Rumney
“We’ll do hard stuff,” I promise. “I’ll lead it myself.”
I’m trying to talk Todd into a trip to Rumney with the Connecticut gym folks. He didn’t like Rumney the last time we went for several reasons, one of which was that the group gravitated towards walls with easy routes. To make matters worse, he’s recovering from a finger injury, having only just gotten permission from his doctor to climb again after a cortisone shot two weeks ago. I vow to be his rope gun.
“I’m going to catch big air,” I tell him, trying to get into this sport climbing thing.
To myself I cross my fingers and say, “I’m strong, I’m confident, and bolts are good,” a perversion of the trad climbing mantra I learned from Theresa on rec.climbing, “I’m strong, I’m confident, and my gear is good.”
“Nothing under 5.8,” he bargains.
“Maybe an 8 for a warmup but that’s all,” I agree. Even I can admit that 5.8 sport is pretty tame. Is it all psychological or do they really rate bolted routes that much softer?
So when Todd points to Dolt, 5.9, as our first route Saturday morning I can only smile and feel relieved. It’s not an 8, but at least I don’t have to jump straight onto a 5.10. Frankly, I don’t expect to have much trouble on it but the route is cruxy and the last crux nearly stumps me. I move up and down several times before reminding myself that I have a bolt at my waist and a mandate to learn to fly.
I commit to the move and pull it. No air time this time.
Todd pulls the rope and leads through my draws, swapping some out for two-footers to alleviate the horrible rope drag I had. (Dolt isn’t one of those straight-up sport climbs.) When he pauses near the top I feel better about almost being stymied by this 5.9. Perhaps it’s a little sandbagged compared to other routes at Rumney – real 5.9 rather than sport 5.9.
Our next route, Jolt (5.10a), confirms this. Everyone in the party agrees that Dolt was cruxier, Jolt more straightforward.
Looking for an open route in the 10 range we wander uphill into a little rock alcove where we find Hot Head (5.10c) available. As we set up a nearby climber scurries over to clean her gear from the area where we’re flaking the rope.
“It’s only 5.9 if you stop at the first anchor,” she says, “but it’s a really nice route either way.”
“First anchor?” I ask. The book says nothing about this.
She points out the anchor at the top of the off-vertical wall. Yes, I’ve seen that. Then her finger drifts out right along the gargantuan roof that caps the wall. Oh. I hadn’t seen that.
“You can go to the top if you want,” I tell Todd. “I may just stop at that first anchor.” Sure, I was going to challenge myself this weekend, but a 10c roof? I don’t think so.
The lower part isn’t really all that inspiring. The crux seems to be deciding whether to climb to the left of the bolts or the right of the bolts and to make a fair judgement as to when you’ve crossed onto the 5.7 route next door. When I almost step on someone else’s hand I realize I’ve drifted too far to the left and drift over to the right for a while.
I reach the first set of anchors without ever having felt particularly challenged and clip both bolts. Am I going up or down? I wish I could clip the next bolt, which is a long stinking ways away at the lip of the roof. There aren’t even any holds here. There’s the horizontal crack where the slab meets the short head wall. That’s where I am now. Then there’s another horizontal crack where the short head wall becomes the roof. That’s about 10 feet away. Well, six. Well, four maybe. Whatever. I still can’t reach it.
Ah, the undercling. Underclings are truly amazing things. Using the crack as a bomber undercling for one hand I manage to get my other hand into the higher crack. From there I make a dizzying over the shoulder clip, looking for all the world like someone in the mags with one hand and one foot on and my body splayed out half horizontally.
I’m safe but kind of committed. Now that I’ve clipped the bolt I really have to try this roof. For one thing, I don’t think I can get down. I throw one hand over the roof, find something semi-decent, and start to pull up on it. I’ll never do it. I don’t have the strength. The clock is ticking. Then something amazing happens. One of my feet goes up to the roof and starts to heel hook. It’s working! I’m being pulled up. I can reach the next hold.
I’ve never heel hooked on lead before. Truthfully, I’ve never convincingly heel hooked anywhere before, not even in the gym. Usually the foot goes up because someone on the ground told it to and then it wonders what it’s doing up there and if it wouldn’t perhaps be of more use down below where feet belong. But today my right foot is a hero.
The route isn’t over yet. Even with both hands over the roof I’ve got some pulling to do. The heel hooked foot gets launched the rest of the way over the roof into a whole-leg scum where I roll/mantle onto it. I’m 5′ 4″ of person stuffed into a 2 foot space. Suddenly I’m glad I’m not a 6′ person. Somehow I squiggle around until I can clip the bolt, and then the next, as I crab-walk across the claustrophobic crawl space, around the corner, and into the open.
Waahooo!
“That was the best thing I ever led,” I say the moment my feet hit the ground. I’m full of myself, brimming over with pride. Luckily for me, one of our party, Gary, is equally excited by my feats of strength.
“I wish I’d had a camera,” he keeps saying. “That heel hook was something.” I’m deeply appreciative of how often he repeats this sentiment throughout the weekend. It’s much nicer to bask than to brag but my success on Hot Head is never far from my mind.
Todd chooses to toprope it. “It’s the only way we’ll get the draws off,” he says. Hmmmm. “If I come off here you may have to lower me all the way down,” he warns as he gets ready to start the roof sequence.
“OK,” I say. I’d suffer any inconvenience, I’d climb the route again myself, to see him fall off this. Sadly, he doesn’t, seeming to find the crab walk harder than the roof and eschewing my heel hook move altogether.
Todd leads Chicken Parts (5.10a) and I get back at him by toproping it instead of pulling the rope. Then Todd and Barry play on a nearby 5.11d while I take a break. The rest of our party has moved on to Jimmy Cliff so we join them. There we find a line of who knows how many people waiting to either toprope or lead Lonesome Dove, a classic 10a arete route. And those are only the people in our own party.
Me on Chicken Parts (5.10a) at RumneyI write Lonesome Dove off as hopeless and look through the guidebook for another 10 in the area. One of them, a 5.10c, strikes me as being my type of climbing from the description but it’s also short. “Short” was another one of Todd’s complaints from our last trip to Rumney so I decide to try Hammond Organ (5.10d) instead.
Now, I’ve never led a 5.10d cleanly. In fact, there are precious few 5.10d’s I’ve ever climbed cleanly, never mind on a first attempt. But I promised myself I’d take some falls this weekend and the lower bolts are reassuringly close together. The upper bolts, where the angle eases off, are another matter.
“I wish I knew if that was 5.4 runout, which is OK, or 5.8 runout, which is going to freak me out,” I mutter to someone. I don’t get an answer. Dan will only say that he climbed it cleanly once and Lisa warns me about reach problems for the bolts.
“Maybe Todd should lead it if his reach is longer,” she says.
“We have exactly the same reach,” he insists, which isn’t true. Then he relents. “I’ll lead it if you want,” he offers.
“No, no. It’s my turn,” I say. The trick with this route is that the guidebook says “the easiest climbing is to the right of the bolts. Climbed directly, it’s 5.11.” So I figure that if my reach isn’t long enough I’ll simply have to move onto 5.11 ground to clip. I can hang from a 5.11 clipping hold, can’t I? I think I can. But can I clip from a 5.11 clipping hold? Well, we’ll find out.
You have to climb up a ladder to get to the start of the route. “Ladder” is the term the book uses. I’d call it “nailed together twigs about to slide enmass down the slab.”
“Keep your feet over the nails,” Todd yells up. Really? The wood flexes out there. My feet are happier dead center between the nails. Soloing this ladder is the scariest thing I’ve done all day.
Dan agrees with Todd. OK. I try to keep my feet over the nails. I’m wishing we could have stick clipped the first bolt so that I’d be protected from this approach. The so-called ladder ends and I make the transition to climbing a tied off log with notches cut for holds. This is a little better as long as you believe that the log is going to stay tied in place.
When I get to real rock, I feel a lot safer. I change my shoes and climb onto the top of the block. Yes, I can clip from here. That was my main concern. I’m so far off the ground already I’m not willing to do anything dicey to make that first clip.
I make a few moves, staying pretty much directly in the bolt line because that’s where the holds seem to be.
“It would be good if you could clip from there,” Todd says. It doesn’t look feasible but I give it the old college try. Nope. At least four inches too short. I can see what he means though. The route is starting to trend right. I move my left foot up a little, press my right foot against a bump up at my waist, and clip the bolt mid move, then step back down and clip the rope.
“Good,” Todd says. “Nice going, Dawn,” I hear Lisa and Dan echo.
I climb some more until I’m nearly level with the next bolt. I reach left with a draw but can’t snag it. Frustrated, I eye the route above me. In one more move I’ll have my hands on that ledge, then I’ll be up and standing on it and I’ll have another bolt to clip. I briefly consider skipping this bolt but fear that I won’t be able to clip the next one either dissuades me.
Remembering my plan to climb the 5.11 if I need to, I cautiously move slightly left and am just able to snag the bolt without taking my right hand off the jug it refuses to relinquish.
“Good,” Todd says again. Nothing from Lisa and Dan.
As soon as I start the mantle onto the ledge I’m glad I didn’t skip that bolt. It’s a slightly rounded ledge with no crack in the back or jug above to help me pull onto it. Fortunately, once I’m there I am able to clip the next bolt.
I almost start crying right then and there because I’m safe. I only have to climb the slab above, where the distance between bolts assures me that the climbing is easier.
Not.
This isn’t runout 5.4. It isn’t even runout 5.8. This is runout 5.10 and it sucks. At least I’m climbing the bolted line a little more directly, I guess. I’ve got a bolt at my feet and a lowering climber to my right assuring a rising climber that she’s perfectly safe.
“You’re on toprope,” she says. “You can’t get hurt.”
I viciously want to tell her to shut up. I’m not on toprope. I can get hurt. “Stop mocking me,” I feel like screaming. No, it’s not that. It’s just that I want quiet. I want to be in my own space where I’m concentrating but not thinking, where the fear has gone away, where it’s only me and this small chunk of rock and the challenge it imposes on me, where falls are harmless because they aren’t going to happen.
I make each move individually, a little problem to solve. The fear is draining away. The bolts are only about 15 feet apart and the slab isn’t so low angle that I’m going to bounce down it. Evaluate the fall, accept it, then forget it.
Still, it is with great relief that I finally clip the anchors and lower off.
“I’m trying to decide if I should pull the rope,” Todd says.
I shake my head. “No one else needs to lead that route,” I say. I’m thinking more of the shaky ladder start than anything else but Todd has enough trouble unclipping to let me know that it wasn’t just my wingspan that made leading that route hard. In fact, looking at the pendulums he’s facing, I realize that I should have cleaned the draws on the way down.
Dan and Lisa wander back in from around the corner.
“We couldn’t watch,” Lisa tells me. “I can’t believe you got those bolts clipped.”
I’m surprised they didn’t warn me away from the route more strongly if they were really that worried, but I’m glad they didn’t.
We leave our rope up on Hammond Organ and go do Things as They Are which Lisa has put a rope on. Coincidentally, this is the 10c I’d had my eye on. It looks great, feels awful. I toprope it cleanly by the skin of my teeth and come down glad I led the 10d instead.
By the time Sunday rolls around, I haven’t taken a single lead fall. I watch Todd lead Holderness Arete (10b). He takes a long time at the crux before finally committing to some wildly powerful moves. I debate whether or not to pull the rope.
Barry on Holderness Arete (5.10b) at Rumney “I’m not saying you will fall . . ., ” Todd says.
It’s a clean fall, I tell myself, and bravely pull the rope. Once at the crux, I summon up all my conviction and everything I learned from watching Todd do it and swing around the corner into oblivion. Several pumpy moves later I find a bolt at my right hand and clip it. A few more moves and I’m standing at a no hands rest. I guess falling just isn’t in the cards for me this weekend.
Lisa says she’s never seen me climbing better. Todd suggests it’s the ten pounds I’ve lost. I mumble something about liking the rock at Rumney, but I think it’s really the bolts. Leading on bolts I have just enough fear to summon up my last ounce of strength to stay on, but not so much fear that I come off just from thinking about it.
Todd on Niki’s Crack (5.11d)
Would you date this man? Todd in a fashionable fur hat at the Rumney campground.
Barry on Niki’s Crack (5.11d) at RumneyCannon
I trudge up the seemingly endless approach listening to Ben talk about which bits of which routes are now which piles of rubble, thinking that this is a little ironic considering that we’re all here today because Ben was trying to convince me that Cannon is perfectly safe.
We’re off to face my Moby Dick. I mean, we’re off to face Moby Grape. If I can lead 10d on bolts, then surely I can lead 5.8 on gear without having a panic attack, but I make no promises except to look at Reppy’s Crack when I get there.
“It looks like Klahanie Crack,” I say to Todd with relief, referring to a 5.7 I led at Squamish. Indeed, the low angle continuous crack is a friendly looking sight.
“If you lead it, you’re going to have to run it out a little,” he says.
“Why?” It’s crack all the way. Why couldn’t I sew it up?
Todd thinks it’s too big and that we don’t have enough gear in that size. Then why did we bring a 3 1/2 instead of a second #2? I argue. Besides, it doesn’t look that wide.
Ben and Dorcas go first. Ben looks pretty smooth but Dorcas struggles a little above the pod. Maybe Todd’s right. Maybe it is a bit wide.
“I know I could do it,” I say. Then I graciously give him the lead. Todd sails up it without hardly placing gear at all and then it’s my turn. Man, do my feet hurt. The foot jams are great but there’s something making them particularly painful today. I hit the pod and slither through it. There, that was supposed to be the crux and I haven’t done anything I couldn’t have led yet. A couple of elbow jams, sure, but not so bad.
And then comes the wide part. Not so wide, just off-hands for me. Yes, I’d have wanted a lot of gear there. And no, we weren’t carrying enough of it. Even though I don’t fall, I’m kind of glad I let Todd have this one.
The way Moby Grape stacks up, assuming you run the first two pitches together like pretty much everyone does, all the hard pitches go to the same person. Todd. Ha!
“You’re leading the triangle roof pitch,” Todd says when I hit the first belay.
“Why?”
“Because this one’s too easy for you.”
Sure enough, the second pitch is a 4th class scramble, though I keep seeing more interesting pieces of climbing hanging around. I even climb a short boulder with an off-width crack just to prove I can.
Todd re-leading the second pitch of Moby Grape to free our stuck rap rope“I went more to the left,” Dorcas shouts down. How do I explain that maybe if I find some harder climbing on this pitch, Todd will relent and I won’t have to lead the Triangle Roof. Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe I’m just feeling strong and ready to move. Maybe I’m actually looking for a challenge instead of hiding from it.
I watch Ben lead the Triangle Roof. He’s a pretty tall guy and he’s not just blowing over it. He does have gear in up high though. I can do that. He pulls through it without falling and I start getting ready to bring Todd up and take my turn.
My turn. I put a piece in over the roof. It’s that stinking #2 size, which we only have one of, and which isn’t a happy size for me to jam to begin with. There’s a not-too-bad looking pin at my feet but I wouldn’t want to go bouncing down the slab so that it could catch me.
“I can only get one piece in,” I tell Todd. I know the piece is good. I’d be happy with one bolt. Why can’t I be happy with one cam?
The funny thing about all this lead head garbage that I’ve been going through is that it mostly seems to revolve around the image of gear pulling. This is without cause, in that I’ve only ever had once piece pull and that was a piece I put in blindly and then climbed up and down past and hung on about a half a dozen times without ever even stopping to look at it and then took a short but high fall factor fall onto, so let’s just say that I pretty much deserved to have that one pull. And anyway, that happened after the lead head thing started.
So why am I so afraid my gear is going to pull? I guess because of how often the phrase “pulled a piece” appears in accident reports. I know that the #2 Camalot I have over the roof is a good piece. But didn’t the leaders in those accident reports know that their pieces were good too? I’m no better than anyone else. Sooner or later a piece I’m trusting is going to let me down. It’s like a time bomb. Will it be this piece?
“Put one in down lower,” Todd suggests. Excellent idea. Below the roof the crack is smaller and I’m able to fit something else in. Now I can face the roof with my fear under control.
My first attempt at pulling the roof is a balk but on the second attempt I give up on jamming it, grab the lip of the crack, and layback for all I’m worth.
I don’t layback on lead any more than I heel hook. My worry is: how do you stop laybacking? Sure enough, I’m mostly over the roof, pumped, out of wall to press my feet against below me, with no way out. Safe fall. Don’t want to take it. My knee is pressing against something sharp – the point of the triangle. That’s it! I hook my entire knee over the point and I’m out of the layback.
I pull over the roof to cheers and flashbulbs, feeling like a hero. 5.8 trad; 5.10c sport. Isn’t it all the same?
Me safely over the Triangle Roof on the third pitch of Moby Grape at CannonIn order to make sure that Todd gets the Fickle Finger of Fate pitch, I lead the next pitch as well. This is a purely enjoyable one with lots of interesting flakes, corners, and cracks up a series of detached-ish blocks, but don’t think about that part.
I’ve put in a piece and am just about to cruise up an interesting looking cracked block to the ledge when Ben calls me. I’m so absorbed in enjoying this lead that I didn’t even know they were up there. He warns me that I’m about to go too high and points out where I’m supposed to traverse right.
“Are you sure?” I ask repeatedly, first as I’m scoping it out and then as I’m halfway through it with one seriously thin Alien-protected move to make before I can reach this evil but bomber looking pointed flake. He’s sure.
“It’s a yellow Alien,” I tell myself, “which is almost a real cam.” I’d feel better if I weren’t going to swing onto it. Where’s my last piece? Not so bad. A Camalot Junior (love those guys) back in the corner. I’ll live. I do.
After all of that, it’s Todd’s turn. The funny thing is that the Fickle Finger of Fate is like ten feet tall. We could see it from the base of the route. I thought it would be huge. But it’s almost as though it hasn’t gotten any bigger as we’ve approached it and now that we’re here, it’s outright tiny.
Todd pulling over the Fickle Finger of Fate on Moby Grape at CannonOK, it’s a tiny, horrible off-width. Todd takes the left side and, lo and behold, the 3.5″ cam goes in, justifying our having dragged it up a talus field and 5 pitches. Todd makes quick work of the Finger and I follow cursing my pack and thinking that maybe I’d have preferred the right side, which Ben and Dorcas took.
This is where we get off. Through a convoluted series of negotiations we’ve all agreed to rap off from above the Finger. Unfortunately, it turns out that there’s not a fixed anchor here, but since we’ve left our approach shoes at the base we’re pretty committed to rapping.
I won’t describe the entire escapade. Suffice it to say that it involved leaving stuff behind and re-leading two pitches and that you should probably just save yourself some aggravation and walk off (although we did beat the party that had been above us back to the cars).
Over dinner Dorcas and Ben mention that they were surprised to see me coming over the Triangle Roof and I say, “aw shucks, I had gear at my waist.” Now if I could just get to the point where gear at my waist is the same thing as a bolt at my waist, if I could tap into the good side of fear when I’m trad climbing, like I can when I’m sport climbing, I’d have this whole leading thing wrapped up. I’m not there yet but I think I got a little bit closer this weekend.
