Circle of Comfort

Posted by & filed under Leavenworth WA.

Kellie and Rolf were great hosts and they didn’t mean to make me sad, but I was jealous of them and what they had. What they don’t have is a lot of stuff like cell phones, mattresses, cars from this decade, or enough chairs to go around. What they do have is a relationship that seems both simple and supportive.

And why do I not have a wild and unconventional guy like Rolf, someone who doesn’t need me to be his wife or anyone’s mother? It’s not because–a thought that almost has me ready to move–guys like him live in the Pacific Northwest instead of the Northeast. It’s because I’d neither attract nor deserve a guy like Rolf even if one happened to be laying around. Because I’m not Kellie.

I don’t know if I’ve told this story before. When I first started climbing, reading rec.climbing assiduously, I felt almost immediately that I wanted to climb multi-pitch trad but no one I knew at the gym ever climbed multi-pitch trad. So I thought maybe I’d go out to Yosemite and climb with Karl Baba there. He was always trying to tempt people. Trouble was that I had a show coming up and then it would too late in the year, and next spring I’d already committed to a show and . . .

“You won’t go to Yosemite,” my friend Gary said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the sort of thing you do.”

I’ll always owe Gary for that, because as soon as he said it I knew it was true, and I knew I couldn’t let it continue to be true, not if I was going to be a climber. I had a very constricted circle of comfort, one that was growing smaller all the time. I ate the same foods at the same restaraunts with the same friends. I helped out at the same community theater doing the same jobs. I lived in the same place, worked at the same place. I hated change and newness and uncertainty, and especially I hated traveling. I was uncomfortable anytime I wasn’t exactly home.

Home was a comfort, but climbing was a flat-out need, so the circle was going to have to expand. Immediately following that conversation with Gary I made some calls and shuffled some committments and about ten days later I was in Yosemite climbing my first multi-pitch trad and never looking back. But I won’t pretend it wasn’t a struggle. Todd especially could tell you how anxiously pissy I could be after a few days in a new place. Always the circle was expanding, but stretching hurts.

I spent last week in Seattle. I have family and friends there and I work from home so my job can go with me. I made a spur of the moment decision and bought plane tickets and completely failed to notify people I was coming or make concrete arrangements to do anything except climb that weekend with Kellie. I rented a car and drove myself around Seattle without directions, figuring it was basically a grid. I ran without a plan, letting my feet find new places. I called people and said, “Hey, I’m here,” and somehow we found ways to get together in my limited time. When the weather forecast ruled out Squamish, I was pleased to have the chance to climb somewhere new. I flowed. I was comfortable flowing, comfortable traveling, comfortable running and driving and climbing the ground in front of me.

I’m so much better these days. My circle is so wide and still growing. And I’m still not Kellie, may never be. I like reassurance and support–getting more than giving. I keep my TV plugged in and my cell phone on and I’d rather sleep in my own bed than anywhere in the world. I hike faster but still whine about not liking it. I lead harder but still yearn for validation and rescue while I’m doing it. I’m only partly unconventional. I only want, perhaps, to not have to do for someone without being anywhere near the place where I don’t need someone to do for me. I’ve come from a rigidly narrow corridor of selfishness, trying to reach out for something open and free, based on trust and respect not neediness and fear.

Not there yet. Long road. Keep trekking.

Saturday
Castle Rock:
The Fault, 5.6 (Kellie)
Catapult, 5.8 (Dawn)
Canary, 5.8 (P1 & 2: Dawn)

Sunday
Fish Wall:
Crab Cakes, 5.8+ (Dawn)
Virgin Sturgeon, 5.8+ (Dawn)
Sardine Routine, 5.9 (Dawn)

Duty Dome, Off Duty area:
Straight Street, 5.9 (P1: Dawn; P2: Kellie)
Off Duty, 5.10a (Dawn)
Peckin’ Time, 5.8 (Dawn)

Sport v. Trad

Posted by & filed under Rumney.

Our rental car in Tuolumne was an automatic, as most rental cars in the US are. I’ve always driven a standard, from my first car when I had no choice (cheaper) through my most recent car when the dealer had to go out of his way to find the model I wanted without the automatic option. Driving a standard feels more like driving. I’m running the show and it takes some skill and thought. Often my driving is “automatic” despite my going through the motions of shifting, but there are times when it flows, when the car and the road and I are moving together.

Then in Tuolumne, I have to admit, the automatic felt pretty good. It was lazy and easy, especially in traffic, and it worked just as well even if the gear changes were a little jerky going uphill. I didn’t have to get a feel for the car. I could just get in and take my foot off the brake, and off we went. What do I go through all that trouble for?

Climbers are seeing the parallel from a mile away, I know.

Sport climbing is quick and easy. You aren’t bogged down in technicalities. It moves fast. But I’m not, somehow, as engaged. It’s hard for me to see the difference between sport leading and just taking a toprope on something (although I admit to plenty of panicky “takes” where I might have pulled through on TR). I dutifully pull the rope and lead back through my partner’s draws and I take my turn hanging the draws, but the feeling is hollow compared to leading on gear, knowing your second will follow behind.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s fun! It’s challenging yet relaxing and you climb a ton of stuff and are almost never scared. Easy approaches, no descents, little in the way of route-finding and less in the way of dithering–sport climbing has all the ingredients for a pleasant day of climbing. So why am I at the Gunks every weekend and Rumney once a year?

It’s not just the longer drive. It’s not just that I’m not good enough to be a sport climber–my arms are telling me today that if I did this more often, I’d be strong enough to do it better. It’s not just that the trad world indoctrinated me first and that’s where my oldest partners and strongest memories are. It’s that when I’m sport climbing I’m climbing, but I’m not driving.

Saturday with Dan and Nate:
Bolt Line, 5.8
Holderness Arete, 10b
Rhinobuckets, 10a
Bonehead Roof, 10c
White Rhino, 11c
Bullwinkle Craters, 11b
Debbie Does CPR, 11a
Son of Sammy, 5.8

Sunday with Dan, Nate, and Derek:
10a?
Dog Biscuit, 10c
Tool Time, 10d
Three Easy Pieces, 11a
Squall, 10d
Murk Trench, 10a
Rack for Sale, 5.7
Dirty Dozen, 10d

Making Memories

Posted by & filed under Tuolumne.

The thought of climbing at Tuolumne made me nervous, and so did the thought of seeing Cathy again. About Tuolumne, there are stories–runout slabs, long approaches, afternoon thunderstorms. About Cathy, there are also stories–stories that are part of my personal mythology; stories that helped form the adult me.

Cathy and I were the ultimate co-adventurers in the years before I got sane and sensible and financially responsible and healthy. I suppose a lot of it was inadvisable (and some of it had lasting consequences), but we were living. Not making shopping lists or doing laundry; not worrying about calories counts or interest rates; not slogging towards Friday or sitting in traffic. We were in that thing called the moment.

Our families suspected we were a bad influence on each other, but it was both healthier and more co-dependent than that. Together we aspired to more, risked more, tried more. Together, in complementary symbiosis, we reached further. Unfortunately what we were reaching for in complementary symbiosis was not sane or sensible or financially responsible or healthy.

Many, many years later–let’s call it 25–I’m sitting in a diner in the Adirondacks making faces at another grey, misty day out the window and idly checking my email. I have a Facebook request from Cathy, which doesn’t surprise me. Facebook is swell that way. What surprises me is the thumb-sized thumbnail next to her name.

“Is that person rappelling?” I ask Steven, passing him my Blackberry. How can Cathy and I, once so similar and then so separated, have ended up in the same place? Not only is Cathy a climber, but she’s going to be, briefly, in Tuolumne while I’m there. Climbing is a small, small world. It seems too small to hold me and Cathy and all of our past.

About Tuolumne, I have my doubts. I don’t know why I’ve elected to go to a place that seems so me-unfriendly. I don’t like slabs, runouts, approaches, or altitude. I have mixed feelings about long routes, liking them only when they’re over. But one of us–me or Brien–said Tuolumne and the other of us said, “Cool, I’ve never been there,” and then plane tickets were bought and now I’m committed and the guidebook is as ugly as I always feared it would be.

In the airport Brien and I page through the recommendations of friends and match them up to descriptions with words like “down-lead” and “wide crack” and “tricky route finding” and come up with a short list of potentially doable routes.

“I didn’t think I’d like Squamish,” I say with quavering hope. “You never know.”

You never know.

On the way into Tuolumne, we stop at Cathy’s house. I think that I’d have recognized her if I’d run into her at a crag, and how weird would that have been? She serves us a great lunch and we exchange gossip and hug each other goodbye. I say I’ll try to find a way to let her know where we’ll be climbing on Friday, but I’m already thinking more about the climbing than about seeing her. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It was good to see her, and then she’s gone again.

Tuolumne gets better every day. The first day we keep it casual on easily accessible single-pitch slabs. Only our last route of the day–a 5.7 crack festooned with the famous Tuolumne knobs–forecasts the fun we’re going to have. It turns out that the slabs are mostly at the tops of the routes and now that we’ve done 5.6 and 5.7 runout slab, we know we can deal with it when it happens.


A brief non-slab section on the Bunny Slopes

The second day we hike out to Cathedral and find out what Tuolumne climbing is really about. It’s a two hour hike in to a beautiful white formation, Gunks-like in that it’s both steep and heavily featured. The climbing is easy, except for the effects of altitude, and the views are spectacular. We make it out and up and down and back without any epics and are starting to feel at home here.


The gleaming face of Cathedral Peak’s South Buttress


Surfing the winds on the summit

The climbing at Tuolumne turns out to be very hospitable. Tuolumne itself turns out to be completely inhospitable. There’s no coffee and there’s no food. There’s a grill that’s open from 8 to 5, times that climbers are otherwise occupied. Then there are two “lodges” which require reservations for dinner and don’t open for breakfast until 7:30. After our Cathedral day we’re lucky to get in on the last dinner seating which doesn’t put food in front of us until after eight. Having eaten nothing but a PB&J and a Fruit & Nut bar all day, I’m about to gnaw somebody’s arm off.

Our campsite is shady, which is another word for freezing. It’s also heavily populated with bears. Bears are not the abstraction I thought they’d be. From before sundown until after sunup, they’re a present reality. Brien and I are too tired to sit around a campfire yelling at bears, so we retire to our tents almost as soon as we’re done eating. Everyone else has time to yell at the bears.

“Bear! Bear!” is the constant refrain, followed by banging and clanging and car alarms and what sounds, sometimes, like gun shots. The bear eventually moves over to the other side of the campground and the cacophony starts again. Huddled inside all the layers I brought with me, serenaded by screams of “Bear!”, it would be hard to sleep if I weren’t so tired.

The third day we wisely start with a real breakfast and make 7:15 dinner reservations before leaving the campground. We then go climb the best route of the trip: West Crack. That night we eat a large, magnificent dinner, prompting me to declare, as I’m offered a second serving of soup, that “7:15 rules!” We’re really getting the hang of this Tuolumne thing. Plan your meals and let the climbing fall where it may. It’s all good.


The Summit of Daff Dome after climbing West Crack with Fairview in the background

Thursday is South Crack and I finally get my 5.9 lead. Atop another monolithic dome, soaking in another magnificent view, Brien and I plot our line of descent. It’s become hard to be worried here. We haven’t been lost or scared or climbed any off-widths. Every route starts with a crux. Then you do some number of pitches at a slightly easier grade followed by some number of exit pitches at a much easier grade. The double ropes we’ve brought with us turn out to be more of a hindrance than a necessity. Retreating seems unlikely when, if you’ve left the ground, all the difficulties are behind you. And since the descents are largely walk-offs, the extra rope is used only for single pitch cragging.


After the crux first pitch of the direct start to South Crack


From the summit of Stately Pleasure Dome


Brien splashing in Lake Tenaya which looked as beautifully cool from the top of Stately Pleasure Dome as it turned out to be

I’m mindful of my promise to let Cathy know where we’ll be climbing on Friday and we’ve done enough hanging belays that our toes are screaming. Brien agrees to a cragging day so we rope in Miriam and I call Cathy and let her know where we’ll be. In the afternoon we head up to Medlicott Dome, expecting her to meet us there. For the first time we get lost, but only temporarily. By the time we get to the climbing, Cathy’s there too. I lead the first pitch of a 5.8 and she follows me.


Cathy following D’Oh at Medlicott Dome


Cathy and I rapping the first pitch of Shagadelic

We’re climbers, so we speak a common language. I can say “off belay” to anyone and she’ll know what I mean for her to do. We make quick work of the long pitch. I find it indescribably odd to be climbing with this reincarnation of a junior high school spirit. There are times when she’ll say or do something and it’s so exactly Cathy. She says the same about me. But I still don’t think we’ve reconnected. It’s still a meeting of two people who used to be friends.

Then we go bear hunting.

Everyone has seen a bear except me. I’ve heard them gallop past the tent and once I woke up and realized that the bear box currently being gnawed and clawed was ours, but I was too sleepy to roll over and poke my head out the tent flap. I wasn’t afraid of the bears exactly, but I didn’t really want to meet one alone in the middle of the night. Peeing in the deepest of darks near my tent, I’d wonder how I’d react if, pants around my ankles, I found myself staring back at a bear staring back at me. I left my headlamp off.

“How are you going to see a bear if you don’t go look for one?” Cathy asks me when the banging and wailing and cries of “Bear!” start up on the far side of her campground Friday night. We walk towards the noise, following it as it follows the bear around the campground. Then we’re at the edge of the campground and the bear is a fast-moving shadow barely illuminated by our headlamps, glimpsed quickly and lost. We keep tracking him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t follow him into the woods,” one of us says, but both of us keep moving forward, mentally holding hands, and then the bear is a blur again, this time steering back towards a family of campers. We form an uneasy triangle: the bear, the campers, and us. Cathy and I edge closer to the campers who are watching us suspiciously. “Don’t look at us,” I say, “look at the bear.” I point to their truck and all headlamps swing in that direction and there he is: staring back at us staring back at him.

I don’t know if anyone shouts or bangs. If they do, I don’t hear them. Cathy and I are as close as we’ve ever been and the bear is every adventure we’ve ever had. Slowly he turns and leaves, and then Cathy and I turn and leave. Not a big bear, she tells me, probably its first year fending for itself, unexpectedly multi-colored, like a brown and tan panda. I feel like giggling. Maybe I am.

I am sane and sensible and financially responsible and healthy, but still alive and longing for adventure. Climbing has replaced trouble-making and other partners have replaced Cathy, but I wonder what heights we could have achieved together. With her, it feels safe to be risky, like it does with your favorite belayer and good gear at your waist and a tricky crux you know you can pull. It’s just the right amount of unsettled.

One day when we were thirteen and having a rest day from trouble-making, I commented that there are days when you sit around talking about what you’ve done and days when you do the things you’ll talk about later. Like Cathy, Tuolumne will always be with me.

Bear!


Cautiously enjoying the view from Taft Point


El Cap, me, Natasha, and Miriam

Monday
Bunny Slopes
Wild in the Streaks, 5.7 (Dawn)
Black Diamond, 5.9 (TR)
Biscuit and Gravy, 5.8 (Brien)
Hot Crossed Buns, 5.6 (Miriam)
Low Profile Dome
Black Widow P1, 5.7 (Dawn)

Tuesday
Cathedral Peak, variation C, 5.7 (P1/2, 4, 6: Dawn; P3, 5: Brien)

Wednesday
Daff Dome
West Crack, 5.9 (P1, 4: Brien); P2, 3, 5: Dawn)
Guide Cracks, 5.8 LB (Dawn)

Thursday
Stately Pleasure Dome
South Crack Direct Start, 5.9 (P1, 3, 5: Dawn; P2, 4, 6: Brien)

Friday
Daff Dome
Guide Cracks, 5.5 (Brien)
Guide Cracks, 5.7 (Dawn)
Guide Cracks, 5.8 (Brien)

Medlicott Dome
D’Oh, 5.7 (Dawn)
Shagadelic P1, 5.7 (Dawn)

*These photos were all taken with Brien’s camera.

Trashcan redux

Posted by & filed under Gunks.

There’s really not much to say in this post because we climbed one route on TR in the drizzle. It was Trashcan Overhang which I haven’t been on in quite some time. I learned that I’m stronger than I used to be (I can survive having my feet cut loose now) and that my new shoes don’t heel hook any better than my old ones. I was pleased to have made the right choice for once (it never got any nicer after we bailed) and glad to see Steven even if we weren’t climbing. I’ve become sentimentally attached to the phrase, “It was good to see you.”

I wish I’d climbed on Saturday and run on Sunday but I got to see a good show and good friends Saturday night and if Saturday would have been a nice day to climb, well, it was a nice day to run too. It was a lovely weekend.

Chanelling the Children

Posted by & filed under Gunks.

To the climbing world, I’m Tradgirl, but to three boys and a girl under the age of six, I’m Aunt Dawn. I’m the Aunt who’ll chase you in endless kitchen/dining room/living room loops with a sock on my hand trying to “get your nose” or run pell-mell downhill with two kids jammed into a jogging stroller urging me to “run faster, Aunt Dawn!”

My non-climbing friends (and sometimes my climbing friends too) wonder why I’m not making frequent trips to the emergency room, but I wonder why those kids don’t. “Stay in the middle,” I remind the littler ones as I bounce as high as I can on a trampoline sans net trying to knock them over. You can see how safety conscious I am: In the middle they fall on top of each other, but at least they don’t bounce over the edge.

Most kids are inappropriately fearless, but these are some adrenalin-driven children, especially if Aunt Dawn is involved. They trust me like you trust your favorite belayer. If I flip one upside down, hold him by his ankles, spin him like a helicopter, and toss him on the couch, then immediately there’s a semi-circle of tiny tots in front of me. “Aunt Dawn? Can you do that to me?” Shortly followed by round two: “Do it again!”

Kiana at two and a half is both the youngest and the only girl, but that just makes her more determined to keep up. “I can do it,” she insists. In that regard, she’s a bit like her Aunt Dawn, only sweet, outgoing, and optimistic. “It’s my favorite,” she’ll assert convincingly about anything you have and she wants, including foods she hasn’t tried before. In her defense, she came back for seconds on that purple cabbage.

I’d like to be so fearless and adventurous again. Even with one of my most trusted belayers holding the other end of the rope, I get scared. “Falling, falling, falling,” I cried in the endless milliseconds it took to get caught by a blue Alien on Dirty Gerdie. Not, “wheee!” Not, “Do it again!” Not, “That’s my favorite.” But afterwards, feeling shaken and mad and scared and disappointed all at once, I told Todd, “I don’t want to not be able to do it.” That was Kiana.

I heard her voice when I said it and I did do it–for her, for the girl I used to be. “When I’m a boy I can,” Kiana told me after her mother nixed some activity or other. Kiana will grow up. Never to be a boy, but I hope to be a woman who knows she doesn’t need to be a boy and who’s always ready to “do it again!”

Boldville, 5.8 (Dawn)
Unsung Hero P1, 10a (Todd)
Blistered Toe Direct, 5.9+ (Dawn)
Retribution, 10b (Todd)
Red Cabbage, 5.9 (Dawn)
Dirty Gerdie, 8+ (Dawn)

Worth it

Posted by & filed under Gunks.

Is it worth it to drive two hours each way to climb three pitches you’ve climbed before? What if you’re showing someone the Gunks for his first time, taking someone up his first multi-pitch route, watching a wide-eyed gym climber learn what exposure means? What if he says he never knew he could get pumped on a 5.6?

Is it worth it to lead twenty terrifying feet of wet 5.2 so someone else can take the crux pitch? What if she’s onsighting High E, what if she sails up it with competent composure even as the raindrops fall on the steep headwall, what if it was her first chance to lead on gear all season? What if they’ll both be back?

It was worth it.

High E, 5.6 (P1: Dawn, P2: Irene)

Warm, dry rock in the sun

Posted by & filed under Gunks.

Nothing to complain about today. No rain, no wet streaks, no hang-fests or drama. Almost no falling at all. Todd tried a direct transition into the Dry Heaves traverse and took a couple falls on it, and I wasn’t bold enough to pop for the jug on City Streets on my first attempt. Got it on the second attempt though and that’s a lot fewer attempts than it usually takes me. I keep saying I’ll get that one clean next time but the move is so ridiculously improbable that my brain talks me out of it being possible.

I’d have hung on Proctoscope if I’d had the choice, but I didn’t. There was no gear to grab when I most wanted it, so I found a bit of something to rest my foot against and took a couple of deep breaths and ended up pulling through. Todd was talking to one of the rangers while I was up there shaking, so it was reassuring to know that the accident response would at least be prompt.

Alley Oops, 5.7 (Todd)
Dry Heaves, 5.8 (Dawn)
Cheap Thrills, 5.10 (TR)
Balrog, 5.10 (Todd)
Proctoscope P1, 5.9+ (Dawn)
Feast of Fools P2, 5.10 (Todd)
City Streets, 5.10 (Dawn)

The Gods Are Indifferent

Posted by & filed under Adirondacks, Gunks.

Around four o’clock on Thursday I’d had enough climbing for the day. We’d gotten in seven pitches. I’d led four of them, including a classic 5.9 I’d onsighted in unusually good style, feeling confident, safe, and in control the whole way up. Towards the end of the day I’d tried to lead the direct start to a 5.7 and had finally given up and gone around, but when I took a second stab at it on toprope, I got even less far. I felt good about that. When I can climb a route cleanly on TR after backing off the lead, I know it was all about fear or lack of commitment. In this case, it was about tired fingers and rain-slick holds.

So I said I wouldn’t mind calling it a day even though the rope was conveniently hanging over a 10 we could TR and it wasn’t, at that very moment, raining. Yes, we’d battled the rain the whole day, but we were beginning to feel we’d conquered it, and Thursday was the worst forecast for our four days in the Daks. There was much climbing yet to come.


Me leading Labatt-Ami, 5.7. You can see the Frosted Mug corner on the left.

Friday morning’s weather was as uncertain as Thursday’s, so we headed to Owl’s Head, another crag we could walk to the top of. Thursday we’d done the Beer Walls and had developed a rhythm that seemed to keep the Rain God at bay. My theory was that the Rain God had two goals: one, to get you to stop climbing; and two, to get your gear wet. As long as we kept absolutely everything covered at absolutely every possible moment and continued climbing, even leading, despite the sprinkles, it seemed the Rain God would give up and go away. Sometimes this bright yellow thing would appear briefly in the sky surrounded by the oddest swath of blue canvas, but this was was only a lure, an attempt to lull us into leaving our approach shoes uncovered or embarking on a multi-pitch route. We were not fooled.

And thus we continued our uneasy truce with the weather gods until, lowering off a slightly-wet 5.6 crack, I felt a few sprinkles. I glanced over at my pack and saw the lid thrown back. I’d broken rule number one! Despite my mad scramble to cover the pack (nothing to see here!) the rain continued to fall. We, of course, continued to ignore it. Steven followed the increasingly-wet 5.6 crack and beefed up a directional at the top so we could TR an unnamed seam between lines. The rain was picking up. When he touched down and I suggested he could take the first stab at the seam, he merely laughed. We left our rope up and our packs covered and grabbed lunch and headed to higher ground.

Twenty minutes later, we were in full retreat mode. The rope was soaked through and our packs were discovered to be sitting in the path of a stream that had formed down the approach trail. We safely rescued all our gear and hiked out. Of course, before we got back to the car the rain had stopped and the road didn’t look any wetter than it had when we started out that morning, but this time we, and all our gear, were a lot wetter. We called it a day. Still, we’d each led a pitch and TR’d a route in between. Ten pitches wasn’t the worst two days we’d ever had and the weather was only going to get better. Steven headed into town and I headed out to do what I do best in the rain, which is run.

I splashed along a muddy trail that led continuously uphill. At first I tried to keep my feet out of the puddles but a few meadow crossings soon made the effort futile. I was wet to the knees. The rain started again and my upper body became as wet as my lower body. But I was running. I was trail running for the first time since the race and I was loving it. I felt like I was flying. More importantly, I felt like I was running.

On a muddy trail in full-on conditions, you don’t have to be moving fast to feel like a hero. I was completely alone in a lush, beautiful world. I fell twice, scraping elbows and knees. I ran through a patch of nettles that first stung and then itched. I kept on until the trail I was running disappeared into a swollen pond and then I turned around and ran back. I was out a little longer than I meant to be but I felt like I’d returned from another world.

Steven hadn’t had a euphoric runner’s experience. Steven had had the internet. The internet had nothing good to stay about Saturday and it wasn’t making any promises about Sunday. Over an excellent dinner of spicy pasta and oak-y Chardonnay, I tried to explain my reasons for staying at the Daks. Those first few pitches that first day were what I needed to heal a weary soul. The Gunks were great, but I’d been there. We could run at the Daks; we could hike. It was beautiful here. We had good company, good food, new experiences. We agreed to stay. But tomorrow, if it was raining . . .

I had wanted so much to make this trip work. I prepared in every way I could think of: packed three pairs of shoes, had two ropes, brought crossword puzzles and running gear and a bottle of wine. I had pleaded with the Rain God, engaged in superstitious rituals, compromised, settled, been ridiculously optimistic and spoke only the positive. I had lowered my expectations and, without fail, the Rain God had failed to meet them.

Friday night it poured. Saturday morning it was still raining. We sat in the diner drinking coffee. I was dressed as though I would climb, but I knew where we would be climbing. Steven tried to reason his way through my stubborn silence. “There was never any question,” I finally told him. Everything was wet, not just the rock but my clothes, my gear, my resolve. The Rain God could have his way. We would go.

Driving down to the Gunks, the sun shining overhead on a lovely day with the promise of another lovely day yet to come, I cried. My heart was still in the Daks. My mind wanted what I had been promised. What I had promised myself. The Daks trip in my mind, the one where Steven and I climbed new, dry rock and I led challenging, well-protected test pieces with confident competence–that trip had never existed. And yet I mourned the hideous waste of potential wonderfulness. It could have been great. Instead those few glorious moments faded to same-old, same-old. Back to the Gunks.

I like the Gunks; I love the Gunks; I’ve been happy at the Gunks. I wanted the Daks.

I can be such a quitter. But there is a time when you’ve tried enough, a time to go on and be happy where you’re wanted. And then later, when you’re not so tired or sad, there’s a time to realize that it was never about you. The weather is what it is. Gods are who they are. I can’t talk or compromise or wheedle or behave my way into sunshine. The Rain God won’t change to suit me. He never cared if my pack was open, or if I was on lead, or if I was stubbornly waiting him out. He never even noticed. All I can do is walk away, and the rain will continue, or not, as if I was never there.

Some day there will be another trip to the Daks. Not that one, not the one I dreamed of, but maybe a real one.

Thursday – Beer Walls
Labatt-Ami, 5.7 (Dawn)
Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving, 5.10 (TR)
Frosted Mug, 5.9 (Dawn)
Seven Ounces, 5.7 (Steven)
3.2, 5.4 (Dawn)
Lichenbrau, 5.7 (Dawn)
Lichenbrau Dark. 5.9+ (TR)

Friday – Owl’s Head

Saturday – the Gunks
Madame G’s, 5.6 (Steven)
Columnbia, 5.9 (Dawn)
Dismantle, 5.10 (Steven)
Datmantle, 5.10 (TR)

Why do the Gunks hate us, part II

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Miriam promised it wouldn’t rain on Sunday so we walked all the way down to the far end of the Trapps to prove it. I have a few projects down there but they were nothing I wanted to try wet (e.g. Frustration Syndrome and Wegetables). Even WASP was more than I was willing to tackle once I saw the profligate water streaks adorning both cruxes, but we were planning to walk past WASP anyway so we gave it a few mournful tsks and kept moving.

We were headed to the Dances area where neither of us had ever been. Moondance was lichen-y and Sundance was taken, so we made a guess at what Ghost Dance might be and I led up it to join the folks from Sundance at the top. Then I scouted around for a couple of the other Dances but either found them filthy or didn’t find them, so we did Sundance next door. Sundance had some nice moves and was worth doing (though not necessarily worth the walk as the guidebook had promised).

I’d thought we might do Casablanca but from the Dances we could hear the birds screeching at someone who was trying, plus I wasn’t sure we could get down with one rope. I’d thought we might do WASP but it was still wet when we passed by it a second time. I’d thought we might do Frustration Syndrome, if I was feeling very, very brave, but a very, very careful examination from the ground revealed at least one wet spot.

So we had to do something and Simple Suff wasn’t far away. I knew Miriam would enjoy getting on a 10. I’d led it onsight and followed Todd on it cleanly. I had no reason to believe I couldn’t do it and there was no sign of even the slightest drop of moisture.

We all have our favorite belayers, the ones we want when we’re planning to flail. Part of the reason why I’d never really have tried Frustration Syndrome Sunday was because Miriam wasn’t Todd or Steven or Scott, the three belayers I don’t have to think about, the three I’d trust to catch me on anything.

It’s a catching catch-22. A belayer gets into your “trust zone” by catching you but won’t get the chance to catch you until you trust him. (Unless you’re like Todd who, contrarily, proves he can trust his belayer by falling on purpose.) I wasn’t expecting to flail on Simple Suff or I wouldn’t have chosen it, but Miriam came through for me. It was a long, slow fight to the anchors and she belayed with competent patience.

P.S. It was wet.

Sunday with Miriam (Dawn led all)
Ghost Dance, 5.7-
Sundance, 5.6
Simple Suff, 5.10

Why do the Gunks hate us, Part I

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Steven and I are planning to head to the Daks for four days over the 4th. This weekend was a chance to get myself ready, which I guess means getting accustomed to climbing on wet rock with the threat of rain. To that end, the weekend was a great success.

The rock was only wet in spots Saturday morning at 9:00, which gave us hope that it would all be dry in a few hours. We started by looking at Overhanging Layback because I needed to scope out an exit strategy for leading Star Action without Todd around to bail me out. Both walls of the initial corner were damp so we slid down a bit further to Tequila Mockingbird. Belaying from the first ledge, I basked in the sun and thought about what harder things we might get on that day. Traverse of the Clods, I thought. It was white rock high above the treeline. The only potential problem was that it might be too hot.

Back down on the ground, I tried to sell Steven on this plan. He was waffling and then the rain started. Traverse of the Clods no longer seemed like a good idea, even to me. The light rain didn’t last long and somehow didn’t even seem to get the rock wet, so we went back to Overhanging Layback again and found it drier than it had been at 9:00.

I wanted to see if I could get to the Star Action anchor from the end of the first pitch of Overhanging Layback. If not, I was supposed to be able to rap into it from the end of the second pitch. Steven wanted me to run the two pitches together so I searched for and found the supposed “step left” option at the crux of the first Overhanging Layback pitch. It was a quick (and easier) escape from the crux that kept the rope line nice and straight. I slung the belay tree with a cordelette and felt comfortable continuing with no noticeable rope drag at that point.

A peek around the corner revealed the Star Action anchor. It looked like about 30 ft of mostly unprotected 5.6-ish traversing so climbing the second pitch of Overlanging Layback seemed like the better choice. Except that the rope drag started almost immediately. I don’t know if it was the first piece I placed near the arete or if the rope got caught under one of those pointed tiers. Steven said later the line looked perfectly straight and all the parts of it that I could see were. I did a lot of downclimbing and back cleaning, both to try to straighten the line even further and because I need to recover the long slings.

Nevertheless, I made steady progress and was even thinking that this would be a very enjoyable pitch if I weren’t battling rope drop. As I neared the top, it started to sprinkle and I arrived at a cruxy bit. The gear here wasn’t good and I was runout from the back cleaning. I told myself that the rock wasn’t going to get any drier and forged on, but I was starting to wonder if I’d wandered onto the second pitch of one of the 10s in the area.

I found myself under a big roof with no escape to the left or right. I couldn’t believe the roof over my head was only 5.7, but I could see one jug up there and the rain drops were coming more closely together. I was too far away from Steven to communicate with him effectively. My best hope was to rescue myself. I popped for the jug and made a couple quick moves to get my hands on the top of the cliff. Unfortunately, the rest of me was still somewhat lower and the rapidly wettening, somewhat muddy, very flat cliff top was offering no purchase.

The clock was ticking, the rope was pulling on me, and all I wanted was a tree. I hand traversed across the top until I found a single muddy side pull that was (barely) enough to get my feet on the ledge and shuffled, just in time, to the tree I’d have killed to have been able to reach a few minutes ago. The skies opened in earnest now. Steven would have to follow in the rain.

Schizophrenically, the rain had abated again by the time he got to the final roof and the rock was already showing some signs of drying. Seven finished the roof move with a lovely heel hook/press-out/rock-on mantle. “That’s not how I did it,” I told him. I put on my shell which he had thoughtfully carried up but it was already not necessary and by the time we reached the ground again, it was hot. At the base of Overhanging Layback once more we looked up and saw the rock in about the same condition it had been at 9:00.

Nevertheless, we were done. In the time it took us to get to Bacchus it rained once more and although the sun was shining when we walked into Bacchus, it was clear by the sparkle of the pavement under the sun when we walked out that it had just stopped raining yet again. As I drove south on 87, there were splatters on my windshield and I shook my fist at the sky and asked, “Why do the Gunks hate us?”

Saturday with Steven
Tequila Mockingbird, 5.7+ (P1: Dawn; P2 & 3: Steven)
Overhanging Layback, 5.7 (Dawn)