trying to pick up a partner at the Uberfall.  I’d never done that, never picked anyone up outside of a gym (or a bar), and really couldn’t imagine myself doing it, but I thought I could at least mention my predicament at Rock & Snow.  Maybe they’d have an idea.

The guy trying on shoes next to me was a familiar face from the crags.  We didn’t know each other enough to do more than nod, but I remembered my vow to at least ask the universe for help and opened my mouth and told my sad story of being dumped by three different partners.

“I’m looking for someone to climb with,” he said.  OK then.

He needed to be back in New Paltz in seven hours.  It was a weekday and the cliffs would be empty.  We had never climbed together.  So the obvious choice was Millbrook.  I was practically running to keep up with him on the hike in.  He knew his way around so there was no fumbling getting the rope set up to rap in.  I asked what the plan was, since he clearly had one, and he rattled of three route names.

“If we’re smoking,” he said.  “We’d have to be really smoking to get in the third.”

I only recognized one name–Cruise Control.  It was the route next up for me to lead at Millbrook, since I’d done Westward Ha!  I told him I’d like to lead it and he looked uncertain and switched gears.

“Let’s do Time Eraser as a warm up,” he said, ” and then we’ll see.”

Now at 5.10, Time Eraser is no warm up.  What it was, I could see, was an audition.  But that was fine with me.  Climbing at Millbrook has a reputation and this guy was motivated to move. I didn’t want to be a big stumbling block in the road of our day.  But when I hit the top of Time Eraser, he said, “If you can follow that route in that style, that fast, you’ll have no problem with Cruise Control,” and he dumped the remains of the rack in front of me without further ado.

Now I was nervous.  When someone, no  matter how experienced and intimidating, says they have everything you need, don’t believe them!  Look for yourself.  He carried nothing bigger than a number one and doubles in nothing bigger than a .4.  Even his nuts stopped at about a .5 Camalot size.  Well, I had asked for this lead and all I could do now was set to it.  He wanted me to run the pitches together (he had a 70 meter rope) and years of climbing with Todd had prepared me for that.  I made no promises but duly ran it out anywhere I didn’t feel death impending.  When I placed gear, I tried to place a very small nut, since that was what I had a rack full of.

I got to the intermediate belay without any rope drag and more than half the slings left.  I had sacrificed my single .75 but I still had my number one for the hand crack to come, so I went ahead into the second pitch.  It was no harder than the first and shorter and then it was all over.  I had onsighted Cruise Control in one long pitch, not something I had expected to do–or even have the opportunity to do–that day.

We managed to sneak in that third route, White Corner Direct, by running five minutes late on the schedule.  On the hike out I was literally running to keep up.  With a lot of hustle and little regard for the paint job on his car, we made it back to Rock & Snow exactly on time and shook hands through the car window as he didn’t even pull over to let me out.

“Perfect day,” he said.

Yeah.

Time Eraser, 10- (Rich)
Cruise Control, 9- (Dawn)
White Corner Direct, 10+ (Rich)

May 3, 2010   Posted in: Millbrook  No Comments