I’ve never given much thought to leading the crux pitch of Grand Central, despite the fact that Todd keeps telling me I should. Its rating of 5.9- PG pushes it out of reach for me: PG is a bit much for something right at my leading limit. But then we were on it again recently and the crux seemed kind of straightforward, a little pumpy but a lot of good feet, so when we find ourselves heading towards the Nears on Sunday I make the suggestion myself. “Why don’t I lead Grand Central?” By which I mean, “Why don’t I lead the crux pitch this time?”

Todd tries to give me a lot of beta but I stop him. This isn’t because I’m proud. It’s because I can never remember the beta once the actual route is in front of me. All it does is confuse me.

He leads the first pitch and I follow him, trying to judge the feel of the rock. It’s not hot today, but it’s damp, with the sort of mist in the air that often washes against the cliff line and clings to the rock. But the rock feels dry and the climbing doesn’t seem any harder than usual . There’s a sort of luxury to starting a hairy lead from off the ground. I’m only following for now.

Then I arrive at the belay and instantly I’m panicked. I’d forgotten this section right off the belay. Faced with it now, I distinctly remember that I was scared even following this part of the pitch last time around. Sure, the crux isn’t bad, but the thin hand traverse over smooth, white feet leading up to it is terrifying.

I don’t want to do this. What did I get myself into? I’m stuck now. We’re committed to the route; Todd has led this pitch oodles of times before; we never would have gotten on Grand Central in the first place if I wasn’t planning to lead it. God help me, but I’m going to have to go up there.

“It’s like 5.4,” Todd says, dismissing the entire section.

This doesn’t reassure me. As flaky as I may sometimes get, I’m pretty certain that I wasn’t shaking in my rock shoes a few months ago because I was following a 5.4.

He shifts his focus to the crux. “The blue Alien goes in vertically. You can tell it’s really good.”

Bomber blue Alien at the crux. Excellent.

“It’s like twelve feet, but you can see the finishing horizontal so you know how far you have to go.”

Twelve feet above the bomber blue Alien. Sure.

Then he says something about going right. This turns out to be important later.

So I gather up my gear and struggle to climb over the belay without stepping on his head. I put a piece in as soon as I can and then climb practically back into factor-2 fall range before reaching the horizontal that marks the start of the hand traverse. I load the crack up with small cams as I work my way across it (saving the blue Alien, of course), get to the point where I’m supposed to turn the corner around the arete and freak out a little.

Pumped from hanging out to place yet another piece, I’m not so sure I can pull the move. I scurry down and backwards, find some good feet to hang out on, and try to gather my courage.

OK. What I really did was put another piece in, but gear counts as courage, doesn’t it?

Now I’m around the corner and the real fun begins. Todd can’t see me, but we can hear each other clearly enough. I put the blue Alien in vertically. It’s a fine blue Alien, but it hasn’t stopped being blue. Above that, I place a small nut. That’s my crux gear. I look up for the finishing horizontal and spot a line of chalk a few moves over my head. I scan the surrounding holds–left, right, straight-up, chalk everywhere. What did Todd say about going too far right? Not to do it, I think. Too bad. There sure are some nice holds over there.

I glance back at the rope, see that it’s become caught in the horizontal crack back at the arete, and flick it free. Enough. Time to go.

As I climb I find myself naturally drifting right towards the better holds. I’m not really supposed to be over here, am I? But there’s a spot here where I could probably put a small cam in. And a good nut placement over there to my left. Bad stances though. So steep. Todd said it’s easier to just climb through, and it’s not so far away, that line of chalk over my head. One more move ought to get me there. Can I make it?

No.

I start downclimbing frenetically. I’m going down but the rope isn’t moving. It’s caught in that lousy horizontal on the arete again. Instead of sliding down to Todd, telling him to take in slack, it’s pooling on the ledge beneath me. I’m in a Lord Slime situation. (“What should you do if the leader says ‘rope’?” he posed on rec.climbing. Steven and I both guessed “duck.” Todd’s answer, “nothing, because my belay is always perfect” made me smile at the time. The correct answer was “take rope in.” It’s just like the follower saying “up rope,” Lord Slime explained. )

I’m climbing towards safety without getting any closer. Somehow, despite the growing fear, and through my intense concentration on what I’m actually doing, I remember that exchange on rec.climbing and I know what I should do.

“Up rope!” I command in a loud, clear voice.

Nothing happens.

“Rope!” I insist.

Still nothing.

“Take!”

I’m still above my last piece and a little worried he might pull me off, but it’s obvious that nothing else is going to work and he’s got six feet or so to yard in before he gets to me. The rope starts to move. As he’s taking out the last of the slack I stop him, “That’s enough. You don’t need to pull on me.”

“What’s going on up there?” he asks. I explain. He’s been close enough for me to explain all along. I just wasn’t rational enough.

I try to flick the rope back out of the crack but it won’t go. I’m higher than I was before, with the crack just out of reach, and I can’t downclimb this last move back to the previous stance. It was a sort of layback/high-step thing that I’m not willing to try in reverse.

I feel every bit as stuck as the rope. I can’t get down to free it and I won’t climb up until it’s free. I eye the new nut I’ve managed to add in above me. I know it’s my ticket out of here. If I would only use the draw as a hold I could lower myself back onto the ledge and fix the rope. Or bail.

I don’t want to bail and I don’t want to pull on the draw. I want to do the route. I want to do it right. I’ve become focused on the stuck rope. Only it is preventing me from getting this clean. If only it would behave, I’d sail up this thing.

With a last, angry pull I wrench it clear from the crack.

“Um, what exactly did you say about going right?” I ask Todd before I start climbing again.

“That you should,” he says. “The farther right you go, the better.”

Ah.

I move farther right this time. The route seems a little more familiar somehow. Good feet. Yes, I remember that part. In fact, the feet are good enough that I’m willing to stop and put another piece in. I don’t care if it is steep and pumpy. It just makes me feel better. I get to the line of chalk over my head. From here I can see the actual finishing horizontal, still several moves away. Good thing I didn’t know how far away it was when I started or I never would have left the ledge.

“Are you at the horizontal?” Todd calls up.

“No,” I answer. I expect him to ask what’s taking so damned long–I was supposed to climb quickly through the crux–but he just warns me that the rope is caught in the crack again. Stupid rope. I look at the gear I just placed, then at the holds above me. It’s cool. I can get there from here.

A stranger starting the crux of Grand Central (5.9-).
Photo courtesy Mike Rawdon

Later that same day

I’ve had my scare for the day so we walk down to Elder Cleavage to give Todd his turn. He’s led the route before, but not cleanly, and I’ve never been on it. There are people on the first pitch and after sitting for a bit Todd points out that the route isn’t usually busy–no point in waiting for it–so we shift focus to Main Line, a two pitch 5.8G we’ve been meaning to do for a while.

Todd asks me which pitch is harder. I tell him they’re both 5.8 but secretly I’ve been reading the guidebook. I know that the second pitch is the crux and I’m feeling good enough after Grand Central to keep it for myself.

He leads the first pitch more slowly than I’d expect on a 5.8 and with a lot more whining about bad gear than I’d expect from a G. Following him, I tend to agree. By the time I join him at the belay I’m a little nervous. If that was the easier pitch, then what’s in store for me?

There’s an easy face above the belay with a couple of horizontals leading up to a roof. So far, so good. But then . . .

“Does it look like there’s gear under that roof to you?”

“Go up and see,” Todd says. “If you don’t like it, you can downclimb.”

So I climb up to the first horizontal and place two cams, then climb to the next and place one more. I’m about halfway between Todd and the roof. I still don’t see any gear up there.

I grab the sturdy lip just over the roof and poke my head into the pod above it. There’s a crack in the back of it, flared in all directions. I can tell I won’t like any piece I manage to place there so I don’t even try. I step back down from the roof and shuffle over to the stance in the corner.

“I don’t think I should do this without gear,” I say, testing the waters.

“Neither do I.”

A relief. It’s not just my imagination this time.

“That’s like a factor one fall.”

“It’s not that bad,” he says, but I know something he doesn’t. I know that the cam closest to me isn’t very good. It’s slightly overcammed and in questionable rock.

I’m eyeing the fall back to the doubled cams in the crack below it. Down a bouncy slab. Maybe even over the roof Todd’s belay is perched above.

This is a G rated route. It’s constantly being recommended as a line that doesn’t get the traffic it deserves. I must be missing something. I step back up to the roof.

I push our biggest cam into the pod and wiggle it around. I find a placement: two cams tipped out, a hollow echo protesting every movement. I look at Todd.

“It might hold.”

He shakes his head. I take the piece out and retreat back to my corner.

“What about there?” Todd asks.

“Just a shadow.”

“How about that?”

“I could maybe get an alien in there,” I say doubtfully We’re looking at a small crack under the roof, several feet to the left of the pod. “But what’s the point? I wouldn’t trust it.”

Why must it always be this way? Why is it always one step forward and one step back. I’ve had my challenge today. This route was supposed to be fun. Casual. A diversion between harder things. We were going to run up it, rap back down, and be back at Elder Cleavage before the other folks were finished. Is there anywhere, ever a route that’s as straightforward as you expect it to be?

I’m frustrated. The thread I just started on rec.climbing is ringing in my ears. But this isn’t the same thing, not the same thing at all. This is no short fall on good gear. This is ankle breaking territory. You hope.

“What should we do?” I ask.

“I could try it.”

“Will you do it like this? If this is the gear?”

“Probably not. I’ll have to see.”

This is different from other times I’ve let Todd take over for me. This is different because I don’t want him to do it either. The anchor is fixed, nice bolts with chains. We can always just bail.

On a two pitch 5.8G.

Stupid rec.climbing thread. Stupid 5.8s that are all out to get me. Maybe I should just stick to 5.9s from now on. My record is better. I swear it is.

I slump against my stance in the corner, listless, defeated. There’s no good answer.

“You could try the move.”

Huh. I could try the move. He’s got a point. I’ve had my head over the roof but I was looking for gear, not jugs. Always the gear comes before the move. But there is no gear. I could try the move.

“Maybe you can get a jam in the pod.”

Yes, maybe I can get a jam in the pod. With a good jam I’d risk a lot. I could try the move. Maybe I could get a jam.

I traverse back to the notch in the roof and poke my head over it again. I try to wiggle my fist in where the cam went but my fist doesn’t have the reach that a cam has and I can’t get it high enough. Instead I match hands on the good lip and jack my feet up high. I can see it up there–the next real hold–and I reach for it with all my mind. I’m stable. I will not fall.

I touch the hold. My hand sinks into it, my fingers curl over the top. It’s a god damned suitcase handle. And before I have time to think of the gear and the fall and the pain, my feet are moving and I’m up over the roof, making one last long move, scared now suddenly because I’m higher than I ever meant to be.

Adrenalin carries the day. There’s no indecision in the middle–there can’t be. Only in the beginning does the mind overrule the muscle. I’m balanced over the roof, pumped and breathing heavy, but at a stance with gear. I did it.

I finish the pitch, detouring too high around a block marked with an X and ending up in even worse rock. It’s all choss around me. The gear I place is sparse and questionable, the rock is steep, but the moves are there and the end is near. I feel great.

Only later does it occur to me that I should have placed all that gear I eschewed: the nut in the flared crack, the tipped out cam in the hollow hole, the tiny alien so far away. Maybe they would have slowed me down.

As the days pass I stop feeling great and start feeling sick. It plays in my head at night and always there’s a different ending: me hanging over a huge roof with a broken leg. Todd tells me that soloing is like that. It feels good while you’re doing it, but it’s best to not look back.

But the jug was so solid. I couldn’t have fallen, couldn’t have. It was right to go on.

I think.