Projected Flesh for Lulu (5.12a/b) at Rumney all day today. I was so psyched (and desperate) to get on it, I just showed up and projected it with random people. I had one good burn on TR where I almost got to the top and fell doing one of the last hard moves. Leading was harder though...I think the clipping is really pumping me out. Rachel showed up and TRed it really cleanly which was pretty impressive. She matched the crux hold, probably using her tiny little fingers, something I was completely unable to do. I did crimp the crux hold really hard. So hard, in fact, I have a huge blood blister there now. But I'm still super, super psyched. I was really stuck in the 11s there for a while, but now I feel like a bunch of easier 12s are within my reach! I just need a little more endurance!
[editorial note: I added some "quick reaction buttons:" yay! or nay! ?]
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Trolls, Mordor, and Flesh
It finally happened this weekend. No, not the apocalypse. The weather finally got nice in New Hampshire (sort of). Sure, it rained now and then, but for the most part, the sun was out, and so I put away my design draft for an ark, and clipped my daises to my harness. See, climbing is a cool sport *because* it's so "extreme" (read: unpopular). If I were into something lame like, oh, golf, I probably couldn't even hire Tiger Woods with a million dollars to glance in my direction, let alone coach me. Fortunately, in something as esotetic (read: stupid) as aid climbing, I can hire Mark Synnott, a bona fide big wall man. So, he took some time out of his busy adventure-related scheming and parenting schedule to teach me about aid climbing. You know, you flip through the aid climbing chapter in Freedom of the Hills, and scoff. Yes, you are ascending using gear, and a lot of gear at that. Yes, it's very complicated. But no, it doesn't appear to be any fun whatsoever. You didn't become a climber to become a bloody rigger, did you? Well, I decided to do it anyways because I had heard it teaches you a lot about placing good gear, seeing as you test every single piece, and unexpectedly found it to be really fun, as well. And that's what climbing is about, right? Yeah. I mean, try to explain even "pure" forms of climbing to people. Uh, yeah, I dip my hands in a pouch containing the ground up remains of ancient sea creatures and climb to the top of the scariest rock I can find. And if I manage to do it without a rope, risking my life completely needlessly, well, I'm extra badass, so can I have my unbridled adulation now? In this, at least, the existentialists have the right idea.
Nut? Ice tool? Pin? So many choices!
Friday, we went to Trollville. We were at Cathedral yesterday, and we explained this fact to a passerby, and he asked "Trollville? Never heard of it." How typical. An added bonus of it being completely deserted most of the time, particularly the summer, is no one gives a fuck if you pound pins, bolt, or drytool away. So this was the perfect place for me to learn how to pound in pins. I mock-lead this A4 seam on the diciest placements, with multiple pieces ripping out on tests, and trying to stack pins and nuts to make things work. I fell about halfway up, which I thought was pretty good. That thing is pretty hard. I fell because I had to get a very marginal micro BD stopper, which was fine when weighted from below, but terrible when I got a bit higher on it. I think if I were going to do it again, I would "free climb" the very blank section in the middle using ice axes. Yes, you can drytool in the summer with rock shoes, and yes, it's totally absurd, but I had a lot of fun doing it anyways:
Absurd drytooling in summer. M7?
I had tried the route before in the winter, and thought it was hard, but it went pretty well this time. I would have sent it, but I got my tool stuck in a slot. Oh well. It's not really a mixed route though, because it never gets any ice on it. However, topping it out was quite tough without any frozen turf at the top. It was totally cool though: leashless trickery, hand jams, heel hooks, torquing sidepulls... I also aided this climb, and it was much more straightforward.
Leading the Mordor Wall. A2, I think.
Well, yesterday I got my first aid lead in at the Mordor Wall on Cathedral Ledge. This thing is no trifle. The first move is off a somewhat dicey looking talon placement:
And you can't see in the pictures, but the next move is to thread a little rivet with the wire of a nut, and slide the nut up to make a "bolt." And then there were a lot of microcam and micronut placements. I think I used almost my entire rack. At one point, I was running out of pieces and had to place a BD C3 (#000) cam and a BD micro stopper (#2) next to each other and equalize them. Those are tiny pieces, to be sure, but I bounce tested them very aggressively and was impressed to see that they held fine. It also took forever...four hours to lead it and then a surprising two hours to jug it. Every time I did something slow, like fifi in too much, Mark would say "Ah, but what would Chris Mac do here?!" and I'd try to ignore him, only to discover an hour later that he was totally right. And jugging a traverse is not trivial. If you thought cleaning a traversing sport climb was hard, wait till you try to do this. Mark told me he's seen people on big walls stymied for hours trying to do stuff like that.
Hey, Mark? Why wasn't this in the brochure? Nobody said
this was going to be awful!
Well, I'm pretty pleased with what happened. I didn't whip, and I only had one piece blow out on a test. I did almost poke myself in the eye when I whipped out a nut, but fortunately, I was wearing safety glasses. I've decided that nut tools, despite their name, are virtually useless for taking out nuts. You can get out most nuts just by yanking up on them. Why didn't anyone tell me this before?! I learned a ton about placing gear and jugging properly, and feel ready to tackle harder aid objectives. I think it will make me feel more confident trad climbing, too.
Well, I polished off the weekend by going to Rumney and having a go at Flesh for Lulu. It actually went pretty well, and I linked a lot of it together. I think I can definitely send it this season. It's 5.12a/b, but nothing feels harder than V3 or V4. It's just very technical and pumpy. It's really my style--slightly overhanging, balancy moves on crimps. Jeremy and Chelsea had a great time on it too:
I also went to Mark's slideshow about his excursion to Borneo with various contemporary climbing luminaries including Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, and Conrad Anker. I won't ruin it for you, because I'm rooting for him to come back in the fall and give a slideshow to the HMC, but there was a lot of gossip about these guys. In no uncertain terms, it was made clear to me that: Mark is crazy and bases all of his sponsored adventures on books which document doomed expeditions where dumb people venture somewhere they have no business being and end up having to practically eat each other before being rescued; Alex Honnold is ridiculously good and has almost no fear, to the point where he makes fun of Mark for being "Mr. Safety;" Jimmy Chin is incredibly charming, to the point where he can solve problems with local officials by whipping out his iPhone and showing them cool videos ("Ah, here I am skiing down Everest. What have you got to say about that?" Incidentally, one dude walked out of the room before the slideshow started, as soon as he found out that Mark wasn't going to talk about climbing Everest. He mumbled something about not wanting to see the "Not Everest guy." What a tool.); and Conrad Anker is both a bloodhound when it comes to routefinding and also totally tough ("You guys want to go down because there's a little typhoon? You're such wimps!"). Well, I'm going to end the post there, with that incredibly long sentence. It was a great weekend.
Nut? Ice tool? Pin? So many choices!Friday, we went to Trollville. We were at Cathedral yesterday, and we explained this fact to a passerby, and he asked "Trollville? Never heard of it." How typical. An added bonus of it being completely deserted most of the time, particularly the summer, is no one gives a fuck if you pound pins, bolt, or drytool away. So this was the perfect place for me to learn how to pound in pins. I mock-lead this A4 seam on the diciest placements, with multiple pieces ripping out on tests, and trying to stack pins and nuts to make things work. I fell about halfway up, which I thought was pretty good. That thing is pretty hard. I fell because I had to get a very marginal micro BD stopper, which was fine when weighted from below, but terrible when I got a bit higher on it. I think if I were going to do it again, I would "free climb" the very blank section in the middle using ice axes. Yes, you can drytool in the summer with rock shoes, and yes, it's totally absurd, but I had a lot of fun doing it anyways:
Absurd drytooling in summer. M7?I had tried the route before in the winter, and thought it was hard, but it went pretty well this time. I would have sent it, but I got my tool stuck in a slot. Oh well. It's not really a mixed route though, because it never gets any ice on it. However, topping it out was quite tough without any frozen turf at the top. It was totally cool though: leashless trickery, hand jams, heel hooks, torquing sidepulls... I also aided this climb, and it was much more straightforward.
Leading the Mordor Wall. A2, I think.Well, yesterday I got my first aid lead in at the Mordor Wall on Cathedral Ledge. This thing is no trifle. The first move is off a somewhat dicey looking talon placement:
And you can't see in the pictures, but the next move is to thread a little rivet with the wire of a nut, and slide the nut up to make a "bolt." And then there were a lot of microcam and micronut placements. I think I used almost my entire rack. At one point, I was running out of pieces and had to place a BD C3 (#000) cam and a BD micro stopper (#2) next to each other and equalize them. Those are tiny pieces, to be sure, but I bounce tested them very aggressively and was impressed to see that they held fine. It also took forever...four hours to lead it and then a surprising two hours to jug it. Every time I did something slow, like fifi in too much, Mark would say "Ah, but what would Chris Mac do here?!" and I'd try to ignore him, only to discover an hour later that he was totally right. And jugging a traverse is not trivial. If you thought cleaning a traversing sport climb was hard, wait till you try to do this. Mark told me he's seen people on big walls stymied for hours trying to do stuff like that.
Hey, Mark? Why wasn't this in the brochure? Nobody saidthis was going to be awful!
Well, I'm pretty pleased with what happened. I didn't whip, and I only had one piece blow out on a test. I did almost poke myself in the eye when I whipped out a nut, but fortunately, I was wearing safety glasses. I've decided that nut tools, despite their name, are virtually useless for taking out nuts. You can get out most nuts just by yanking up on them. Why didn't anyone tell me this before?! I learned a ton about placing gear and jugging properly, and feel ready to tackle harder aid objectives. I think it will make me feel more confident trad climbing, too.
Well, I polished off the weekend by going to Rumney and having a go at Flesh for Lulu. It actually went pretty well, and I linked a lot of it together. I think I can definitely send it this season. It's 5.12a/b, but nothing feels harder than V3 or V4. It's just very technical and pumpy. It's really my style--slightly overhanging, balancy moves on crimps. Jeremy and Chelsea had a great time on it too:
I also went to Mark's slideshow about his excursion to Borneo with various contemporary climbing luminaries including Alex Honnold, Jimmy Chin, and Conrad Anker. I won't ruin it for you, because I'm rooting for him to come back in the fall and give a slideshow to the HMC, but there was a lot of gossip about these guys. In no uncertain terms, it was made clear to me that: Mark is crazy and bases all of his sponsored adventures on books which document doomed expeditions where dumb people venture somewhere they have no business being and end up having to practically eat each other before being rescued; Alex Honnold is ridiculously good and has almost no fear, to the point where he makes fun of Mark for being "Mr. Safety;" Jimmy Chin is incredibly charming, to the point where he can solve problems with local officials by whipping out his iPhone and showing them cool videos ("Ah, here I am skiing down Everest. What have you got to say about that?" Incidentally, one dude walked out of the room before the slideshow started, as soon as he found out that Mark wasn't going to talk about climbing Everest. He mumbled something about not wanting to see the "Not Everest guy." What a tool.); and Conrad Anker is both a bloodhound when it comes to routefinding and also totally tough ("You guys want to go down because there's a little typhoon? You're such wimps!"). Well, I'm going to end the post there, with that incredibly long sentence. It was a great weekend.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Positive Thinking?
I wish this were about the route of the same name in the Daks, but it is actually about this:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html
People are always telling me to think more positively, and it seems like that might actually be counterproductive. Well, to be fair, I think psychotherapy, and for that matter, psychology and psychiatry, while sometimes undeniably helpful, are somewhat pseudoscientific. Along with the bias I have that says social science studies like this often have some sort of agenda, I do take the whole thing with a grain of salt. But nonetheless, I think it's common sense that striving for realistic pronouncements, and general honesty with yourself, is often helpful. Of course, if you're on lead, and you need to lie to yourself to make it work, then by all means. But once you're on the ground, don't tell yourself you're a 5.12 climber when you don't have any arms!
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html
People are always telling me to think more positively, and it seems like that might actually be counterproductive. Well, to be fair, I think psychotherapy, and for that matter, psychology and psychiatry, while sometimes undeniably helpful, are somewhat pseudoscientific. Along with the bias I have that says social science studies like this often have some sort of agenda, I do take the whole thing with a grain of salt. But nonetheless, I think it's common sense that striving for realistic pronouncements, and general honesty with yourself, is often helpful. Of course, if you're on lead, and you need to lie to yourself to make it work, then by all means. But once you're on the ground, don't tell yourself you're a 5.12 climber when you don't have any arms!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Rumney Reportlet
Neal, Hannah, Claire, Jeremy, Chelsea, Philippe, Jonathan, Patrick, a variety of hangers-on, and I pounced on the brief respite from the continuing monsoon-like deluge to get some sport climbing in at Rumney. It was good to get back into projecting mode. Neal and I worked on Orangahang (12a/b), and I think we both made good progress on it. I still don't think I have all the footwork down quite right, but it's good enough that I think I can send it with a bit more endurance. I put Claire on Tropicana (11a), her first 11 outside, and she did great, contrary to pre-mumblings to the contrary. A lot of stuff was really drippy so we didn't do much else. I wanted to get on Flesh for Lulu (12a/b), but there was some camp of precocious teens on it so we went and ate delicious Subway sandwiches instead. I'll try to project that next week. It seems like more my style. Mark Synnott and I are headed out to do some aid climbing this weekend, assuming the clowns at the body shop ever decide to fix my car. Maybe I'll get to lead my first aid climb!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
RIP Johnny, Micah, Wade
I only knew Micah, but it sounds like they were all cool dudes. Micah came to give a slideshow here last year and it was a really cool, funny show. I even got to climb with him at Rumney once...he was totally psyched about everything. We're all going to miss them.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Unorthodox Nut Placement
My toaster broke, so that the handle pops up, whether the toast is done or not, so I have come up with an innovative solution involving a #5 BD micro stopper. Now, I wonder if I can do it in reverse...think I can use the toaster as an "aid only" piece? I bet *that's* not covered by the warnings. It just says not to soak it in the bathtub and nothing at all about falling on it as a piece of pro...
Monday, June 15, 2009
Black Diamond
BD, definitely one of my favorite gear companies was recently robbed by an idiot who thought that actually dealt in diamonds:
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/106460446
Kinda puts your problems in perspective, doesn't it?
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/106460446
Kinda puts your problems in perspective, doesn't it?
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