There was something in the air. It was a beautiful early fall day, the weather crisp, clear, and just warm enough once the sun came up to climb in short sleeves. The Gunks were surprisingly uncrowded yet filled with people I knew. But despite the auspicious circumstances, when we reconvened at the end of the day, very few of us had managed more than four pitches.

Now four pitches for me and Todd is nothing unusual, but back in the day we managed it in a matter of hours. We were experts at the late morning start combined with the early afternoon fade-off. This, on the other hand, was a workman-like nine to five day. Our mistake was climbing onsight and over our heads.

It started with a long walk down to Wasp. The theory here was that it was going to be crowded, or perhaps it was just a change up. Or it was Todd’s determination to get me on Frustration Syndrome. However it was, we walked down there and Todd started leading Wasp. Now I know people (Julie) who actually like this climb, but Todd and I aren’t two of them. It’s got a hard, scary start and we never seem to be able to figure out how to get down. Todd hemmed and hawed his way up the first ten feet but after that we both progressed smoothly and thanks to a 70 meter rope and a little experience, we even got ourselves down with some efficiency (only losing a sling plus biners, as we discovered too late).

Thus far, we were doing just fine. Next up was the aforementioned Frustration Syndrome. Todd had been on it once and thought it wasn’t so hard for 5.10. There was a period when we weren’t climbing together and he was climbing with some guys from his gym when he was climbing very well. I do believe he climbed Frustration Syndrome during this period because it turned out to be hard. I’m not saying it was so hard for 5.10, but it wasn’t so easy for 5.10 either. You have to fiddle in a lot of fiddly gear from a lot of bad stances and after fighting through an awful lot of it and doing it pretty well, I thought, I got to the final small roof and put in an iffy piece and started to pull over it and ran out of holds and backed off and tried to put in another piece and found it even iffier and, in a state of unreasonable panic, grabbed a blue/black hybrid alien that had only the black lobes touching.

Which held.

It took some looking and some thinking but I finally found gear I liked, a stance of sorts, and some holds over the roof. In the days following the climb I figured I could do it clean next time, now that I knew. I’m writing this report two weeks later and I no longer know. I know where the stance is. Maybe that’ll be enough. Todd suggested that he’d done the climb once, well, and that perhaps he never needed to be on it again.

Next up was Todd leading Simple Suff. Simple Suff is probably the sole instance of a 5.10 at the Gunks that I’d led and he hadn’t. As with Wasp, there are people who like this climb (Steven), but I suspected Todd wouldn’t be one of them. I actually led it clean, making it one of very few 5.10 onsights for me, but I was in something like a trance while I was doing it. There are days when you climb beyond your abilities. This wasn’t one of them for Todd and there was much whining and no small amount of hanging before he reached the top.

Then it was my turn. The first pitch of Falled on Account of Strain is only 5.9 but it’s 5.9-terrifying and 5.9-reachy. Honestly, I don’t even know if I’d bother to go back and get this clean except supposedly there’s a great pitch of 5.10 up there somewhere. The first pitch itself didn’t seem to have any interesting climbing if you could reach the holds and weren’t about to die.

At this point, it was late enough to start meandering back to the Uberfall to avoid being late for our rendezvous. Our hope was to run into friends with ropes up but instead we kept running into friends with their harnesses off and their feet dragging. Everyone was ready for a cold beer after a long day of having their butt kicked. Except for Steve. He rolled in about 45 minutes later, chipper and chatty with a long line of successful pitches to crow about. Apparently he didn’t get the memo.

Wasp, 5.9 (Todd)
Frustration Syndrome, 5.10 (Dawn)
Simple Suff, 5.10a (Todd)
Falled on Account of Strain P1, 5,9+ (Dawn)