Crow Hill, or, Jamming 101

Jimmy, Dunbar, Karen, and I headed out to Crow Hill today. It was really nice in the morning, but then the weather really rolled in around 3 or 4 o'clock and we stopped climbing, did some self-rescue, and then called it a day. We started on some sort of chimney climb, which I lead (trad), as part of my new "OK, I guess I better learn how to climb trad" kick. I discovered that I'm actually not only a huge chicken when it comes to trad, but also just kind of bad. I got up this slab to this ledge, and then started climbing up this somewhat overhanging face. It was a little surprising, because I thought it was supposed to be 5.easy. I got in a bomber 0.3 C4 in, and then tried to exit the climb directly upwards, only to find that there was a bit of rope drag, and more to the point, no gear. Worried about decking on the slab below, I just set an anchor and finished the climb with an easier variation. As my guide Sean says, you want to have some balls, but you never really want to paint yourself into a corner.

Well then. We moved over to Intertwine. The whole world was waiting to do the climb, so Jimmy quickly led it and I quickly followed it. I found it hard to take out one nut while hanging from a fingerlock, so I ended up hanging on the rope. I would have liked to do it clean, and suss out all the moves properly, but there wasn't time. It was mostly a sequence-y fingerlocking lesson. OK. Then we headed over to Jane, which people had set up a top-rope on and kindly let us use. I flailed all over it on the first attempt, but then I taped my right hand up a bit, and tried it three more times. I think I have everything but the exit move dialed now. There were all these cool jams...hand jams, wrist jams, fingerlocks, etc. On my fourth and final attempt, I sent it all the way to the exit move and then came off. I think I've decided the key to sending it is to grit your teeth and really jam very, very hard. I have a huge bruise on my hand from all the jamming I did. Finally, I went over to clean Diagonal. Dunbar led it impressively, and took an even more impressive whip trying to top it out. It was quite an exciting 20 or 30 foot fall which took him kind of close to the ground. I was impressed, anyways, and I bet it got Karen's (his belayer) heart racing, too. The whole climb is really greasy, but it has locker wrist jams, and I think I could do it cleanly if I got another try at it. There's a direct variation on it to the left, and it's full of slopers and tension-y moves, too. I think western Mass. climbing is just really hard; full of greasy slopers and jamming moves I'm not used to. But I've decided I'm going to teach myself how to jam properly because it's embarassing that I can do 5.11 sport routes and WI 5 ice routes but not 5.7 trad cracks.

We reviewed a little self-rescue after that: escaping a belay off your harness, lowering off a weighted Reverso, making a Munter and mule, passing a knot while lowering, 2:1 drop loop, simple 3:1, simple 5:1, etc. It felt good, but it's a little disconcerting that even after having plenty of guiding on it, and seeing things a bunch of times, it's still hard. I've got two days of guiding with Bayard in a few weeks, and he's going to show me some more stuff. I do feel like I'm getting better and better at rigging anchors efficiently and getting out of tough guiding-type situations though. I still don't hold a candle to Bayard, Kevin, or Sean though (my regular guides). Of course, they'd probably be confused as all hell in a chemistry lab. But it's interesting how stuff Kevin showed me a few years ago, which I found totally baffling at the time, makes much more sense now. I remember he showed me the "block and tackle" method for unweighting something and something just totally clicked about it recently. Anyways, it was a fun day. I want to go back and work on these trad things and eventually lead them.

I just spoke to Zeb and found out about the HMC part of things at Rumney. There were shennagians, a gong show, and a failed practical joke, by all accounts. Rachel showed up and Zeb (who evidentally can tell Rachel apart from Vanessa at a glance) pretended it was Vanessa. Now I think I can tell them apart by the shape of their faces, slight difference in height, and slightly different spots, but the easiest way is that Vanessa always has the necklace thing around her neck. They're both super cool, though. Anyways, Zeb pretended Rachel was Vanessa, and it kind of worked for a few minutes, but then he blew it by accidentally referring to her as Rachel again. Oh well. I saw on Facebook that Vanessa has a climbing wall at her place now. That's pretty sweet.