On Saturday Steven, Todd, and I climbed with a guy doing his first trad leads on his brand new rack. On Sunday, Todd and I climbed with a guy who’s been leading for 20 years and carries a set of the original rigid Friends. And yet, the two days had more in common than they had different.

Fresh from my first 5.9 the weekend before, I had the urge to keep pushing, so while Steven belayed HJ on Horseman (5.5), Todd and I went to do Red Cabbage (5.9-). After a thorough examination of both guidebooks, I have come to the following conclusion: the 5.9- variation of Red Cabbage pulls around the arete to the left face when the crack ends before the bulge. This, however, is not at all what I did.

I led up to the end of the crack, placing gear every few feet and ending up hugely pumped as a result (steep, man).

“You might want to extend that,” Todd said, referring to my last piece at the top of the crack.

“Not right now, I don’t,” I told him. I was ready to fall off any moment and had no desire to add to the length of the fall. Taking a deep breath, I started pulling over the bulge. A couple of desperate moves brought me to a spot where I could pull right to what looked like a Thank-God stance. It wasn’t. On top of that, there was no gear there and the next move promised to be powerful.

My last piece wasn’t far beneath me but was off to my left. The fall was clean and I didn’t want to take it. I stepped down. The stance wasn’t much better but I was able to get gear.

“You might want to extend that,” Todd said. I didn’t even have the strength to answer. “If you step down again, you’ll have better feet,” he added. This was a much more helpful suggestion. I milked the rest for all it was worth (not that much, unfortunately), then bravely extended the piece and stepped back up.

I still didn’t feel like doing the next move. I had the hands in hand. I could envision the move. What I couldn’t envision was myself pulling through it in my current exhausted condition. But wait! This time a protection opportunity presented itself. I fumbled in a nut at chest height and, fortified by its presence, found a slightly less powerful way to do the move. Finally, a stance! I threw in a nice tri-cam and moved easily to my left and around the nose to finish the route.

I thought I’d been off-route when I stepped down. Todd thought I was on-route when I stepped down because I’d been off-route when I started pulling over the bulge before moving right. Steven thought I was off-route when I stepped left over the top the bulge because the route finishes up the center of the face. It turned out we were all wrong – everything after the end of the crack was off-route. Leading Red Cabbage was a real confidence booster for me, but I could have made it a lot easier on myself if I’d looked at the guidebook.

Later in the day I followed HJ on Arch (5.5) with its wild traversing moves. He did an excellent job leading it, handling both the scary runout and the intimidating finish. He also learned a bit about the evils of rope drag by not extending the pieces he placed in the corner. I’d never been on the route before and had a great time following it. At the Gunks, following a 5.5 can be every bit as much fun as leading a 5.9 (maybe more fun, now that I think about it).