On Saturday Steven, Todd, and I climbed with a guy doing his first trad leads on his brand new rack. On Sunday, Todd and I climbed with a guy who’s been leading for 20 years and carries a set of the original rigid Friends. And yet, the two days had more in common than they had different.<\/p>\n
Fresh from my first 5.9 the weekend before, I had the urge to keep pushing, so while Steven belayed HJ on Horseman (5.5), Todd and I went to do Red Cabbage (5.9-). After a thorough examination of both guidebooks, I have come to the following conclusion: the 5.9- variation of Red Cabbage pulls around the arete to the left face when the crack ends before<\/em> the bulge. This, however, is not at all what I did.<\/p>\n I led up to the end of the crack, placing gear every few feet and ending up hugely pumped as a result (steep<\/em>, man).<\/p>\n “You might want to extend that,” Todd said, referring to my last piece at the top of the crack.<\/p>\n “Not right now, I don’t,” I told him. I was ready to fall off any moment and had no desire to add to the length of the fall. Taking a deep breath, I started pulling over the bulge. A couple of desperate moves brought me to a spot where I could pull right to what looked like a Thank-God stance. It wasn’t. On top of that, there was no gear there and the next move promised to be powerful.<\/p>\n My last piece wasn’t far beneath me but was off to my left. The fall was clean and I didn’t want to take it. I stepped down. The stance wasn’t much better but I was able to get gear.<\/p>\n “You might want to extend that,” Todd said. I didn’t even have the strength to answer. “If you step down again, you’ll have better feet,” he added. This was a much more helpful suggestion. I milked the rest for all it was worth (not that much, unfortunately), then bravely extended the piece and stepped back up.<\/p>\n I still didn’t feel like doing the next move. I had the hands in hand. I could envision the move. What I couldn’t envision was myself pulling through it in my current exhausted condition. But wait! This time a protection opportunity presented itself. I fumbled in a nut at chest height and, fortified by its presence, found a slightly less powerful way to do the move. Finally, a stance! I threw in a nice tri-cam and moved easily to my left and around the nose to finish the route.<\/p>\n I thought I’d been off-route when I stepped down. Todd thought I was on-route when I stepped down because I’d been off-route when I started pulling over the bulge before moving right. Steven thought I was off-route when I stepped left over the top the bulge because the route finishes up the center of the face. It turned out we were all wrong – everything after the end of the crack was off-route. Leading Red Cabbage was a real confidence booster for me, but I could have made it a lot easier on myself if I’d looked at the guidebook.<\/p>\n Later in the day I followed HJ on Arch (5.5) with its wild traversing moves. He did an excellent job leading it, handling both the scary runout and the intimidating finish. He also learned a bit about the evils of rope drag by not extending the pieces he placed in the corner. I’d never been on the route before and had a great time following it. At the Gunks, following a 5.5 can be every bit as much fun as leading a 5.9 (maybe more fun, now that I think about it).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday Steven, Todd, and I climbed with a guy doing his first trad leads on his brand new rack. On Sunday, Todd and I climbed with a guy who’s been leading for 20 years and carries a set of the original rigid Friends. And yet, the two days had more in common than they… 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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gunks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","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=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/climbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}