Considering how many times I’ve followed Retribution, considering how wired I have it, I really did expect to lead it cleanly. Several falls later . . . I did lead it but boy, was that a surprise.
Retribution (Dawn)
Son of Easy O Direct (Dawn)
Travels with Charlie/Strictly link-up (P1: Steven, P2: Dawn)
Erect Direction (P1: Steven)
CCK (P2 & P3: Dawn)
We drive 3 1/2 hours with it raining the last two hours, hike through the rain to find rock that’s mostly dry, belay with the rain pounding our eyes and streaming down our faces, say “the holds are all dry” optimistically. We climb three routes before the wind forces the rain into the rock and pack our soaked and mud covered belongings and walk back through the rain and drive 3 1/2 hours home and spread everything out around the living room to dry. And that’s what we do for love.
Rumney:
Underdog (Dawn & Scott)
Polly Purebred (Dawn & Scott)
Fat Man (Dawn, Scott & Hugh)
I spent a lot of time looking for a partner for Saturday and didn’t come up with much. Gabe said he couldn’t be there til 4:00 and since that was the best offer I got, I took it. He was meeting two friends and, three being better than four, I was welcome to join them.
So I pull into the West Trapps lot around 3:30, shoulder my pack, and start walking towards the Uberfall where I’m supposed to meet Gabe. At the end of the lot is a guy a with his shirt off. Seriously nice. I’ve recently decided that younger men are the way to go and right there is a good example of why. I take several long looks as I pass him by. Seems like he’s checking me out too. Yeah, I’ve still got it.
Up the path coming towards me is another young stud. This one’s got his shirt on but he’s all wet from the swimming hole and pulling his long hair back into a pony tail. Beautiful eyes. I don’t get as long a look as I’d like because we’re walking towards each other but I flash him a smile and flick my eyes sideways at him. As I keep walking down the path, I’ve got a smile on my face because God has been good to me today. Then behind me I hear “Are you Dawn?” These are my dates for the day. God is good indeed.
We meet Gabe (also very sexy and sexier when sweaty) at the Uberfall and start to discuss plans. Cory (pretty eyes) wants to go do Shockley’s naked. Now a smarter girl might have jumped at that but I admit I balked. I told him it was more of a third date thing. Here’s looking at third dates. Yum.
Oh, you want to know what we climbed? Yeah, whatever. It was hot. Gabe and I were efficient. We got in five pitches between 4:00 and dark and I walked out by headlight for the second weekend in a row. I still need a partner for this weekend, so, um, second date guys?
Arrow (P1 & P2: Dawn)
Limight (P2: Dawn)
Annie Oh (P2: Gabe)
Three Doves (P2: Gabe)
After a weekend off post-Squamish, I was ready for some Gunks rock again. Steven and I met Mark and Mike. Mike was itching to lead Shitface in the Nears so we went there. I wasn’t sure what I’d lead there. I haven’t gotten Roseland clean yet but I wasn’t sure I was psyched for such an immediate rematch. Grand Central I’ve done but I suppose I could do it again. There aren’t many 9s in the Nears.
Well, there’s Inverted Layback. Now there’s a thought I hadn’t had prior to that minute, but when Steven starts the day by leading Layback in one long pitch to the top I can’t help but notice that we’re standing right next to Inverted Layback. Mike and Mark are doing Te Dum with the plan to drop a rope on Swingtime. I decide against trying Swingtime because it’s so early in the day and I’m going to do something big. Inverted Layback. Hmmm.
I take the arete start which is more challenging but probably better protected than the classic blocky start. Normally I’m following this and run right up it in a couple of burly moves. On lead I naturally have to place three pieces, turning it into an epic ten foot battle. But I win.
Then the climbing is reasonably straightfoward until the crux. I know I’m supposed to put in a blue Alien and a black Alien and I can see the two little pockets – coated in chalk as though someone thinks they’re handholds – where they go, but no one has ever told me which comes first. I end up with what I think are two good placements, as good as blue and black Aliens get anyway, and the gear below them isn’t so very far away.
I think that all I need to do is get that left foot up the first time. It’s the hardest move and the most committing. From there I’ll have no choice but to move on and do it. So I’ll do it and all will be well. Well.
I get the foot up and make a shuffling move sideways, only to realize that in order to move my left foot again I’m going to have to move it around the rope. It takes a huge amount of energy to lift my foot high enough and then I’m faced with the realization that I now need to lift my right foot in order to move it around the draw attached to the farthest piece. That takes energy too. And now my left foot needs to move around the draw attached to the closest piece. Arrgh.
I can reach out and touch the arete but it’s useless until my right foot is farther right and my right foot can’t get farther right until my left foot is farther right. I mumble something about not being able to do it and wonder if the gear will hold. It’s right there if it does. It’s a fair fall if it doesn’t. Steven shouts up that it’s only one more move and I figure I might as well die trying, so I lift my left foot and then shuffle my right foot and then I’ve got the arete and even though it feels like my arms are coming off, I can do these last moves.
Safely standing up again, I wonder I’m going to puke but ultimately don’t.
Layback (Steven)
Inverted Layback (Dawn)
Le Plie (Steven)
Crass (TR)
Farewell to Arms (Dawn)
To Be Or Not To Be (TR)
Grease Gun Groove (Dawn)
Tulip Muscle Garden (TR)
The days are too long.
There’s no excuse not to.
Where’s the epic?
They think five pitches is an approach.
Friction.
Gear placing itself off your rack.
Friday
Corn Flakes, 5.6 (Dawn)
Lieback Flake, 5.9 (TR)
Corner Crack, 5.7 (Steven)
Flying Circus, 10a (Dawn)
Neat and Cool, 10a (TR)
Geritol, 10c (TR)
Saturday
Slap and Tickle variation, 5.9 (Steven)
Stefanie’s Tears, P2, 5.9 (Dawn)
Science Friction, 11d (TR)
High Mountain Woody, 5.9 (Steven)
Paul’s Crack, 10a (Dawn)
Gerizim, 5.8 (Michelle)
Sunday
World’s Toughest Milkman, 5.8 (Steven)
Horrors of Ivan, 11c (TR)
Handful, 5.9 (Dawn)
Washington Bullets, 10c (TR)
Up for Grabs, 5.8 (Michelle)
Fist, 10a (TR)
Monday
Rock On, 8, 9, 9, 10a, 8 (P1: Dawn, P2: Steven, P3: Dawn, P4: Steven, P5: Dawn)
Tuesday
Mosquito, 5.8 (Steven)
Peaches and Cream, 10a (Dawn)
Alexis Cracks, right & left, 5.7 (Steven)
White Streak, 10c (TR)
Zip, 10a (Dawn)
Mike started the day by trying to lead a direct variation of Shit Or Go Blind. I don’t know what it goes at. He finally bailed on the roof and walked around and dropped a rope on it so I got to TR it. It’s a long reach over the roof and hard to protect. I’ve never done the regular version which I understand escapes under the roof to the right.
Then I got on something I’ve been looking at and worrying about since I started climbing almost: Lisa (5.9). I’ve been worrying mostly about the step across move, which you’re soloing. I hate step across moves. But that turned out to be trivial. The reach problem, unfortunately, did not. I was able to reach high enough to get the piece in but I had the wire stem to help with that. I couldn’t reach high enough to get my fingers in and I twisted and turned and tried this and that and Mike was very patient but I never could do it. I finally pulled on the draw.
The rest of the route is really fun and interesting and still has some 5.9 in it. In fact, I wager that first move isn’t that hard if you can get your fingers in the good hold, but I’ll never know. There’s a surprise ending to the route – a surprise especially if you tend to set up a TR on The Sting instead of finishing the route. Of course, I’d never done either so I finished the route, finding one last hard bit up there. Mike was the one who has surprised. I guess it’d been a while since he’d done that last sequence.
He then had the grief of getting over to the Sting anchor, which isn’t that easy – pumpy traverse and no stance at the anchor. I don’t even remember if I tried The Sting (5.11). If I did, I got absolutely nowhere. Mike can do it and got our stuff back from the anchor.
Somehow we got to talking about Modern Times which apparently Mike has a fear of. Having all the beta, I have no Modern Times fear so I offered to lead it and to teach him the beta. You’d have thought I was offering to lead Twilight Zone. He must have asked me “Really?” in absolute incredulous amazement about ten times. I had to put up or shut up. We took P1 of Jim’s Gem up there and then I led MT as promised and he got the benefit of my wisdom (well, Todd’s wisdom recycled). He was ridiculously grateful. Certainly made me feel good.
Shit Or Go Blind Direct, ? (TR)
Lisa, 5.9 A0 (Dawn)
The Sting, 5.11 (TR)
Jim’s Gem P1, 5.8 (Dawn)
Modern Times P2, 5.8 (Dawn)
It was a nice day but the rock was still wet so we started with Alphonse. I’d previously led the first pitch and followed the second so we did it backwards this time. It was one of those days when my stomach hurts with an ominous sense of foreboding. I made Steven put in extra gear. I don’t find the first pitch of Alphonse all that 5.6-easy and it was soaked. By contrast, I remembered the supposed crux pitch as being pretty cakey and it was, even on lead, and dry besides.
We were in the nears largely because I wanted to lead Roseland as my token 5.9 for the day but Roseland was still dripping. Birdland promised to be dry, being all facey and sun exposed, and it was. Birdland was also on my to-do list because I’d had some setbacks on it after my initial sucessful lead. Steven promised me I’d be OK with the gear and I put no fewer than three pieces in to be sure. Then I groped around at the holds and the move, hating life and wishing there wasn’t quite so much of a circus going on in the Nears that morning before I found the key hold I always seem to forget. Then it was easy.
Steven said he had no need to lead the second pitch, having led it before. I was thinking that I didn’t have any need to lead it either but we were up there and it’s a nice pitch so I did it. It’s pumpier and more sustained than the first and I don’t know why no one ever seems to do it. I also don’t know why it’s rated easier. They’re pretty similar in maximum difficulty.
By now Roseland looked mostly dry but the circus, rather than moving on, had expanded. I was hesitant to start up a hard lead with so much commotion (and so many dogs although it wasn’t until later in the day that one tried to kill me) but I needed to get my 5.9 in for the weekend. It’s sort of my goal to lead 5.9 on 9 weekends in a row. Then the 10.
Steven said that if it didn’t feel right I could always come down and he’d finish it. When he said it my feet were about 3 feet off the ground on a ledge and I asked if I could come down right now. That foreboding feeling was back. In fact, it had probably been tied to the thought of leading Roseland all along. But I forged up and on and did OK through the roof and the corner to the top of the corner where it was wetter than it had looked.
I put in two good pieces and told Steven the gear was good and tried to get myself over to the starting holds on the traverse so I could clip that pin which was tantalizingly out of reach. I felt that if I clipped the pin all would be well and I’d never ask for anything again. I finally got one hand near the pin and reached out as far as I could go and got the draw hung but there was no way to clip it. I tried again and got a little further out and found myself pretty committed. I still couldn’t clip it (couldn’t let go with one hand) and now I couldn’t get back into the corner either.
So I said, out loud, that I couldn’t do it and then asked what I should do and then answered my own question, still out loud. You should fix your foot, I told myself. My leg wasn’t technically behind the rope but one foot was still stemmed way out back into the corner and there were a lot of slings and ropes between me and it. I was resigned to the fall and preparing for it, trying to plan how to make it gentle and harmless. So I fixed my foot and then I was hanging directly from the holds instead of twisting myself into them and it was a lot more comfortable so I was able to clip after all.
Then I said take. To hell with all that drama. Eventually I de-pumped and led the rest of the route and came down annoyed that now I have to try to lead Roseland again but not scared of it anymore. Now I know the trick. Clip the pin from directly beneath the pin. Don’t waste energy trying to do it from the corner. Also, I’m proud of myself for thinking clearly in the face of a fall. I don’t think I’ve ever rationally considered how to improve a fall before.
I jumped once, above a bolt on a vastly overhanging route at the Red. I was all the way at the next bolt but couldn’t clip it, not even using the draw as a hold. At the Red, draws aren’t good enough to be holds. That was scary but safe and I fought it as long as I could. This was different and better.
Then we TR’d Shitface and the circus was surrounding us still and growing ever louder. It was a really empty day at the Gunks because of an iffy forecast but for some reason everyone with a kid or a dog or a monumental ego was climbing somewhere near us. So we walked back to the Trapps and Steven led Ken’s Crack in his approach shoes and I even followed in mine. Let it be known that Ken’s Crack is not easier in your approach shoes (unlike most every other route at the Gunks if you believe Steven) but my new shoes do actually climb pretty well.
I wanted to do something long and easy and not stressful, being pumped from Shitface which I might have gotten clean if I hadn’t been pumped from Roseland. I led Belly Roll in one long pitch to the top (this is where the dog tried to kill me by tangling himself in our lead line). I had the straightest line that 150 feet of 5.4 has ever seen. You know, that’s what you climb for is 150 feet of moving smoothly and fearlessly like that. Pop in a little gear, eschew the pins because they’re outside of your perfectly straight line, climb a little higher before placing something cause it’s all good. All good.
Alphonse (P1: Steven, P2: Dawn)
Birdland (P1 & 2: Dawn)
Roseland (Dawn)
Shitface (TR)
Ken’s Crack (Steven)
Belly Roll (P1 & 2: Dawn)
The good news is that I led four pitches of 5.9 this weekend. The bad news is that only two of them were clean. Or three. Depends how you count.
Since I’d never been to Cathedral before, I wanted to start with something easy. There’s not really that much that easy at Cathedral. Aside from standing in the Thin Air line (that comes later), we were looking at 5.7, so we did a two pitch 5.7 called Funhouse. I thought Marc’s pitch was harder and he thought my pitch was harder, which was the theme for the weekend. Maybe my lead head is finally coming around to the point where leading feels more natural than seconding, but really I think it was the pack. I don’t like climbing with a pack. My excuse is that when you’re short and light the weight interferes with your center of gravity more.
But it was hot and two pitches only took us part way up the wall, so water was a must. Once on the mid-height ledge we had to decide what to do next, so the guidebook had to come along too. And it’s a long walk back down, so the shoes were crucial. So the pack came with us, like it or not.
As soon as I joined Marc on the ledge my eye was drawn directly to the slanting flake above us. Marc was reeling off possibilities like a salesman (or like a guy holding a guidebook) but all I could say was, “What’s that?” It was Retaliation, 5.9. I said I’d do it and Marc said he’d do it and I said no, I’d do it and he said either way, so I got to do it.
First he led the short 5.6 pitch to a small ledge about 40 feet up. That’s where it gets hard. I figured I could at least hang my way up the thing but it turned out to be too hard to for that. I had to actually climb it.
The trouble with Retaliation is that it always looks like the next stance is a good stance. I’ll just do this move and then I’ll be standing there and it will be better than standing here and I’ll put in gear and have a little rest. The trouble with Retaliation is that next stance always turns out to be as bad as the last stance.
The feet were there but small – little stems on little ripples. It was the left hand that caused all the trouble. Because the flake slanted right, the left hand spent most its time hanging around feeling stupid. Left foot on the flake, right foot on the wall, right hand in the flake, left hand . . . Left hand? Here, sir! What are you doing there, left hand? Um, nothing sir. Could you maybe put in some gear? Not really, sir. The gear’s kind of over there and I’m kind of over here and . . . Then could you hold on so that right hand could put in some gear? Not really, sir. See, the holds are over there and I’m . . . Sigh. Never mind, left hand, just never mind.
I got gear in here and there. The gear was great. It would go in anywhere. Just, you know, you had to put it there. I slipped a nut in overhead because the higher I placed the better I could actually see what I was placing. It wasn’t great, that nut. I could have put in something better only it didn’t really want to come out and I didn’t want to set it that hard because the last piece was a way-ish down, and besides, I was going to get a stance after this next move.
So I did the next move and it wasn’t a stance, it was the goddamned stinking crux, and I reversed the moves and as I did I heard the click of the nut shifting and I tried to remember just how way-offish that last piece was, only when I was back at the last non-stance and the dust had settled and I looked, the nut had actually seated itself into a much better position. So I did it again.
The book gave the idea that the crux was at the hole near the top but that part was easy. Then there was supposed to be a short 5.6 pitch from a treed ledge which Marc was going to lead, only there was no tree on the ledge and there was no way that crack was 5.6. So I led it too and then there was another ledge and another crack and another ledge and another crack and eventually there was the top, so I guess it was 5.6 after all.
It’s a long walk down on pavement from Cathedral. Someone should start a shuttle business. It made my feet hurt, all that walking. Hot death-like march, except downhill.
We decided to see what the crowds were like at Recom-Beast and finding them largely non-existent, we did it. Marc led the first pitch and I fell off it. I was strolling along one of the less-hard 5.7 bits and palming against the wall and then the wall was gone and I was falling and it was only the sound of rock hitting rock that reminded me to yell rock, I was so surprised by the whole thing. Surprised and a little freaked out. This wasn’t some obvious flake or chalk-encrusted jug hanging by a thread I’d pulled off. I’d managed to push a bump off of the freaking wall. I mean, it was a sloper.
“I’m only touching holds with chalk on them,” I told Marc after we’d both established that I was fine. It didn’t bode well for our trip to the Dolomites that I was pulling off rock on a Cathedral Ledge classic, that was for sure.
So I was shaky heading towards the Beast Flake and I made a mistake. I z-clipped my two crux pieces. I can explain that. See, I was moving down and left and the piece was up and right and then the next piece was down and left but then after you do the crux moves you have to climb up a bit for a stance and to protect your second and the route slants back right and . . . Maybe I can’t explain it. I had to lower down and fix it. Personally, I’m counting that pitch as clean but I know Steven won’t, so I’m on record as only two clean pitches.
Then comes the pitch that sends Recom-Beast back into Recompense which I linked with the previous pitch. I did the low traverse. Now here are all the pros and cons:
Link the pitches, pro: rope drag is your friend on the traverse
Link the pitches, con: rope drag is not your friend on the finishing moves of Recompense P2
Link the pitches, con: big cams needed to protect the low traverse have all been used on previous pitch
Low traverse, pro: overhead protection (see caveat above)
High traverse, pro: avoids the finishing moves of Recompense P2 which are grunty and hard
High traverse, pro: it takes smaller gear that you’ll actually have on the rack
High traverse, con: looks hard
I bruised my way up the end of Recompense P2 to the belay, muttering and groaning and cursing the rope drag and putting in gear, I didn’t care whether it made life worse for Marc or not (it seemed fine but he had to go low, obviously). I felt bad for the previous team’s second who had to watch all that. I told him it always made me nervous watching someone who might be about to fall and he said he just didn’t look. So that took care of that.
Then the pitch which I most definitely didn’t get clean: the last one. I chickened out. Backed down from the last move of the crux and hung. I’ve got a lot of excuses for why that happened, so many I don’t have time to type them all.
Marc said I looked like I was about to fall over on the walk back down and it wasn’t far from the truth. Four pitches of 5.9 is a month’s worth for me. Then some nice man with a harness and a pickup truck picked us up and threw us in the back with some other climbers and it was bliss.
We took it a little easier on Sunday, starting with Repulsion which features a scary first pitch (Marc’s lead) and two tree downclimbs and ended the day on Thin Air. Thin Air is OK but, as often seems to be the case with easy “classics,” it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It’s just the easiest route on the cliff. You solo the first pitch. The second pitch is a traverse (and also the crux, never mind what the guidebook says). Then two short pitches of semi-interesting climbing and, for some unknown reason, a 20 foot 5.2 finishing pitch which the party in front of us actually led as a separate pitch.
But the position is gorgeous and the belays are all good. We didn’t wait too terribly long, considering. And it’s done now. The next time I go back to Cathedral, the one thing I don’t have to do is Thin Air.
Since Marc didn’t have the 4th off, we separated Sunday night. He crossed the border and I headed south to tend to my wounds – more bruises and scrapes than I can count. My multi-colored arms and legs triggered a realization in me that there’s something special about the Gunks: the Gunks aren’t grovelly. You can climb 5.2 at the Gunks and never leg-hump anything, never stick any part of your body into any crack, never touch the rock with anything more than the tips of your fingers and the toes of your shoes. You know what? I think I like that.
But I like cracks too, especially when I can put gear into them. Next stop: Squamish.
Saturday
Funhouse (P1: Dawn, P2: Mark)
Retaliation (P1: Mark, P2 & 3: Dawn)
Recom-Beast (P1: Mark, P2, 3, & 4: Dawn)
Sunday
Repulsion (P1: Mark, P2 & 3: Dawn, P4: Mark)
Thin Air (P1 & 2: Dawn, P3: Mark, P4 & 5: Dawn)
A hot and sticky day, nastiness in the air. I started on BB Route, which was a new route for me. It’s short but has its crux where I ended up hanging. No good reason for hanging there with gear in all around me but when I got a piece I liked in higher up I was of course able to pull the move.
Later we did No Glow which was also new to me and which also resulted in a hang. I was leading up to the crux when people started rapping over my head. Four of them. So I settled into a stance and told Steven I’d be there for a while. One of them tells me to go ahead because they won’t be in my way. I said the rope was hanging down directly through the crux. He said it would give me something to grab if I needed it. Which may be the most obnoxious thing anyone has ever said to me while I was leading, except for “Why do people think they need so much gear to lead such easy routes?”
When their ropes and their obnoxious selves were finally gone, I went back up to the crux and saw there was no way I could reach the hold over the roof. No way. No stinking way. I tried various shenanigans and then I said take. Although I certainly could have gone back down to the stance, there seemed no point since there was no way I could do this route. I told Steven there was no way and he asked me if I’d tried reaching the hold and I had to admit that no, I hadn’t actually tried that. So I tried it and it turned out I could reach the hold. Huh. Imagine that. It also turned out it’s kind of spooky above the roof. Grabbing that jug is the start, not the end. Good to know.
Also good to know: you can’t get down from No Glow with one rope. Go find another rap line. I learned that on my re-match.
BB Route (Dawn)
Walter Mitty (Steven)
No Glow (Dawn)
The Story of Apoplexy – A Thousand Ascents, One Lead
I thought I’d be a bit smoother on Apoplexy, given how many times I’ve followed it. I wasn’t feeling too shaky until I got up to the flake and couldn’t find the offset Alien placement I thought I was going to get. I don’t remember why now, but for some reason I had the rack on one day and was mucking about with gear there and I thought I got an Alien I felt pretty good about. The red/yellow. Todd said it sucked but I thought I’d be OK with it when the day came for me to lead the route myself.
So I started with the red/yellow and it kind of went in, but it sucked. Then I tried yellow/green and it didn’t go in at all. So then I thought maybe I was remembering the offset part wrong and tried red, yellow, and green independently. Then I gave up and resorted to opposed nuts.
In the end I liked my opposed nuts OK but it was a lot of time at a pumpy stance and it emphasized the potentially perilous position I was in. Rather than throwing in a cam quickly and doing the moves before I could think about it, I’d spent rather a lot of time thinking about it. I shook my way through the sequence. The holds I use, never big but usually positive, were nothing more than slimy pebbles. The feet seemed poorly defined. I overcripmped like mad and made it through.
Then I over-protected the easy part, under-protected the roof, and ended up way too high over a great green Alien where I suddenly remembered that this last move was more balancy than juggy. It was at that moment that some folks I knew from the gym chose to call up to tell me to have a nice day and see me later and SHUT UP!! I can’t belive they were even talking to me (and told them so the next time I saw them with both my feet on the ground).
But the move wasn’t really hard and once I’d done it there was gear again and the route was over and I was smiling. To lead Apoplexy, after all these years, felt great and to have led it clean means I never, ever have to do Apoplexy again. Unless I want to.
The Story of A New Route
The new guidebook has everyone all abuzz about rating changes and new linkups (most of which aren’t new, only previously unpublished). And then there are the new routes. Is it really possible to find a new, moderate, star-worthy route at the Gunks? I don’t think so.
Android (5.8 PG, one star) is a variation of a couple of other routes. The parts of it that are new are largely composed of vertical fields of lichen. It’s a rope drag nightmare. It has about eight feet of clean rock and that part’s unprotected. There’s more gear than you can see at first glance and I don’t think it ever gets as hard as 5.8, but it’s so amazingly not worth doing that I can’t even think of another route at the Gunks to compare it to. If it were clean, it would be 5.6 PG and still not worth doing.
Moby Dick (5.8 G, two stars), on the other hand, is worth doing if you’re going to be in the neighborhood anyway (or are that desperate for new rock). It’s a nice pitch and if you didn’t have to climb two pitches of something else to get to it, it would be well worth two stars. But since you have to climb 160 feet of something else to climb 40 feet of it, I’m not sure it’s worth the trip. If you do go up to do it, do yourself a favor and use the second pitch of Andrew to get there. Someone comfortable leading 5.8 (and therefore willing to run out Andrew a little) might even be able to run the two pitches together.
The Story of the Water Bottle
From: Dawn
To: The person who kindly posted on Gunks.com about finding a Nalgene bottle near Andrew and asking me to identify its color
Hi, I think that’s my partner Mark’s. I’m not sure I can tell you the color, but I can tell you the story which will explain why I’m not sure about the color. We were doing Silhouette starting from the Andrew ledge. There were two people above us on Andrew but I never saw them in person. They’d left their shoes and, apparently, one Nalgene bottle on the ledge. They had a nice, friendly but sad and lonely dog tied up at the bottom.
So just as I was leaving the ledge, a woman called up and asked if there were shoes up there because she was picking them up for a friend. Now this guy Mark I was climbing with, I’d never climbed with before. He had a Camelbak and I didn’t realize he also had a water bottle. Plus, it was about to rain any minute (it didn’t ever, but I thought it would). So I had collected what I thought was our gear and put it under our rope bag. When the woman looking for the shoes called up, I told her there were two pairs of shoes and two water bottles, inadvertently giving away Mark’s water bottle. Which I think was maybe greyish or bluish but honestly I don’t know.
So, long story short, he discovered his missing water bottle, I realized what I’d done, and gave him one of mine in compensation. So the one you have would technically belong to me. But I don’t think it’s worth trying to arrange an exchange. They’re not that expensive and I hate to make you go out of your way. It was my fault. So thank you for trying to return it, but please keep it. And if that’s your dog, he gets very sad down there alone but he’s sweet tempered and doesn’t bark only whimpers a little.
Dawn
Apoplexy (Dawn)
Coronary (TR)
Silhouette (Mark)
Android Variation (Dawn)
Moby Dick (Mark)
Limelight (P1: Dawn, P2: Mark)