I haven’t gone this long without touching real rock in the nearly nine years I’ve been climbing. After four straight weekends of personal and work obligations monopolizing the springtime weather I was bouncing off the walls in full withdrawal. “I need to get out!!!”

So I didn’t care about the 30% chance of rain. A 30% chance of rain is a 70% chance of not-rain, a statistic it would seem most people don’t bother to calculate as it’s almost a 100% chance of nobody being there. I found a willing accolyte and set the date and by damn if it wasn’t sweet and sunny when we set out. Unfortunately it was raining at the Gunks, but only lightly and only, according to my partner’s Blackberry, briefly.

I was climbing. I didn’t care what and I didn’t care how. I wasn’t going away without climbing something. Horseman was free (hell, it was all free). I made the insanely stupid decision to start the route in my approach shoes to keep my rock shoes dry until I got under the first overhang. If there’s anything sketchier than starting your first route of the season on wet rock in approach shoes, I don’t care to participate in it.

Much dithering and whimpering later I arrived at the ledge, changed into rock shoes, and charged up the blissfully dry and marvelously sticky corner. It was wet again after the crux traverse but wearing rock shoes and having 40 feet of climbing under my belt made the difference. I did drop a locking biner (“I was expecting a rock,” a young man apparently unacquainted with the true meaning of the word “rock!” told me) and tangle the rope so badly I had to get my second to unweight it while I was lowering her to fix it, but overall I felt pretty good, my line was brilliant, and by the time we got down it had stopped raining.

We did a few more routes and it kept getting drier and drier and eventually it was time to face facts: Trapped Like a Rat was waiting for me. It’s been a while since I looked that bad grovelling up the start, but once past the first crux I cruised it. Miriam looked good on it too, despite her insistence that she wouldn’t. We finished the day on Eyesore where the death block seemed much better cemented this year than last.

This morning I pulled stockings on over skinned knees, felt the burn deep in the muscles of my upper arms while doing my hair, and smiled.

with Miriam, all led by me
Horseman, 5.5
Bunny Direct, 5.6
Double Chin
Ken’s Crack, 5.7
Trapped Like a Rat, 5.7
Eyesore, 5.6