Dawn's Climbing Blog

I’ve never given much thought to leading the crux pitch of Grand Central, despite the fact that Todd keeps telling me I should. Its rating of 5.9- PG pushes it out of reach for me: PG is a bit much for something right at my leading limit. But then we were on it again recently and the crux seemed kind of straightforward, a little pumpy but a lot of good feet, so when we find ourselves heading towards the Nears on Sunday I make the suggestion myself. “Why don’t I lead Grand Central?” By which I mean, “Why don’t I lead the crux pitch this time?”

Todd tries to give me a lot of beta but I stop him. This isn’t because I’m proud. It’s because I can never remember the beta once the actual route is in front of me. All it does is confuse me.

He leads the first pitch and I follow him, trying to judge the feel of the rock. It’s not hot today, but it’s damp, with the sort of mist in the air that often washes against the cliff line and clings to the rock. But the rock feels dry and the climbing doesn’t seem any harder than usual . There’s a sort of luxury to starting a hairy lead from off the ground. I’m only following for now.

Then I arrive at the belay and instantly I’m panicked. I’d forgotten this section right off the belay. Faced with it now, I distinctly remember that I was scared even following this part of the pitch last time around. Sure, the crux isn’t bad, but the thin hand traverse over smooth, white feet leading up to it is terrifying.

I don’t want to do this. What did I get myself into? I’m stuck now. We’re committed to the route; Todd has led this pitch oodles of times before; we never would have gotten on Grand Central in the first place if I wasn’t planning to lead it. God help me, but I’m going to have to go up there.

“It’s like 5.4,” Todd says, dismissing the entire section.

This doesn’t reassure me. As flaky as I may sometimes get, I’m pretty certain that I wasn’t shaking in my rock shoes a few months ago because I was following a 5.4.

He shifts his focus to the crux. “The blue Alien goes in vertically. You can tell it’s really good.”

Bomber blue Alien at the crux. Excellent.

“It’s like twelve feet, but you can see the finishing horizontal so you know how far you have to go.”

Twelve feet above the bomber blue Alien. Sure.

Then he says something about going right. This turns out to be important later.

So I gather up my gear and struggle to climb over the belay without stepping on his head. I put a piece in as soon as I can and then climb practically back into factor-2 fall range before reaching the horizontal that marks the start of the hand traverse. I load the crack up with small cams as I work my way across it (saving the blue Alien, of course), get to the point where I’m supposed to turn the corner around the arete and freak out a little.

Pumped from hanging out to place yet another piece, I’m not so sure I can pull the move. I scurry down and backwards, find some good feet to hang out on, and try to gather my courage.

OK. What I really did was put another piece in, but gear counts as courage, doesn’t it?

Now I’m around the corner and the real fun begins. Todd can’t see me, but we can hear each other clearly enough. I put the blue Alien in vertically. It’s a fine blue Alien, but it hasn’t stopped being blue. Above that, I place a small nut. That’s my crux gear. I look up for the finishing horizontal and spot a line of chalk a few moves over my head. I scan the surrounding holds–left, right, straight-up, chalk everywhere. What did Todd say about going too far right? Not to do it, I think. Too bad. There sure are some nice holds over there.

I glance back at the rope, see that it’s become caught in the horizontal crack back at the arete, and flick it free. Enough. Time to go.

As I climb I find myself naturally drifting right towards the better holds. I’m not really supposed to be over here, am I? But there’s a spot here where I could probably put a small cam in. And a good nut placement over there to my left. Bad stances though. So steep. Todd said it’s easier to just climb through, and it’s not so far away, that line of chalk over my head. One more move ought to get me there. Can I make it?

No.

I start downclimbing frenetically. I’m going down but the rope isn’t moving. It’s caught in that lousy horizontal on the arete again. Instead of sliding down to Todd, telling him to take in slack, it’s pooling on the ledge beneath me. I’m in a Lord Slime situation. (“What should you do if the leader says ‘rope’?” he posed on rec.climbing. Steven and I both guessed “duck.” Todd’s answer, “nothing, because my belay is always perfect” made me smile at the time. The correct answer was “take rope in.” It’s just like the follower saying “up rope,” Lord Slime explained. )

I’m climbing towards safety without getting any closer. Somehow, despite the growing fear, and through my intense concentration on what I’m actually doing, I remember that exchange on rec.climbing and I know what I should do.

“Up rope!” I command in a loud, clear voice.

Nothing happens.

“Rope!” I insist.

Still nothing.

“Take!”

I’m still above my last piece and a little worried he might pull me off, but it’s obvious that nothing else is going to work and he’s got six feet or so to yard in before he gets to me. The rope starts to move. As he’s taking out the last of the slack I stop him, “That’s enough. You don’t need to pull on me.”

“What’s going on up there?” he asks. I explain. He’s been close enough for me to explain all along. I just wasn’t rational enough.

I try to flick the rope back out of the crack but it won’t go. I’m higher than I was before, with the crack just out of reach, and I can’t downclimb this last move back to the previous stance. It was a sort of layback/high-step thing that I’m not willing to try in reverse.

I feel every bit as stuck as the rope. I can’t get down to free it and I won’t climb up until it’s free. I eye the new nut I’ve managed to add in above me. I know it’s my ticket out of here. If I would only use the draw as a hold I could lower myself back onto the ledge and fix the rope. Or bail.

I don’t want to bail and I don’t want to pull on the draw. I want to do the route. I want to do it right. I’ve become focused on the stuck rope. Only it is preventing me from getting this clean. If only it would behave, I’d sail up this thing.

With a last, angry pull I wrench it clear from the crack.

“Um, what exactly did you say about going right?” I ask Todd before I start climbing again.

“That you should,” he says. “The farther right you go, the better.”

Ah.

I move farther right this time. The route seems a little more familiar somehow. Good feet. Yes, I remember that part. In fact, the feet are good enough that I’m willing to stop and put another piece in. I don’t care if it is steep and pumpy. It just makes me feel better. I get to the line of chalk over my head. From here I can see the actual finishing horizontal, still several moves away. Good thing I didn’t know how far away it was when I started or I never would have left the ledge.

“Are you at the horizontal?” Todd calls up.

“No,” I answer. I expect him to ask what’s taking so damned long–I was supposed to climb quickly through the crux–but he just warns me that the rope is caught in the crack again. Stupid rope. I look at the gear I just placed, then at the holds above me. It’s cool. I can get there from here.

A stranger starting the crux of Grand Central (5.9-).
Photo courtesy Mike Rawdon

Later that same day

I’ve had my scare for the day so we walk down to Elder Cleavage to give Todd his turn. He’s led the route before, but not cleanly, and I’ve never been on it. There are people on the first pitch and after sitting for a bit Todd points out that the route isn’t usually busy–no point in waiting for it–so we shift focus to Main Line, a two pitch 5.8G we’ve been meaning to do for a while.

Todd asks me which pitch is harder. I tell him they’re both 5.8 but secretly I’ve been reading the guidebook. I know that the second pitch is the crux and I’m feeling good enough after Grand Central to keep it for myself.

He leads the first pitch more slowly than I’d expect on a 5.8 and with a lot more whining about bad gear than I’d expect from a G. Following him, I tend to agree. By the time I join him at the belay I’m a little nervous. If that was the easier pitch, then what’s in store for me?

There’s an easy face above the belay with a couple of horizontals leading up to a roof. So far, so good. But then . . .

“Does it look like there’s gear under that roof to you?”

“Go up and see,” Todd says. “If you don’t like it, you can downclimb.”

So I climb up to the first horizontal and place two cams, then climb to the next and place one more. I’m about halfway between Todd and the roof. I still don’t see any gear up there.

I grab the sturdy lip just over the roof and poke my head into the pod above it. There’s a crack in the back of it, flared in all directions. I can tell I won’t like any piece I manage to place there so I don’t even try. I step back down from the roof and shuffle over to the stance in the corner.

“I don’t think I should do this without gear,” I say, testing the waters.

“Neither do I.”

A relief. It’s not just my imagination this time.

“That’s like a factor one fall.”

“It’s not that bad,” he says, but I know something he doesn’t. I know that the cam closest to me isn’t very good. It’s slightly overcammed and in questionable rock.

I’m eyeing the fall back to the doubled cams in the crack below it. Down a bouncy slab. Maybe even over the roof Todd’s belay is perched above.

This is a G rated route. It’s constantly being recommended as a line that doesn’t get the traffic it deserves. I must be missing something. I step back up to the roof.

I push our biggest cam into the pod and wiggle it around. I find a placement: two cams tipped out, a hollow echo protesting every movement. I look at Todd.

“It might hold.”

He shakes his head. I take the piece out and retreat back to my corner.

“What about there?” Todd asks.

“Just a shadow.”

“How about that?”

“I could maybe get an alien in there,” I say doubtfully We’re looking at a small crack under the roof, several feet to the left of the pod. “But what’s the point? I wouldn’t trust it.”

Why must it always be this way? Why is it always one step forward and one step back. I’ve had my challenge today. This route was supposed to be fun. Casual. A diversion between harder things. We were going to run up it, rap back down, and be back at Elder Cleavage before the other folks were finished. Is there anywhere, ever a route that’s as straightforward as you expect it to be?

I’m frustrated. The thread I just started on rec.climbing is ringing in my ears. But this isn’t the same thing, not the same thing at all. This is no short fall on good gear. This is ankle breaking territory. You hope.

“What should we do?” I ask.

“I could try it.”

“Will you do it like this? If this is the gear?”

“Probably not. I’ll have to see.”

This is different from other times I’ve let Todd take over for me. This is different because I don’t want him to do it either. The anchor is fixed, nice bolts with chains. We can always just bail.

On a two pitch 5.8G.

Stupid rec.climbing thread. Stupid 5.8s that are all out to get me. Maybe I should just stick to 5.9s from now on. My record is better. I swear it is.

I slump against my stance in the corner, listless, defeated. There’s no good answer.

“You could try the move.”

Huh. I could try the move. He’s got a point. I’ve had my head over the roof but I was looking for gear, not jugs. Always the gear comes before the move. But there is no gear. I could try the move.

“Maybe you can get a jam in the pod.”

Yes, maybe I can get a jam in the pod. With a good jam I’d risk a lot. I could try the move. Maybe I could get a jam.

I traverse back to the notch in the roof and poke my head over it again. I try to wiggle my fist in where the cam went but my fist doesn’t have the reach that a cam has and I can’t get it high enough. Instead I match hands on the good lip and jack my feet up high. I can see it up there–the next real hold–and I reach for it with all my mind. I’m stable. I will not fall.

I touch the hold. My hand sinks into it, my fingers curl over the top. It’s a god damned suitcase handle. And before I have time to think of the gear and the fall and the pain, my feet are moving and I’m up over the roof, making one last long move, scared now suddenly because I’m higher than I ever meant to be.

Adrenalin carries the day. There’s no indecision in the middle–there can’t be. Only in the beginning does the mind overrule the muscle. I’m balanced over the roof, pumped and breathing heavy, but at a stance with gear. I did it.

I finish the pitch, detouring too high around a block marked with an X and ending up in even worse rock. It’s all choss around me. The gear I place is sparse and questionable, the rock is steep, but the moves are there and the end is near. I feel great.

Only later does it occur to me that I should have placed all that gear I eschewed: the nut in the flared crack, the tipped out cam in the hollow hole, the tiny alien so far away. Maybe they would have slowed me down.

As the days pass I stop feeling great and start feeling sick. It plays in my head at night and always there’s a different ending: me hanging over a huge roof with a broken leg. Todd tells me that soloing is like that. It feels good while you’re doing it, but it’s best to not look back.

But the jug was so solid. I couldn’t have fallen, couldn’t have. It was right to go on.

I think.

One of the nice things about climbing with Steven is that he’s always up for one of the moderate classics. The other nice thing is that we get a reasonably early start to the day, so we actually stand a chance of getting one of the moderate classics.

Amazingly, in three years of climbing at the Gunks, I’ve never been on Strictly from Nowhere (5.7 PG) in any form. Today I see Steven’s face peering down at me through the trees as I start up the talus. His smile tells me we’ve got it.

All the signs of yet another miserably hot and humid day are present, but at 8:30 the temperature is still low enough to climb with some confidence.

“The great thing about Strictly,” Steven says, “is that it’s the first route where you have to stop in the middle of the crux to place gear.”

Way to wig me out, Steven.

So I climb up to the corner determined to place beaucoup gear before the crux, just in case I don’t feel like stopping to place any in the middle. Slightly below the roof I run into a tricky move and back off. I have a green Alien, somewhat oddly placed, in right before the move. I’d like to place a second piece. The roof looms above me–who knows when I’ll be able to protect again. Now is the time, I tell myself.

I have it in my head (though it turns out I’m wrong) that Strictly is a G-rated route, so I’m confounded by the seeming lack of gear. I remember watching from a nearby route as a leader on Strictly kicked out a nut while climbing past it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I can see where that nut went and I’m not surprised it came out without much coaxing. I refuse to place the nut.

After a thorough scouring of my options I finally decide that my only choice is to step back up to the hard move and place something from there. So I do. Ouch. Once I get the piece in and pull my way through the move into the roof proper, I realize that that was actually the worst stance on the route. In fact, this is exactly what Steven meant when he said you had to place gear from the middle of the crux.

Steven asks me if I want to lead the second pitch as well and I shrug–whatever. “It’s like 5.4, isn’t it?”

“Nooooo,” Steven says. “I wouldn’t say that.” So it’s my lead again.

Classically, Strictly is done in three pitches. The more modern approach, now formalized by the installation of bolts directly above the roof, is to climb it in two pitches. Under the old pitch breakdown, all the difficulties were on the second pitch. The last pitch, now largely ignored, was indeed something like 5.4. But the new breakdown actually splits the hard parts between the two pitches.

As I find out.

In fact, the second pitch is loads of fun with perhaps more wild moves than the first pitch, though none quite approach the same level of difficulty. As I pull through each tier expecting the rock to smooth out above me, I find yet another layer of overhangs. The short pitch ends on a shady ledge. I belay Steven up, glad I finally got on Strictly from Nowhere and grateful to be out of the sun.

The fact that I led Walter Mitty (5.8+ PG) despite its having a reputation, if only because Todd had given it one, was made even more remarkable by the accident. No sooner had we thrown our packs down that day than a ranger loading the stretcher into the back of his truck took Todd away with him for carry-out duty.

I’m happy to say that the injuries were minor, though the circumstances were distressing: hit the ground from 30 feet up, pulling two pieces, and on a route I’ve led. There have been times when just reading about an accident has put me off leading for weeks.

So there I was, left contemplating leading a 5.8 that Todd had found thin, heady, and runout, and this back in the days when he was climbing hard and fearlessly, before I tamed him, while farther along the carriage road a person who could easily have been me, at least in my tortured imagination, was being handed person to person down the talus slope.

Add to that the fact that it was a 90/90 kind of day (90 degrees with 90% humidity) and I had every reason not to do a thin PG at close to my leading limit.

The story of my leading it is pretty anti-climactic compared to the story of my thinking about leading it in that nothing happened. As Steven has pointed out to me before, sometimes you place more gear on a PG than you would on a G. Because you’re never sure where your last piece will be, you take advantage of every opportunity. Such was the case on Walter Mitty as I put not just one, but two, pieces in at each horizontal, so much so that when I went to place gear again after the crux I found I had used almost every small to mid-size piece I was carrying.

Todd admitted that he had very likely skipped placements to find himself as run out as he was feeling that day but I didn’t skip a thing and although the gear was at my feet when I pulled on that tiny flaky edge on my way through the crux, it was a lot of gear at my feet and I felt OK about it.

Saving some gear for the part after the crux wouldn’t have been a bad idea, though.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over this one.

Ostensibly we pick the route because it’s open. Secretly I pick the route because it’s 5.9- G and therefore On The List. I haven’t told Todd yet that I’m going to lead the crux pitch, but I fully intend to.

Let me spoil the suspense by saying that the 5.9- part went very smoothly. It was just hard enough to give me a huge charge when I did it but not so hard that I had to stand there for half an hour first. Ten minutes tops. No, it wasn’t the 5.9- that got me, proving once again that 5.9- is kind of a gimme rating at the Gunks, rather it was the 5.8 first pitch.

I pull through the pumpy first few moves and lead up quickly to the tiny roof near the end of the first pitch. It’s a small roof, so small in fact that you can easily stand beneath it and still have fully half your body over it. No, the challenge of this rooflet lies not in its sharp, well-protected outthrust but in the smooth slabby rock above it.

There’s only one hold above the roof, that’s the problem. I wish I could say that it’s a height thing, that I can’t reach that solitary hold, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I can reach it all right. I just don’t like it.

If I could only crank my left foot up over the roof I think I’d be OK, but my feet aren’t quite high enough, or my hip joints aren’t quite flexible enough, to maneuver myself over the lip. I need to bounce the right foot higher, to smear it, in other words, and I so don’t want to. I keep eyeing the fall behind me.

Which is perfectly fine, in case you’re worried.

I add a third piece to the crack beneath the roof and start equalizing. I have the sinking feeling that Todd is going to come up here and pull right through this and that, worse yet, so am I once I’m not on lead. But no matter how many times I try I can’t find a sequence that guarantees results without consequences, and I’m so damned anti-consequence these days.

I lower off and let my ropegun take over. I watch him approach the roof, waiting to be shown up. What’s this? Todd has taken one peek over the roof and is now traversing right.

“There aren’t any holds up there,” he says.

“But that’s not our route,” I protest as he gets farther and farther away. Now ten feet out with no gear in, he’d better find an easier place to pull the roof. Or come back where he belongs.

Todd makes what looks like a balancy step up over the dwindling roof and traverses back left again. As he leads the remainder of the first pitch and runs it into the second pitch, I’m left scratching my head. Is the roof 5.8? Should I have gone to the right? Should I have more faith in my ability to recognize a non-5.8 roof when I see one? I assumed the route was 5.8 and I wasn’t, but perhaps it was the other way around.

Todd hasn’t placed any gear on his detour. That leaves the way clear for me to find the answers out for myself.

I climb up to the roof. Fifteen seconds later I’m over it. I think Todd is losing it.

“I don’t even see how you reached that hold,” Todd says.

“But you didn’t even try,” I argue. And neither did I really. When Todd chose to run away from the roof instead of pull it I had a brief respite from the demons in my head, but now they’re back.

Try the move. Take the chance. Try the move. Take the chance. Stop being such a weenie.

Have you ever seen a climber caught in a web of his own devising? No, I’m not being figurative. This isn’t some kind of morality play. It’s safe to keep reading.

I see Todd’s foot slip, the right foot I think later, though it’s more of a reaction than a realization at the time. Surprised because Todd never slips. Surprised because this is only 5.9. Surprised because, even though he said the move was hard, he seemed so in control until the moment he started to slide.

I brace myself for the impact. I never know whether I’ll fly or not–depends on how much drag is in the system and how hard the fall is. I duck my head, turn my non-belaying shoulder into the wall, wait for it to come.

It doesn’t.

After a moment I lift my head. Why don’t I feel him? I’m half afraid to see Todd fall past me, his rope cut, his knot undone, something drastically wrong, and half expecting him to be hanging on somehow, annoyed because I have him locked off.

What I see is him trapped in a criss-crossed hatch of slings and rope. He untwists himself and drops the last foot or so onto my belay. He has what turns out to be no worse than a stubbed toe, though inside a tight pair of Anasazi’s he wonders if it’s broken, a wicked rope burn across the back of one knee–I can see it from where I’m standing–and assorted scrapes and bruises. In terms of damage, it’s the worst fall I’ve ever seen Todd take.

And this is only the start of the epic.

Things started off well, although we should have guessed there was a good reason we’d never heard anyone mention Exit Stage Left, a 5.9 that pulls the Modern Times roof “directly”, before. Certainly the start was disgusting-looking enough–a mossy, chossy corner followed by vague wandering up to the GT ledge–but we fixed that problem by starting on Jim’s Gem, a 5.8 that starts just to the right of Exit Stage Left and crosses lines with it somewhere before the GT ledge.

I led this improvised first pitch, finding it tricky in some places and a little runout in others but never enough of either or both together to worry. Reaching the ledge I felt both good about my lead and nervous about Todd’s. The roof to the left of Modern Times, the one we were supposed to pull “directly”, is very deep. Deeper than anything I’ve ever pulled. On top of that, the nice day was going bad as isolated clouds turned into solid sky cover and thunder rumbled in the distance.

“We could just do Modern Times,” I suggested as Todd reached the belay.

“No,” he said.

Twenty minutes later Todd is hanging from the rope pulling off his shoes to see if any of his toes are broken. A raindrop hits the dust beside me.

“Do you want to come down?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

He decides to aid through. There follows a whole lot of shifting and squealing, orders of ‘take’ and orders of ‘slack’ and for all that he doesn’t seem to be any higher. I keep waiting for him to say ‘climbing’, to have reached a hold from which he can continue free, but it doesn’t happen. Just ‘take’ and ‘slack’ and him hanging in the same place.

“You want me to do it?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

It’s not that I have any illusions that I can lead something Todd can’t. It’s just that I’ve at least done a tiny bit of aid climbing, which compares favorably to his none. The people whose ineptitude we’d been monitoring on High E are all gone. There’s just us and the steadily increasing pitter patter of random raindrops.

“We could leave gear,” I suggest.

“No,” he says.

Stubborn, that’s what he is. Anxious, that’s what I am. But eventually he does get it.

When I stick my head up over the roof and see all the gear I have to laugh.

“You’re supposed to put each piece higher than the last piece,” I explain to him later, “not put a whole lot of pieces next to each other.” Of course there weren’t any other places to put gear. “What were you doing up there?” Switching to shorter and shorter runners apparently.

It has started to rain and I know I should be pulling on gear, slapping on prusiks, doing whatever I need to do to get over the roof and to his belay so we can get down. Still, I can’t help but try it once. It’s not raining on me.

I get all the gear I can reach out of the way and commit to the move. It’s about a mile’s worth of move. I’m reaching endlessly for the next horizontal, fruitlessly trying to bounce my feet beneath the roof, get a heel hook, mantle off my low hand, freeze myself with body tension. Anything.

“Grab the orange sling!” Todd yells.

Obsessed as I am with getting the move, the term “orange sling” fails to translate for me. I fall off. Oh. The orange sling. The draw. Right.

Luckily I’m high enough over the roof that I can get back on. From a hanging position I make it to the next hold, but I doubt I ever could if I had to start from beneath the roof. I make a frightening traverse over to Todd’s belay and then scramble the last twenty feet up to the top. Just as Todd hits the grass the drizzle becomes a downpour.

We have three raps to get down. By the end of the second rap, we’re as wet as we can get. We put on dry shoes, which some stranger has been kind enough to hide under our packs for us, and shuffle back to the car, beaten by a 5.9.