Looking down from the middle of the third pitch on Gelsa (5.4)

There are many good reasons why old farts like me and my climbing partner (Thom Parker) don't normally do road trips. These include: failing bodies, for us the driving is far harder than the climbing. Grossly elevated caffeine tolerance, making cellular dehydration a necessary part of the "approach route". Children, though they provide excellent mental training opportunities, as in "okay, stay calm, breath through your nose, you're not going to lose it here". Twenty-year marriages, preserved in part by not disappearing for days at a time. Jobs which require us to shave, shower, sleep and stop drinking before going to work. You know the life.

On the other hand I imagine that for the twenty-something gym rat, a climbing trip is just like any other day but with road kill. Am I right? Well, I have some good news for my geriatric peers: climbing road trips are possible even if you are over forty. I know this because we "did the Gunks" over a three day weekend June 8-10. The weather was perfect. The crowds large but interesting. The routes awesome and plentiful. The exposure a rush. The climbers helpful and spray-free. Oh yes, and people called us "dude". Take my word for it: this appellation is not used very often with reference to a senior solicitor with the Attorney General's office. Here are a few tips for those interested in "going down the road" to the Gunks:

Choose your routes before you get there. Don't act like my kids do at Toys R Us, so overwhelmed by choice they choose something they didn't want. Make decisions early and stick to them. There are so many routes on several different walls that you can't possibly walk around and eyeball them. Review the beta found at Gunks.com and Tradgirl.com. Pick up a guide book en route. Decide what you are going to do and just do it. Expect to wait a bit to do the most popular routes, but take your time once you are on them. They are popular for a reason. Enjoy them. Ignore the guy coming up behind you. He can wait his turn like everybody else.

Peter at the second belay on Gelsa (5.4)

Take two grade points off whatever you can do back home. I am not kidding here. Recall that many of the routes in the Gunks were rated when 5.9 was the end of free climbing and the start of aid. If you are like me enjoy savouring a comfortable 5.8 trad lead; do 5.10a/b sport routes on rock; and can pull off 5.11 in the gym you will only climb 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 on lead in the Gunks. This is the truth, so don't argue with me. Just get used to it. To wit: the single pitch Fitschen's Folly is rated as "5.7+", but is almost identical in style (crimp + mantle times two = success) to a route I climb called All the Rage at Sorrow's End, Terrence Bay, Nova Scotia, which we rate as 5.10a/b. If you climb 5.10 back home, but return not having completed a 5.7+ trad lead in the Gunks, don't view the trip as "failure". Failure is spending three hours on a multi-pitch route, only to discover you would rate the "5.6+ crux" at 5.10+. And in the Gunks the crux is usually a roof 180 feet off the deck. Think about it before you leave the ground. It is often a long rap down from the crux and sometimes a downclimb to the rap point, unless you want to leave gear on the wall.

At the top of the Trapps

Gym rats beware. The Gunks have banned new fixed protection for fifteen years. They do replace existing rap and belay anchors with bolts. Solid pitons have been left where placed. It is a cool feeling to clip an old piton. I mean, think about it: Wiessner or Kraus may have placed it. Chouinard, Kor and Kauk probably clipped it. Cool. But you are not in the gym. Three rusty pitons does not a sport route make. Stitch up that crack. Hone your lead skills. Go out and practice setting up an on-the-wall belay anchor without bolts. Twice in three days we left the Gunks as the sun went down, and watched an ambulance race the other way. Maybe it was heat stroke, I don't know. But it is a long way down and the ground is hard. Oh yes, did I mention? Fitschen's Folly is just like All the Rage, but without any bolts (All the Rage has four) Joe Fitschen did it on lead in 1961. He was probably tripping in a very different way at the time. His second refused to follow. We top roped it. We are old, but not yet feeble-minded.

Don't eat the egg omelette on an English muffin, served at the Dunkin' Donuts in Brookfield, Connecticut. You will have to ask Thom about that one. He tells me that, while it is hard to crack climb while throwing up, a good fist jam is practically retch-proof. I am just happy that it is hard to hear what the second is saying or doing while top belaying in the Gunks. (Note to self: ask Heather Reynolds Sagar if regular vomiting while climbing could improve core strength, due to the muscles utilized.) Feel free to eat and drink a lot of crap, though. After all, this is a road trip. You are not in "training". This is The Show. Enjoy yourself.

Bring some tricams. Horizontal cracks are not something we see a lot of back home in Nova Scotia, where the norm is vertical crack climbing on crystaline granite sharp as glass. These Gunks' horizontal cracks are ideal for tricam placement. Everyone down there swears by them. We had none on our rack before going and couldn't find any back home. Our regular national distributor, Mountain Equipment Co-op, back-ordered them for us but they didn't materialize in time. You can pick up a set at "Rock and Snow" in New Paltz. Get two or three 0.5s (the pink ones) and one or two 1.0s (the red ones). Anything bigger and you would probably use a spring-loaded camming device of some description. You might, that is, but I wouldn't. That's because I know TCUs are part of a Trilateral Commission-Vatican-United Nations conspiracy to make us weak, lazy and ripe for foreign takeover. As a Montana Militiaman may tell you if you meet at a belay station in the Gunks. But hey, you only have to look as far as who is buying up all the climbing areas in Nova Scotia. The truth is out there. Don't get me started on SLCDs.

Admiring old pitons on the third pitch of Bunny (5.4)

Take two 60 metre ropes. There are some routes which call for true double rope technique, though we didn't see any. We had your standard single 50 metre, 10.5 mil. The problem was not the limits this placed on our climbing (e.g., rope drag), but its uselessness on rappel. Two connected sixty metre ropes will allow you to rap from anywhere on the face, top to bottom. One 50 metre rope can mean two or three raps to cover the same ground and can rule out certain routes. With 777 routes to get to on the three main faces alone, you don't want to come down at the same speed as you went up.

If you can avoid it, don't buy climbing gear in the U.S. Brand name items, even if made in America, have the same dollar price in the U.S. as in Canada, despite the Canadian dollar being worth less than 70 cents U.S.. Go figure. It could cost 50% more for Canadians to buy the same thing down there. To wit: it cost me $152 Cdn to get $100 US in cash, three tricams cost us $49 US, but you can get the same three tricams from MEC for $46 Cdn, including taxes. Why the hell would anyone buy anything down there when they could buy it up here? (The corollary, which I passed on to two New Hampshire climbers: get in the car and drive to Toronto if you Yanks have gear to buy.) And it's not just Rock and Snow either, as Eastern Mountain Sports was comparable. It must be a stronger economy south of the border, more disposable income, higher advertising costs, the absence of socialized medicine, or maybe dumber consumers.. Anyway, save your money to buy an egg omelette on an English muffin in Brookfield, Connecticut.

View from the top of the Near Trapps

Stop climbing long enough to admire the view. The exposure is breathtaking. Enjoy it. We particularly liked the single engine airplanes flying lower than we were. I can only compare it to the climbing areas back home, where we have no "mountains" or even "foothills". This is not to say that a sunset seen from the top of Main Face at Paces Lake isn't quite nice. A fog bank looming off shore, spied from the top of Sorrow's End, still causes a shiver. Dissipated storm swells breaking on Little Ship Rock, when viewed from the Poop Deck, still remind me that ocean equals death. But the view from the top in the Gunks is something else again, perhaps because you are looking out over farmland. The people are very nice to look at too, whatever your persuasion. In comparison, our farmer's tans proved that it was a long winter in Nova Scotia, and our pecs and abs proved it wasn't spent in the gym. If you envy beautiful people, don't go to the Gunks.

Learn to love driving. There is no way around it. Even driving for hours at 75 per in a 55 zone, it will take you fourteen hours to get there from where I live. It is still fourteen hundred and fifty kilometres for Christ's sake. Make it fun. Bring good music. Drive all night to avoid traffic. Plan to climb all day right after you have driven all night because you won't care, you will be totally psyched. Don't stop unless you really have to. Watch out for deer. Plan to spill two large cups of coffee in your lap at some point. Waiting for it to happen is the fun part. Enjoy the rush of driving at 140 kms per, a mere ten feet behind the car in front of you, with another one on your tail. This is just how they drive down there. Treat it as more mental training. And don't worry, you won't see the state troopers at night in New York state anyway, because the cars are dark brown. Try to visualize: you are just one of thousands of baby turtles hatching and trying to reach the sea. Those pesky predators can't catch all of you. Start scurrying. The odds are in your favour.

Call me first. That's because I will be going with you. I am a good enough climber so as not to make you look bad as part of a rope, but bad enough to make you look good as part of the same rope. It's perfect. I have a place to stay an hour from the Gunks (seventy five minutes anyway). I am very good at driving at night. I look very respectable to cops. I don't talk (much). I hear the Fall is the real climbing season in the Gunks. Think about it, dude.

Notes

(1) For a look at the Nova Scotia climbing sights referred to in this article, go to Rock Climbing Nova Scotia and click on the 'biners for Terrence Bay, Pace's Lake, and Ship Rock.

(2) Heather Reynolds Sagar is the author of Climb Your Best, and is a well-regarded authority on training for climbing. She and her husband, Nick Sagar, manage Rock Works climbing gym in Halifax, Nova Scotia.