Power Play

This week, we've been on the infamous annual HMC trip to the Adirondacks. On Tuesday, Bayard took me up Power Play, a classic grade 5 route at Chapel Pond. It was in pretty thin condition, but when I followed it, I took the opportunity to examine the gear and anchor placements. I talked to Dunbar about it, and he said it was too thin to do at the moment. But after taking a day off to learn how to downhill ski at Whiteface on Wednesday, I convinced Dunbar and Lauren to come check it out with me on Thursday. I admit I was pretty nervous Wednesday night. In these conditions, mistakes would have at least R-rated consequences. But still, I felt pretty solid when I followed it, and more the point, really psyched. Here's the route:


Although it has a direct variation (hard), the recent spate of warm weather hit it pretty hard and it probably isn't very well-bonded or safe to lead. We rambled up a series of ramps. There were small bits of ice on them that could be hooked, but I wouldn't call it secure by any means. Still, I tried to test every placement and climb very carefully. This was important, because I didn't get a good piece of gear until I got about 50 or 60 feet off the ground (#2 camalot). I got a sketchy tipped out stubby before that and a bad green C3 after that, but once I was on one of the higher ramps, I got decent yellow and blue screws every fifteen or twenty feet, which made me feel a lot better. Near the end of the first pitch, I basically ran out of rope, and Dunbar and Lauren had to simul-climb up first few moves (easy) to let me clip a cedar tree for an anchor.

Dunbar following the first pitch.

Dunbar led the short second pitch exit to the end, a steep curtain. I'm glad he led it, because I was feeling pretty tired. It's short, but no joke--an impressive lead. Lauren, amazingly enough, followed this with one old BD viper and something called a "humminbird," which looks like a hammer with a pick added as an afterthought. Still, it was marvelous:

Lauren styling it on the second pitch.

Well, after some double-rope management shenanigans and avoiding a huge rock on the way down, we made it. I'm pretty psyched. This is probably my hardest lead (of any sort) thus far.

Pictures From Cathedral

Bayard took some awesome photos. These are from Repentance, I think:

Another Few Days in New Hampshire

A few of us went up to the Flume yesterday. I've seen it colder there, but with little sun, it's definitely a chilly spot. Dunbar got beaned with a chunk of ice on his eyebrow and forehead. It looked like it hurt. He got a few stitches in Plymouth but didn't seem to need a priest. I think we all had a good time overall. I got to coach Karen a bit and that got me psyched. It's nice when you shout some advice and it actually helps someone instead of just annoying or confusing them. Dave Ford seemed to be having a good time. For only his second day on vertical ice, I thought he was doing rather well. (By comparison, my second day on the ice was atrocious. Let's not say any more!)

Bayard and I went to do Repentance at Cathedral Ledge today. Here is a picture below. I like the dark aspect of this picture. I think it captures it well.



Now, the guidebook gives this an ice grade of 5+ (accurate), a commitment grade of IV (also accurate), and an old-school mixed grade of 5.8 or so (can't remember exactly, but it's bullshit). I mean, OK, maybe it's 5.8 or 5.9 if you're an elite climber or a guide, but for us mere mortals, it's pretty hard. I think of 5.8 as something a gumby does on his or her first day at the gym or on top-rope. This was way harder.

This morning, I told somebody at the Frontside Grind coffee shop that I was going ice climbing on Cathedral Ledge and he explained to me that "ice is for gin and tonics." But I went anyways. The climb starts with about 80 feet of this "5.8" drytooling to get onto the ice (in the picture above, you can see the ice doesn't start right off the ground). When Bayard and I tried it last year, the ice didn't really touch down very far, so there was a big runout to get to the ice. This year, the ice started (thinly) after the good drytooling, so we were off to the races. Some pumpy, technical, and generally awesome climbing on good ice got us to a nasty sloping hanging belay for the second pitch. The second pitch was super hard, and probably the crux. A thin, horribly candled, and wet column (visible at a vertical white streak in the picture above) led to an awkward squeeze chimney. The column was really scary and I was only following it! There were very few good places to swing/tap, as almost every surface was convex. But I'm starting to get the sense, from climbing all these scary little pillars, that they're not impossible. If I get maybe twice as much endurance, then I'll be able to work for my tool placements, and actually do these things on lead. As it is, I'm desperately shaking out on every hold, which really pumps me out overall because it takes me a lot longer to climb the whole route. I can't swing too well when I'm pumped, either. The chimney was actually the crux of the route. Crazy sideways chimney moves and little taps/hooks on a thin, transparent smear of ice in the back of the chimney take you inside the climb to a roof. You get a hook in a crack just above the roof, swing out, and it's over. More or less. The third pitch was a wider chimney which was technical, but not quite as hard. Overall, it was a stellar route. I got pumped out of my gourd. My manubrium hurt in a weird way when I chimneyed. I got soaked on the second pitch. It was a good day.

Tuesday: We went to do Repentance today. It was thin and tricky conditions. The column off the first belay was way thinner than when I did it last year. In fact, it didn't even touch down--it was a dangler. The ice was brittle and fractured a lot. I'm sure it's not very nice on lead when you swing into the ice and white marks appear everywhere. Still, I climbed it like I was leading: solid sticks everywhere, every placement tested, every hook set, good footwork, etc. I kept looking around for gear. There are definitely some heady runouts involved, at least for a weenie like me. I had the whole route dialed except for the top where there's this massive chockstone. I kept switching positions for twenty minutes, trying to send it, but eventually I just took on the rope. Bayard kept telling me to stem onto the right somehow, but I couldn't really figure out how to do it. After a while, I just sort of powered my way through it in a sketchy way, but I wouldn't feel too good about doing that on lead. I think if I did eventually get up there, I'd consider just aiding through it. There's a great #3 cam, and then a fixed alien, and then another #1 placement above that. So that's all possible.

I'm totally worked now. Time for a nap.

Black Dike/Hassig's Direct or My Thin Ice Refresher

Kevin Mahoney and I went to Cannon today. Things were looking interesting, but quite thin. Omega is forming (but not ready, unless you're insane) and Prozac might be approaching climbability (also for insane people). We did the Black Dike, which I hadn't done before. We didn't do a rock traverse; rather, we did a sometimes-formed direct start to the second pitch. After that, we rapped back down and did a variation to the second pitch called "Hassig's Direct." Instead of shooting off left into a rock traverse, you angle up right around some blocks to another ribbon of ice. Everything was super thin. There were some cool hook moves, but also a lot of dull pick-on-rock noises. I probably have to sharpen my picks again, and I just did them last night. We found some extremely sketchy rap anchors where people had evidently slung some blocks. Some of these were so solid, the blocks could be pulled out by hand! It looked like a little mousetrap for ice climbers. The approach/exit was quite slippery. I'm still recovering from some bronchitis I got a few weeks ago, so I'm not in stellar aerobic shape, but I trudged along anyways. Right now, I'd say it's some snow on ice-covered rocks, which is generally bad. There are a lot of fallen trees all over the trail. Apparently the people who made the trail got it wrong in a bunch of places, but our tracks have now corrected this. Of course, everything looks the same to me, especially in the winter. I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

No pictures yet...but Kevin will send them to me soon. In lieu of photos, some impressions: a pale sliver of a crescent moon at sunrise over the Notch; yellow, twisted ice in evil shapes strewn about wizened, leafless trees at the top of the Dike; and a patina of icy crust served on blocky Cannon granite.

Sodium/Benzophenone

In preparation to make [6Li]HMDS, I had to distill N,N-dimethylethylamine from sodium/benzophenone overnight. Here's the cool color change:

Campus Training

[edit: on an unrelated note, here is an interesting discussion about winter gloves]

I've been bouldering a lot inside recently and I knocked off a bunch of V5s this week. I feel like I've broken through a bit of a mental barrier. I used to think that I might, maybe, one day be able to do a V6. Now I can see that's going to happen reasonably soon, and in fact, harder stuff is possible. I wasn't a gymnast, wrestler, or other sort of inhuman superman as a child. In fact, I decided un-athletic as a child. I'm certainly not a natural at climbing--it's taken lots of concerted effort.

Well, one direction I direct my efforts towards is campus training. Invented by the redoubtable Wolfgang Gullich in 1988 for his famous route, Action Directe (5.14d here in America). Basically, there's a bunch of wooden rungs which you climb up with no feet. It's primarily a form of neuromuscular training which gives you both the macroscopic coordination you need to execute big, dynamic moves and the microscopic coordination you need (muscle fibers contracting simultaneously) to be able to "stick" deadpoints and dynos. It's said there's not much muscular conditioning, but I bet it increases your tendon and even bone strength. I read an interesting article in the New York Times that seemed to suggest that strength training is not as helpful for increasing bone density as has been previously imagined. In fact, bones need "large forces released in a relatively big burst" to get stronger. I wonder if campus training qualifies? Hmm.

Anyways, each of the rungs are numbered (#1-10). On the one at Metrorock, ten rungs are arranged four or five inches apart. There are three ladders with small, medium, and large rung thicknesses. When I started doing it (six months to a year ago), I could barely hang from the large rungs, let alone do any campus moves. I started by sticking a foot on and doing "lock-off touches" on the large rungs. Both hands start on rung #2, say. One hand remains on #2, while the other bumps from 2-3-4-5 and back again. I figured that if it was, in fact, neuromuscular conditioning, then full body weight was unnecessary. I don't know if I was right or not, but it worked. After a while I progressed to doing it with no feet on, and then to "laddering," which is where your hands alternate 2-3-4-5... and then back down. Now, just this week, I've progressed to skipping rungs 2-4-6... which is a lot harder, believe me. I can do the single step laddering on the medium rungs now too. Next up is the "double dyno" which means both hands start on rung X and then explode up to rung X+n (n=1 if you're me, but much more if you're crazy). Immediately, both hands drop back down to rung X. It's not as hard as it sounds--but I almost fell over with surprise when I did it for the first time.

Aside from being just plain fun on its own, I've noticed that campus training has helped my bouldering and to some extent, route climbing. I can make big dynamic moves. I'm actually excited, rather than terrified, of making big moves or climbing on very steep terrain. Everybody complains that campus training is "too harsh" or "too hard" or whatever, but I think it's great. As long as you gradually ease yourself into it, stop if it hurts, and do it maybe two weeks on/two weeks off, I think it's fine. I make sure I take 5-7 days off climbing every two months or so. You'd be surprised what a difference that makes. I don't have a problem with skin rubbing off or anything either. I make sure I wash my hands after every climbing session and moisturize with something greasy before I go to bed that night. That, and cutting off any calluses that form with nail clippers, keeps my hands relatively smooth and functional. Some people think that calluses actually help their climbing, but I think it actually gets in the way of making good contact. And, of course, if they get ripped off, then that really puts a damper on things.

Note: Everybody says this, but you probably shouldn't use the campus board unless you can boulder at least V4 because you can get hurt (it's hard on the tendons, joints, etc.).

Crow Hill, Headpointing

Jonathan and I went to do some practice aid today at Crow Hill. I led Intertwine and he jugged it:


It was sunny, beautiful, and wet. Then Jonathan did his first aid lead on Jane, which I'll call C2. I've decided I'm going to try to headpoint it, so I worked it on top-rope, figuring out gear placements and beta.

I've one hung it so far. I'm close, but the back of my hand hurts from jamming now, so I'll have to come back to it. It's supposedly easy 11, but it's hard for me--I'm not used to crack climbing. There's real jams and stuff on it.

I made a beta sheet for it, 'cause I think I might not get back to it for a while. I'm super psyched about it though.