Start of the Season

Despite its unusually early appearance, Dunbar and I welcomed Spring in a decidedly non-hippie way by going trad climbing at Cathedral today. We went up the first two pitches of the Prow, which was...humbling. The first pitch (10a) was fine, but then when I tried to lead the second pitch, I took a bunch of small whips, gave myself some rope burn, and generally dogged it. After a few more attempts by both of us to free it, Dunbar aided up, and I followed free. I managed to get the bouldery moves going left off the ledge linked up, which was nice, but then I was shut down by this "10a" slab above the "11c" section. I was relieved, however, when I talked to Coz and he told me that the 11c might be an 11d or 12a, and that the 10a was a bit of a joke, given that 10a slabs should usually have some holds on them. I think I'm missing something there. The rest of the climb looked wet, so we bailed. I'm not about to climb 5.11+ in wet conditions. Yet.

We went off to the North End to do some crack climbing, which I'm absolutely atrocious at. 5.9 crack climbing feels like 5.11 face climbing to me. Dunbar, though, is really good. He led a bunch of stuff handily that I dogged on top-rope. Damnit. I think we have a very different philosophies on climbing (and possibly life). He wants to climb easier things on alpine terrain (hard things too, I guess). I want to climb harder things next to the road. He'll live in a cabin for months. I get fussy if I don't get to take a shower. He wants to climb easier trad things onsight, and I want to project sport things. Actually, I'm upgrading to projecting trad things, too, which apparently is objectionable, particularly if it's not a single pitch. "Pff. What's the point in projecting a five pitch route?" Well, touche. One could replace "a five pitch route" with "Ph.D. thesis," eh? Lucky for me, I'm adding those three precious letters to my name soon. After all, that is why I came to school here. It's all about wearing pretentious red hats and meaningless abbreviations on business cards. Well, there's a lot of jibber-jabbering about chemistry, a lot less actual chemistry, and a decent amount of climbing.

[Caution: I've probably grossly misrepresented Dunbar. Too bad he's not here to defend his good name. Yes, indeed. He's quite the ghoul, or so I can claim here. Mwahaha.]