I haven’t written in days because I’ve been either climbing or recovering from climbing. Saturday I did the day of sixes with Steven. We climbed 11 pitches of which I led 9. It was great but I don’t think it taught me much except that I’m a comfortable confident leader on ground I’m comfortable and confident on. I just emailed him to say let’s have a day of sevens. Now, 7s scare me. I start thinking Laurel and Ken’s Crack and Trapped Like a Rat and I want to run and hide. I have the same reaction I do when thinking about leading a 9 for that matter. Apparently I’m only comfortable and confident up to about 5.6.<\/p>\n
Then Monday I climbed with Mike Rawdon in the Dacks. We went to his pet slab to work on his latest project. It was a grey and humid day. When we got to his crack there were ferns growing in it and it was running with water. Nevertheless, he did lead that first pitch and got it clean which he said was its first clean ascent. Then I led the second pitch because he said it was 5.6 and I’d just had the day of 6s so I figured I’d be fine.<\/p>\n
It was frightening though. I had to do a couple of scary slab moves over the belay with gear already below my feet. I didn’t like that a bit. Then there was a laybacking section which turned out to be reasonably easy. Then more runout with a bit of slab to the belay which I arrived at saying thank God.<\/p>\n
Mike had said that the belay consisted of two pins which he’d placed last year when he started working on this project. So I clipped the sling between the two pins and I clipped one of the pins directly and I placed a brass nut as a backup (because I couldn’t find the little steel nuts on his rack although it turned out they were on there). I slumped down on the belay because my feet were killing me both from his pitch, which was fierce hard, and mine which was very foot intensive. <\/p>\n
When Mike got up there he had me slide over and then he reached up and one of the pins fell out into his hand. I should have been more freaked out than I was. It’s hitting me harder in retrospect or perhaps it hit me harder when I discovered I clipped the sling in such a way that if either pin came out I was clipped to nothing. It so happened that the pin I was clipped into directly was the good one (and it so happened that the other pin was still good) but that was pure accident. It didn’t come from any assessment on my part.<\/p>\n
So essentially I was hanging off of a brass nut I’d thrown in as an afterthought because I couldn’t find the piece I really wanted. It’s sickeningly scary really and the worst is that I wasn’t just risking my life but Mike’s also.<\/p>\n
After backing up the remaining pin with about 7 other pieces, Mike rapped down and got his hammer and banged the other pin back in and we rapped off them. I’ll never trust a fixed anchor again without carefully evaluating what it consists of and how good those pieces are. It comes from the early days when I trusted any fixed anchor more than my own gear, but those days should have ended a long time ago. I know how to place gear and know whether it’s good or not.<\/p>\n
Saturday while Steven was trying to get out a piece I’d gotten a little stuck I heard a noise like an ambulence makes when trying to get cars to move out of the way. Then I saw a chopter over his head. The chopter was red and white. I figured it had to be a bad accident but Todd said there was nothing on gunks.com. Today there was. Fortunately it sounds like a fairly minor acciedent considering the evacuation by helpicoper. All these kinds of things though–the accidents, which seem up this year, and my occasional hideous mistakes–make me want to stay away from climbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I haven’t written in days because I’ve been either climbing or recovering from climbing. Saturday I did the day of sixes with Steven. We climbed 11 pitches of which I led 9. It was great but I don’t think it taught me much except that I’m a comfortable confident leader on ground I’m comfortable and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adirondacks","category-gunks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}