There’s something wrong with the Gunks.

Somebody recommended the upper pitches of V3. No one will admit to it now, of course. There’s always somebody recommending the upper pitches of something or other. Let me tell you, when there’s a nice fixed anchor at the end of pitch one and most of the people you ask say they didn’t know it had a second pitch, there’s a good reason for it.

My first day back leading at the Gunks after a longer than usual winter layoff was going well. A poor forecast had kept everyone at home and I led one classic after another, hesitantly at first but with increasing confidence. I thought it was about time Steven led something and he said he always enjoyed V3 and I said I’d never been on the upper pitches but had heard they were worth doing. It’s important to note that Steven denied nothing at this point.

So he leads the first two pitches in one long one to the GT ledge. The second pitch, a lineless expanse of 5.2, would almost be nice if it weren’t so dirty. It’s a mystery to me why this should be, but there are two types of rock at the Gunks: pretty pink, white or yellow stuff that stays clean and juts forward in sharp-edged jugs, horizontal cracks, and blocks that will probably stay put; and nasty, pebbly grey-black stuff that grows lichen and moss and undulates in lower angle but holdless waves. P2 is of the latter sort.

When I arrive at the belay, Steven confesses that he doesn’t actually know where P3 goes, having only ever done it once a long time ago. This despite his having earlier described it as a “short, pleasant roof pitch.” So there’s a roof up there, not more than 20 feet over our heads and barely more than 20 feet wide. It’s clear that we can escape the roof on either side, but if we’re going to do a “short, pleasant roof pitch” there’s not much to choose from.

The roof is made out of pretty white rock and it’s split up the middle by a crack. We have no guidebook but everyone knows that you pull a roof at its weakness, so I shoulder the rack and climb the 10 feet or so to the roof and check it out. It’s a double roof really: a roof and then, almost immediately, a deeper roof. But it looks like it will go. So I put two cams in below the first roof, pull myself over it as far as I can go before hitting the second roof, and stuff two cams in below that one for good measure.

Above the second roof I find my last pair of hand holds. After those the rock turns abruptly from pretty and pink to grey and gritty. Below, I’ve run out of feet, at least horizontal ones. The combined depth of the two roofs is considerable. I smear a foot up the wall, resulting in a position that might be comfortable for watching television but without a couch beneath me for support and with nothing to see except a sea of lichen, I’m not feeling relaxed.

What I have to do is put my foot up there. There. Up. There. Ooph. I climb up and down a certain number of times before Steven points out that with the amount of gear I have in I’m really going to have to take a fall before I’m allowed to give up. So I make a half-hearted try and take a half-hearted fall. Then, since I’m not dead yet, I try really, really hard and fall a really, really long way, or 18 inches, whichever comes first.

Now falling off a 5.7 is funny because I happen to be climbing better than I’ve ever climbed in my life. I mean, I don’t like to brag, and I can’t help knowing that a lot of people who live in Colorado and California wouldn’t find this anything to brag about, but at the gym I’ve been climbing 11s.

On a third try I get it. The end of the pitch is approximately five feet away. Short, indeed. Roof, certainly. Pleasant? Hmmmm. Steven has no trouble with it but see, he’s taller. Flexible too. Once we’ve found our way down I head immediately for the guidebook, mumbling about being sandbagged and people who claim they know where routes go when they don’t. I only wish the story had a punchline, but it doesn’t. Except that the line we climbed is labelled as a variation (V3 Direct), the guidebook tells a sadly familiar story: pull the roof at the crack, 5.7.

There’s something wrong with the Gunks.