So much for G, is what I'm thinking but my survey has decided me on one thing at least. The pin on the left is only one move away off a bucket whereas the pin to the right is at least two thin moves away. I'm going left.

I step up, clip the pin, and step back down. I hang the rope and resolutely step back up again. Only problem is, there's no move up there. Honestly. I swear. It's not just a matter of my being afraid to fall, which I am, there really isn't a move up there.

So I step back down.

I'll spare you all the ups and downs. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the route goes to the right but I like having my friend the-pin-on-the-left clipped. I don't wish to unclip him and chance the moves to the right. Ultimately Todd suggests that I just go check it out to the right and I do, find myself committed but climbing, and pull through the whole thing, clipping several more pins along the way but never unclipping the pin to the left.

I pester Todd about it the whole way home: what would you have done. He says he would have done the same thing I did--clipped the pin to the left and then gone right. I still feel a little like I cheated but when I give beta to a friend a few weeks later, that's exactly what I tell her: clip left, climb right.

For all that, I didn't really have any trouble with the moves themselves on Triangle, so later in the day I step up to lead Absurdland, 5.8+, with something like confidence. For one thing, it's only 5.8, not 5.9, and for another, I've been on it before once when Steven led it. I remember that Todd and I were, well, I hate to use the word snickering, but underwhelmed let's say, by the route's difficulty that day. What with it's reputation as an ankle-breaker and the way Steven had sewn it up, we were expecting something that was at least a little bit hard.

Why do they keep taking away all the easy routes at the Gunks and replacing them with harder ones? That's what I want to know.

At least I know where the hard part is: close to the ground. It's an ankle breaker, after all. So I put some gear in from the ground, then put a second piece in, then take it out cause it's in my way and sucks anyway. I sketch around and go up and down and whine and complain.

"If that gear will protect that move, and it's good gear, then why do people keep breaking their ankles?" I ask doubtfully.

"They probably don't bother to place anything," Todd answers. (Later we get a glimpse of why else they might be breaking their ankles. Listen guys, if the leader places a piece that close to the ground, it might behoove you to stand up and take the slack out of the rope. "You weren't belaying me like that, were you?" I double-check. But of course he wasn't.)

Eventually I make the move and place a piece from a shaky stance. Todd wants me to place a second piece, but I'm feeling good now. Through all the hard stuff on a 5.8+, pulled off a 5.9- earlier, I'm cruising to victory. Just this one kind of pumpy move. Then this next one, then this next one, really bad stance now, place gear, burning out, place another piece, shit, scared, pumped, downclimb, bad stance, bad stance, how far do I have to go?, dammit, take!

And I wish Todd wouldn't argue with me when I say take. I wish that. I really do.

Somewhere up there the route did get easier, but not until it whipped my butt. By the time I lower off there's folks racking up to take their turn.

"You looked smooth up there," they say.

"You weren't here for the ugly part," I tell them. We exchange the story of our days. I tell them about hanging on Absurdland, about the other routes we did, about getting Triangle clean.

"Well, it was 5.9 minus," I qualify. "5.9- is easier than 5.8+." This isn't just a one-liner. It's the honest truth as I've lived it today.

6/22/02

Have you ever seen a climber caught in a web of his own devising? No, I'm not being figurative. This isn't some kind of morality play. It's safe to keep reading.

I see Todd's foot slip, the right foot I think later, though it's more of a reaction than a realization at the time. Surprised because Todd never slips. Surprised because this is only 5.9. Surprised because, even though he said the move was hard, he seemed so in control until the moment he started to slide.

I brace myself for the impact. I never know whether I'll fly or not--depends on how much drag is in the system and how hard the fall is. I duck my head, turn my non-belaying shoulder into the wall, wait for it to come.

It doesn't.

After a moment I lift my head. Why don't I feel him? I'm half afraid to see Todd fall past me, his rope cut, his knot undone, something drastically wrong, and half expecting him to be hanging on somehow, annoyed because I have him locked off.

What I see is him trapped in a criss-crossed hatch of slings and rope. He untwists himself and drops the last foot or so onto my belay. He has what turns out to be no worse than a stubbed toe, though inside a tight pair of Anasazi's he wonders if it's broken, a wicked rope burn across the back of one knee--I can see it from where I'm standing--and assorted scrapes and bruises. In terms of damage, it's the worst fall I've ever seen Todd take.

And this is only the start of the epic.

Things started off well, although we should have guessed there was a good reason we'd never heard anyone mention Exit Stage Left, a 5.9 that pulls the Modern Times roof "directly", before. Certainly the start was disgusting-looking enough--a mossy, chossy corner followed by vague wandering up to the GT ledge--but we fixed that problem by starting on Jim's Gem, a 5.8 that starts just to the right of Exit Stage Left and crosses lines with it somewhere before the GT ledge.

I led this improvised first pitch, finding it tricky in some places and a little runout in others but never enough of either or both together to worry. Reaching the ledge I felt both good about my lead and nervous about Todd's. The roof to the left of Modern Times, the one we were supposed to pull "directly", is very deep. Deeper than anything I've ever pulled. On top of that, the nice day was going bad as isolated clouds turned into solid sky cover and thunder rumbled in the distance.

"We could just do Modern Times," I suggested as Todd reached the belay.

"No," he said.

Twenty minutes later Todd is hanging from the rope pulling off his shoes to see if any of his toes are broken. A raindrop hits the dust beside me.

"Do you want to come down?" I ask.

"No," he says.

He decides to aid through. There follows a whole lot of shifting and squealing, orders of 'take' and orders of 'slack' and for all that he doesn't seem to be any higher. I keep waiting for him to say 'climbing', to have reached a hold from which he can continue free, but it doesn't happen. Just 'take' and 'slack' and him hanging in the same place.

"You want me to do it?" I ask.

"No," he says.

It's not that I have any illusions that I can lead something Todd can't. It's just that I've at least done a tiny bit of aid climbing, which compares favorably to his none. The people whose ineptitude we'd been monitoring on High E are all gone. There's just us and the steadily increasing pitter patter of random raindrops.

"We could leave gear," I suggest.

"No," he says.

Stubborn, that's what he is. Anxious, that's what I am. But eventually he does get it.

When I stick my head up over the roof and see all the gear I have to laugh.

"You're supposed to put each piece higher than the last piece," I explain to him later, "not put a whole lot of pieces next to each other." Of course there weren't any other places to put gear. "What were you doing up there?" Switching to shorter and shorter runners apparently.

It has started to rain and I know I should be pulling on gear, slapping on prusiks, doing whatever I need to do to get over the roof and to his belay so we can get down. Still, I can't help but try it once. It's not raining on me.

I get all the gear I can reach out of the way and commit to the move. It's about a mile's worth of move. I'm reaching endlessly for the next horizontal, fruitlessly trying to bounce my feet beneath the roof, get a heel hook, mantle off my low hand, freeze myself with body tension. Anything.

"Grab the orange sling!" Todd yells.

Obsessed as I am with getting the move, the term "orange sling" fails to translate for me. I fall off. Oh. The orange sling. The draw. Right.

Luckily I'm high enough over the roof that I can get back on. From a hanging position I make it to the next hold, but I doubt I ever could if I had to start from beneath the roof. I make a frightening traverse over to Todd's belay and then scramble the last twenty feet up to the top. Just as Todd hits the grass the drizzle becomes a downpour.

We have three raps to get down. By the end of the second rap, we're as wet as we can get. We put on dry shoes, which some stranger has been kind enough to hide under our packs for us, and shuffle back to the car, beaten by a 5.9.

6/29/02 - 7/3/02

Todd and I were at Lover's Leap near Lake Tahoe in California. Read the trip report: Price of Admission

7/27/02

Arc of a Diver. I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this one.

Ostensibly we pick the route because it's open. Secretly I pick the route because it's 5.9- G and therefore On The List. I haven't told Todd yet that I'm going to lead the crux pitch, but I fully intend to.

Let me spoil the suspense by saying that the 5.9- part went very smoothly. It was just hard enough to give me a huge charge when I did it but not so hard that I had to stand there for half an hour first. Ten minutes tops. No, it wasn't the 5.9- that got me, proving once again that 5.9- is kind of a gimme rating at the Gunks, rather it was the 5.8 first pitch.

I pull through the pumpy first few moves and lead up quickly to the tiny roof near the end of the first pitch. It's a small roof, so small in fact that you can easily stand beneath it and still have fully half your body over it. No, the challenge of this rooflet lies not in its sharp, well-protected outthrust but in the smooth slabby rock above it.

There's only one hold above the roof, that's the problem. I wish I could say that it's a height thing, that I can't reach that solitary hold, but that wouldn't be the truth. I can reach it all right. I just don't like it.

If I could only crank my left foot up over the roof I think I'd be OK, but my feet aren't quite high enough, or my hip joints aren't quite flexible enough, to maneuver myself over the lip. I need to bounce the right foot higher, to smear it, in other words, and I so don't want to. I keep eyeing the fall behind me.

Which is perfectly fine, in case you're worried.

I add a third piece to the crack beneath the roof and start equalizing. I have the sinking feeling that Todd is going to come up here and pull right through this and that, worse yet, so am I once I'm not on lead. But no matter how many times I try I can't find a sequence that guarantees results without consequences, and I'm so damned anti-consequence these days.

I lower off and let my ropegun take over. I watch him approach the roof, waiting to be shown up. What's this? Todd has taken one peek over the roof and is now traversing right.

"There aren't any holds up there," he says.

"But that's not our route," I protest as he gets farther and farther away. Now ten feet out with no gear in, he'd better find an easier place to pull the roof. Or come back where he belongs.

Todd makes what looks like a balancy step up over the dwindling roof and traverses back left again. As he leads the remainder of the first pitch and runs it into the second pitch, I'm left scratching my head. Is the roof 5.8? Should I have gone to the right? Should I have more faith in my ability to recognize a non-5.8 roof when I see one? I assumed the route was 5.8 and I wasn't, but perhaps it was the other way around.

Todd hasn't placed any gear on his detour. That leaves the way clear for me to find the answers out for myself.

I climb up to the roof. Fifteen seconds later I'm over it. I think Todd is losing it.

"I don't even see how you reached that hold," Todd says.

"But you didn't even try," I argue. And neither did I really. When Todd chose to run away from the roof instead of pull it I had a brief respite from the demons in my head, but now they're back.

Try the move. Take the chance. Try the move. Take the chance. Stop being such a weenie.