Rufus

Rumney on Sunday was beautiful. The climbing was overtaken by a chocolate lab puppy named Rufus. Depending on who you believe, Rufus (a) is as much Rachel's puppy as it is Vanessa and Mike's; (b) might have Down's syndrome; or (c) is much more interested in unsuccessfully gnawing at over-sized plastic bottles than you. He's also very interested in midday naps, as shown above.

Mordor Wall

I went back to tackle the Mordor Wall again with Dunbar yesterday. It went all right, but not perfectly. We ended up doing the first three pitches and then bailing. We weren't moving particularly quickly, I was spooked by a slopey bat hook, a sketchy top-step, and a lot of running water, and time was running out. The sketchy top-step occurred because of the slopey bat hook, in fact. I'd set my talon, "ooze" onto the placement, and shriek when it fell out. Dunbar, on the other hand, led the second pitch, a bolted bat hook traverse, and seemed quite nonchalant. He's calmer than I am on stuff like this. I need time to get into a comfort zone; he seems at home. It's admirable. Anyways, more talking would only bore you, so here are a bunch of pictures:

Me leading the first pitch.

At a belay. There's a lot of stuff.

Dunbar jugging on a beautiful fall day.

Dunbar leading on the bat hook traverse.

Dunbar climbing out of Mordor.

Am I hooking a bolt with a grappling hook? Um, yes.

Dunbar looking like a stoic Russian general here. He's
usually more jovial than this, but you can't tell from this
picture!

Rack for the day: doubles in the C3s, double C4s up to 2",
double BD stoppers and micro nuts, 18 draws, a bunch of
hooks, etc. Can you identify everything in the picture?

Ice Screw Sharpening

Despite the fact that many of us experienced a warm, comfortable day
yesterday at Rumney, I have to admit I feel the ice clasp of winter
approaching. Fortunately, I also feel feverish excitement for the
upcoming ice season. In the last few years, my ice rack has seen some
use, and I've been trying to figure out how to sharpen my screws.

Last year, I found somebody who would sharpen screws via mail, but as he
went out of business, I'm on my own now. There are other people who claim
to sharpen ice screws out there, but with all the mumblings I've heard
about bad results and machine sharpening, I don't trust them. Like most
people, I have an all Black Diamond rack of Turbo Express ice screws (some
of the older ones, some of the newer ones). According to BD (personal
communication), each screw is machine cut, and then hand sharpened. They
recommend against the use of machine sharpeners or grinders because the
heat generated can damage the temper of the steel.

BD gives some instructions for how to sharpen them on your own:
http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en-us/customer-service/faqs#climb

I tried it this afternoon and my impression is as follows. Any bozo, such
as myself, can sharpen screws to a mediocre level. It's easy to remove
any offending burrs, rust spots, or dull edges. However, it's very tricky
to get the screws back to their original geometry. If one carefully
inspects a brand new screw, it's obvious that there are subtle little
contours which end in a relatively sharply pointed tooth. These contours
were very difficult to replicate in my inexperienced hands. My sharpened
screws are still relatively sharp, but the teeth are not as agressive as
before. Still, according to BD, such screws will work much better than
their unsharpened counterparts.

In any case, I think there's a limited amount of sharpening a screw will
take before further sharpening will start biting into the threads. In the
future, I just plan to be very careful about not damaging the teeth of my
screws. The other thing is that screws are prone to rust damage, so
drying them out promptly after climbing is important, as is lubricating
their insides. I've settled on two quick shots of WD40, once from the top
and once from the bottom. I think this not only facilitates ice removal,
but also repels water and rust. I don't think the WD40 is very good for
the rest of my climbing gear, so I flicked and wiped the screws dry as
best I could afterwards. Too much oil probably means the screws will
start accumulating all sorts of dirt.

Flesh

I'm still working Flesh for Lulu. I've fell on the last (serious) move for the fourth time today. I worked the top for about an hour though, so I think if I rest up it'll go. I hung out with Brayton and Devin and had a really fun, chill day. I feel winter coming soon, so I'm looking forward to making the transition to ice climbing.

Dunbar jugging a few weeks ago. Yay for aid climbing!

Brayton hooking hard on Riviera (5.13d).

Crow Hill Aid

This weekend was really wet, so I just did a half day with Dunbar today at Crow Hill. It was pretty simple: I led Crow-Magnon, Dunbar jugged it, Dunbar led Jane, I jugged it, and then we both top-roped Jane. Dunbar had never led any aid or jugged before, so I think he was psyched. The gear at Crow Hill is tricky. There are a lot of flaring pockets. Fortunately, there was hardly anyone there to disturb us, which was surprising, given that the sun was out. We almost got Jane (5.11ish). It was getting dark and the holds seemed quite greasy, but I almost got it on toprope. I should think about leading it. I need to figure out exactly what gear it needs though.

Winter is coming! Winter means ice! Ice means ice climbing!

Prow, VMC Direct Direct

There was another break in the weather over the last two days, so I went for it and had a big "weekend." Yesterday, Coz and I went to do the Prow at Cathedral Ledge. Although it's a 5.11d free route, it's a relatively easy C1-C2 aid route. There are six pitches. I led the first five, freeing the first and a lot of the third (aiding the rest), and Coz led the final "dreamy fingerlock" pitch. We moved a little slowly, but I thought it was a good time overall. We started around 9 and were done around 4. I actually thought things were moving well except for the fifth pitch, which has the notorious triangular roof. There was great gear in the roof, but I found the transition from below to above the roof to be very awkward. I also found it hard to test the pieces in the actual roof, because they were effectively behind me. I ended up giving them a mediocre foot test, and just going for it. I had bomber gear right below me, anyways. I brought a pretty light rack, considering, and it was sufficient, but I certainly would have liked more pieces. I back-cleaned a bunch. I never thought carrying 17 cams would be considered light, especially for relatively short pitches, but here we are... Yesterday's rack:

- 1 set BD standard stoppers
- 2 sets BD micro wires
- singles: BD C4s, 0.75, 1, 2, 3
- doubles: BD C4s, 0.5, 0.4, 0.3
- doubles: BD C3s, 00, 0, 1, 2
- single: BD C3 000

Yup, I'm a BD guy. I definitely could have used more...everything. Anyways, I climbed with Bayard today. He told me that a buddy of his and him did the route in a startling 39 minutes, using a mixture of aid, french-free, and free techniques. Shit. I guess I have a way to go. Coz did really well on the route, although it certainly seemed like it would be quite hard for a free climb. I won't be freeing the whole thing anytime soon, although I would like to at least work some of it.

Today Bayard and I went to Cannon. We did most of the VMC Direct Direct (supposedly a "5.10 route with a bit of 5.11 on it") and Sticky Fingers (another "5.10"). We did everything on VMC Direct Direct except for the third class stuff at the top. It was hard. Of course, I was tired from yesterday, but I think it would have been hard regardless. It's not super powerful, but it's technical in a way I'm very unaccustomed to. It's also got some spooky moves that would be very exciting on lead. There's a lot of smearing on insecure granite bumps, underclinging tight little pin scars, and tenuous stemming. I certainly need to get better at this sort of trad climbing, and I suppose the only way to do so is to do more of it. I hung a bunch, often to remove gear, but often because I was confused about what to do. It definitely wasn't my best climbing...my feet hurt from standing in my aiders with climbing shoes on from the Prow, so that wasn't helpful.


As if I weren't dead enough, we then went over to do Sticky Fingers, which is a two pitch route. The first pitch is a hard 5.10 finger crack. I liked trying to figure it out, but I must say I flailed all over it. I got a few good fingerlocks in it, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out where to put my feet. By this point, my big toe joint was killing me, so that probably didn't help either. The finger crack diagonals hard to the right so it's hard to figure out whether to put your feet in the little pin scars or on the little textured bumps on the face below the crack. I often found my feet crossed over each other very high, which seemed very awkward. Near the end I figured out you had to go between fingerlocking and gastoning/laybacking the crack's edges whenever possible (which is basically a mediocre sloper). It was cool, because it was all new to me. The second pitch is a sparsely bolted hard 5.10 slab. Well, I thought it was hard. I figured out a bunch of it, which seemed to involve smearing one foot on a mediocre bump and, with no handholds, just standing up very delicately. I thought I was good at slab climbing, but that pitch kicked my ass. I think I'm used to actual holds. Heh.


Anyways, it was a great weekend. Here's one random anecdote from today. We were taking a break at the base of the cliff before "cragging" when we saw four kids and two parents hike up. The kids didn't seem too psyched. Bayard gave me a look. Later he told me he had never seen kids up there before. I might understand taking your super-cool climbing protege/child prodigy up there, but these were definitely not climbers. I bet kids would hate the talus field. Plus they didn't have any helmets or anything. It was kind of like seeing a movie which vaguely involves a climber, but where the director had to skimp on the budget for hiring a climbing consultant. The dad had a BD pack on, with Petzl ice clippers on the ice axe loops. Why? I have no idea. He said things that sounded approximately climber-like, but made little sense. I'm a little baffled by all that, to be honest. Oh well.

Accident at Rumney

I wish I could stop writing subject titles like this. Josh and I went up to Rumney today. A hanger fell off a bolt on Flesh for Lulu at the Meadows, so I got together my gear and headed up to fix it. I'm just fifi-ing into my daisy when I hear this incredibly loud crash from the Parking Lot Wall. It sounded like a bunch of stuff was falling, but I couldn't really tell what was going on. The sound lasted for a few seconds, so it sounded serious. There were a lot of people over there, and I was busy leading, so I couldn't exactly rush over there to find out what was going on. I got up to another bolt and hung there, trying to figure out what I should do. Then somebody came by and said that a tree had fallen on a climber, that they were sort of hurt, but everything was under control. So I kept going. I got up to the seventh bolt (the eight bolt's hanger was missing). I clipped the eight bolt like a rivet with a hanger, and pulled onto it. But I was sketched because it was a really far reach to the ninth bolt, and I wasn't sure if I could make it, even if I top-stepped like crazy. So I just dropped my gear and free-climbed/ran it out past the missing hanger, clipped the ninth bolt, and lowered down to put a new hanger on the eighth. After that, I went up to the anchor with the intention of replacing the quickclips, but I realized there were glue-ins there, and besides, the clips which I thought were really worn, weren't too bad. So I came down.

We still didn't hear any yelling or sounds of disaster, but we figured we'd head over to the parking lot and see what the hubbub is about. We'd heard a helicopter flying close by, so we thought it might have been more serious than we were led to believe. When we got there, we got the full story. A girl with MITOC (?) had been belaying and a tree fell a reported 70 feet and hit
her. A paramedic who was rescuing her had fallen on the trail as well, and banged up his head, so both needed to be carried out. We arrived just in time to help with both carry-outs. This carried some personal resonance with me because the exact same thing had happened to me a few years back.

The girl looked bad. Half her face looked purple and one of her eyes looked swollen shut. I could see her wrist was heavily bandaged, and there were grotesque looking open fractures on her lower leg. I've never seen anything that bad. We carried her hand over hand down to the trail, and the helicopter whisked her off to Dartmouth. I still haven't heard what happened yet, but it looked pretty life-threatening to me. She was still sort of conscious and could wiggle her toes, so that seemed positive. She was with a doctor, and there was a fair of some sort happening down the road, so the EMTs got there really fast. I really hope she's all right. I swear, the trees are a serious hazard. I find myself wearing a helmet a lot more when belaying and climbing now. You just never know when some stray rock or something is going to come down and fuck you up.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I flailed on Flesh again (damnit) and did some miscellaneous other stuff with Josh. I think we both had fun climbing, considering. Be safe out there.