Gunks!

I'm here at the Gunks on a climbing roadtrip. This past weekend, I was helping out with the AMC's New Seconds weekend. They offer a great class on how to follow trad all fall, and this is the weekend where the graduates of the class get to go on their first big multipitch adventure. I had some very good seconds, Kerry and Greta. I think your first three pitch outing is always a bit...overwhelming, not just because you're really high up and exposed for the first time, but also because it's physically exhausting in an unfamiliar way. All the hanging belays, rope management, gear cleaning, rappelling, etc. do take a toll, I suppose. A lot of people wanted to head back to Boston early (those quitters), so I found myself climbing with Sarah near the end of the day. She's very cool. It's pretty rare to find girls who are psyched about every kind of climbing: bouldering, sport, trad, aid, ice, etc., so I'm suitably impressed. Anyways, I got psyched to lead my first Gunks 5.10, so I managed to convince her to belay me on Retribution, a 5.10b at the start of the West Trapps. Like a lot of the 10s here, it has a roof crux. I went up to the roof, placed a nice 0.3 C4, and tried the move. I could see I was doing it wrong, so I downclimbed a bit and took on the cam to check out the move. After a minute, I tried it again, and found it wasn't nearly as bad as I was making it out to be. There was a bit of a higher crux later on, but it wasn't too bad either. I got a great belay, and it was a fun lead. I also worked "No Solution," which is a 12a toprope next to it. It's thin, technical face climbing that reminded me of Eyeless in Gaza. I think I worked out all the moves, but I don't think I'd ever lead it. It's 5.12a R/X. I'm not really into dying. I did see some drunk hippies in flipflops solo by the GT ledge carrying cans of beer, binoculars, and bird watching guides, though. It kind of scared me, although I could see they were good climbers. I also suspect they weren't actually bird watchers, because when I pointed out two possible peregrine falcons to them, and asked them to verify their classification, they seemed uninterested. Of course, if I were soloing in my flipflops, I would be relatively uninterested in the finer points of taxonomy, too. I'm here for another week with Bayard, and then hopefully Dunbar and Karen. I'm sure we're going to be getting up to all sorts of cool stuff, so I'll send another report soon!