More Outdoorness

On Saturday night, Kevin Mahoney asked me where I wanted to go on Sunday. Vacillating spinelessly, I nixed Lake Willoughby because it's apparently kind of baked right now. I decided we should go back to Cathedral, suggesting we do some "single pitch mixed climbing," because that sounded like an easier day. Ha! In the morning, we started up Diagonal, a summer 5.6 rock route or "WI 5" in the winter. That rating is a filthy liar and is not to believed under any circumstances. Neither, in fact, should any of the other ratings at Cathedral Ledge. But I digress. We climbed with crampons on hands up to the ice, which was pretty baked, so we traversed back down and went up Standard Route ("5.7"). It was really hard! I had one tool and a hand out for a whole bunch of it. There are several roofs inside chimneys where the sides are either broken up rock or verglas. If you're leading it, you're supposed to chimney up to the roof, clip a sling (which is around a frozen in rock or something--I thought it was scary because it didn't look all that secure), and then shoot out onto some thin ice or turf. At the end, there was a bit of steep ice. It was quite the adventure. I am definitely not up to leading something like that. But Jimmy and I may try the Just Laughing/Unicorn deal next weekend. Am I up to leading M6 trad? We'll see. Now I'm at Sunday River. I did a double black diamond run today, my first! It went quite well, and it was actually on natural snow, which was new for me too. However, I got on some moguls early in the morning, and that went really badly. I don't know how to turn quickly enough to do them yet. I'm practicing doing some small fast turns with little hops, so that may help. I tried their night skiing today, but it wasn't very well lit and there weren't very many trails open because of grooming, so I just did a couple of runs and took off. It's been a great weekend!