Gunks

Dave and I met up with Dunbar and Karen, along with a host of other HMC lookalikes. Actually, I quite like these lookalikes, but I'm too tired to list them off now. It was my first time doing anything hard there, and certainly my first time leading any horizontal roofs in gear. Today we found ourselves rapping in the dark due to a "uh oh, this pitch is too hard" moment (not my fault!). I hate rapping in the dark or even climbing anytime near dark, but evidently others don't consider this much of a restriction. Nonetheless, I would declare the weekend a success. I'm going to miss Dunbar and Karen as they make their way to one of those strange states I've haven't visited. Karen is leading pretty well these days. She's come a long way. We were remarking today that we were impressed she's led ice now. And what can I say about Dunbar? He got a haircut, but still has the straggly beard. I told him that was precisely the sort of unkempt personal hygiene that would get him placed on a security watchlist. However, he assured me he would shave before taking up his new job, in a misguided attempt to convince people that he is, not, in fact a climbing dirtbag who lives in his car. As we were chilling out between climbs today, Dave and I chatted with some nearby climbers, and they asked if one of us was Dunbar because some crazy person had been querying the skies for Dunbar periodically from the bottom of the cliff at a considerable volume. I convinced them he was our spiritual leader, which I think they half believed. Climbing is no fun without a considerable amount of bullshit, as long as it doesn't involve tangled ropes.

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.]

More Training

It's been quiet lately because I've been writing my thesis and training for an upcoming June trip to Yosemite. I've learned a ton of stuff at my desk lately. It's reassuring that my brain still works after being marooned at the bench for five years. Occasionally, I've managed to escape and do a little climbing. Last weekend, I went to Rumney. It wasn't too exciting, but I did get on Nicky's Crack (5.11d) at the Hinterlands. I tried it a couple of times on top-rope and to my surprise, redpointed it on my first try. I think I'm definitely getting a lot stronger. I've been hitting up Metrorock two or three nights a week and I feel some power endurance I've never felt before. I think if I don't get hurt, I'll be feeling really strong in a month. I've been training on the campus board too. I'm not exactly where I was before in terms of power. I used to be able to ladder every other rung. But now I can ladder every rung on the intermediate-sized board, which I never used to be able to do. So I seem to have better contact strength and endurance than I used to, but less power. But I think the power will come back too. I think I've learned that I have to dial things back a bit when I'm feeling good. The time to rest is when things are going really well. In that vein, I'm taking three days off at the moment, and plan for a week soon. I do want to go back to Rumney and try and send Flesh in the next month though. I feel like that's been nagging at me for a while. I have my eye on Hope for Movement, too. There's also the Prow at Cathedral, too. I suppose there's a lot on the agenda for this season...including adding a few letters to my name!

Cathedral Linkup!

Last week, Kevin Mahoney and I did a whole bunch of stuff at Cathedral. One of the things we did was a linkup of Just Laughing (trad M6) and The Unicorn (WI 5). We also swung leads on Repentance (WI 5). So I called up Dunbar this week and suggested we try to repeat the linkup ourselves. Now, it’s one thing to follow a guide up something hard and thrash around, and quite another to be on the sharp end yourself. Neither Dunbar nor I had led anything quite so hard, nor quite so long before, but we got psyched to try it.

I started up Just Laughing, a 30 m granite crack which goes up to a roof at around 9:30. It was scary, pumpy, and fun. I placed a ton of gear on it—a double set of cams! I ended up hanging on the gear a few times, but I eventually pulled it off. I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen. I really thought I could whip off at some spots. It’s funny, because Kevin told me last weekend that he thought the climbing was “really secure,” and today I felt my feet skate and torques spin. I suppose that’s the difference between a gumby like me, and expert like him. For me, the climb was about big moves between a few hooks, and a lot of torques (where you put your pick in and twist with constant opposing pressure). For Dunbar, it seemed to involve a lot of having one hand out and one tool out. I tried to tell him that fingers were for picking your nose, but I guess my advice didn’t take. I can’t complain too much though, because he did it cleanly! It was impressive.

Dunbar went up a short mixed pitch, and then led up The Unicorn, which was steep and pumpy. I’m glad I didn’t lead that pitch because I was pretty tired. In fact, after we walked off, it was about 2:30 pm, and I was about ready to call it a day. But we walked over the Repentance “just to check it out.” There was a party there just doing the first pitch, so we decided to re-rack and go for it. I led up to the first belay station and continued up the crux to link up the first and second pitches. The crux was scary as all hell! It had the snowy appearance and soft feel that ice gets when it gets baked. I was scared enough to get a stubby in the column (an iffy proposition, at least if the column breaks) and clip a screamer to a V-thread that somebody else had put in. But then I looked at the V-thread, and I saw there was a nice white horizontal fracture line under it! Not psyched, and pumped silly, I shook out, and tried to get my breathing and pounding heart under control. I punched it past the crux, and sighed heavily in relief when I got a nice #2 camalot in.

The rest of the climb was way harder than last week’s lead. There were super good hooks last week that felt secure. This week, it felt like I was hooking on saucers, because the hooks had expanded from the warm temperatures in the valley this week. I felt myself panting and smelled the sharpness of burned rock (from tools and crampons on rock). Scared, but committed, I fought really hard and made it to the belay. I don’t think I’ve dug that deep before on a climb. I brought Dunbar up and he cruised past me to the third pitch. He sent the chockstone! The top of the climb is a wide chimney with an infamous chockstone in it. I managed to do the chockstone, too, surprisingly enough. I had been having trouble making the wide stem (I’m only 5’7”, gimme a break!) so this was the first time I actually did it properly.

Anyways, it was around 6:15 pm when we topped out, and night had fallen. We hiked down the road under a gleaming half moon and sparkling starlight. As we passed the slabs at the North End, the ice caught the moonlight just right, and there was a marvelous glow. We were both totally wiped, but we had made it! That was probably one of the most incredible days of climbing I’ve ever had. We were both at our limits, and we both needed each other to pull it off. That’s a good feeling. It’s been a damn good winter.

More Outdoorness

On Saturday night, Kevin Mahoney asked me where I wanted to go on Sunday. Vacillating spinelessly, I nixed Lake Willoughby because it's apparently kind of baked right now. I decided we should go back to Cathedral, suggesting we do some "single pitch mixed climbing," because that sounded like an easier day. Ha! In the morning, we started up Diagonal, a summer 5.6 rock route or "WI 5" in the winter. That rating is a filthy liar and is not to believed under any circumstances. Neither, in fact, should any of the other ratings at Cathedral Ledge. But I digress. We climbed with crampons on hands up to the ice, which was pretty baked, so we traversed back down and went up Standard Route ("5.7"). It was really hard! I had one tool and a hand out for a whole bunch of it. There are several roofs inside chimneys where the sides are either broken up rock or verglas. If you're leading it, you're supposed to chimney up to the roof, clip a sling (which is around a frozen in rock or something--I thought it was scary because it didn't look all that secure), and then shoot out onto some thin ice or turf. At the end, there was a bit of steep ice. It was quite the adventure. I am definitely not up to leading something like that. But Jimmy and I may try the Just Laughing/Unicorn deal next weekend. Am I up to leading M6 trad? We'll see. Now I'm at Sunday River. I did a double black diamond run today, my first! It went quite well, and it was actually on natural snow, which was new for me too. However, I got on some moguls early in the morning, and that went really badly. I don't know how to turn quickly enough to do them yet. I'm practicing doing some small fast turns with little hops, so that may help. I tried their night skiing today, but it wasn't very well lit and there weren't very many trails open because of grooming, so I just did a couple of runs and took off. It's been a great weekend!

Repentance, Take 2

Kevin Mahoney and I went out to Cathedral today. We rolled up at the extra early time of 8 AM (early if you consider that I had to drive up from Cambridge) but there were already three parties on or queued up for Repentance and another on Remission! We checked our Deidre, which was formed weirdly, but there wasn't much ice on the hand crack higher up, so we bailed after doing the first pitch and trying the second. Then we did Just Laughing, which is probably about M6 (too burly for me to lead right now, but I didn't fall following it) to The Last Unicorn (4? 5?). We thought about doing some ice-toproping, but I've had enough ice-toproping to last a lifetime (at least, for this season). We headed back to Repentance, and magically, everyone was gone! I linked up the first and second pitch. Everything was hooked out, which was nice. Things were going well...I chugged up past the first belay, hooked up the crux (a swiss cheese of ice screw and pick holes), and found a nice little V-thread someone had put in. I even got to stick some screws into old screw holes! Heh. I got higher up and then I realized there was trouble brewing...I was out of draws! I guess Kevin only normally carries 8, but that's a bit thin for a full 60 m pitch. I did all sorts of bullshit like clip things with the carabiners on cams. I even wanted to take the neutrino off my bullet pack and use that, but I was wearing the pack, and that would have been tricky. Because I couldn't extend any of the higher pieces, there was atrocious rope drag, but I grunted through it. I had to run it out (by my standards, not Kevin's) a bit to cut down on any further drag, but I punched it to the belay. Then Kevin led up to the top and I followed. I actually made some progress on this chockstone thing. I feel it's very mean to short people like me. Maybe Hannah can stem like crazy, but I can't. I bridged the wide chimney at full extension, with my toes pointed, and even with my gloved hand in a fist to get a little extra reach and I just barely made it. Higher up, the rock rippled a bit, and I couldn't quite make it happen. There's basically one or two moves in that extremely wide area that I need to work out. After that it's a hook, some turf shots, and a high step to the finish. I swear that it's waaay harder for short people like me. But then again, it might be easier in the chimney section for me. So who knows? I'm just psyched I got to lead one of the classic hard routes in New England...and it wasn't even a sketchfest! I heard Steve House soloed Repentance and Remission and found the chockstone the hardest part. In fact, I heard he nearly decked on it. Holy shit. Kevin said he threw away his glove in an effort to jam, but then found that his hand was too small! I'd be crapping my pants if that happened. Yikes! Oh well, I'm still impressed...

Repentance, Take 1

Dave, Jimmy, and I woke up at a fairly unwholesome hour to go try Repentance at Cathedral Ledge, a classic grade 5 ice climb. Unfortunately, when we got there, a Russian party of two was on it already! There was already a party starting up Remission, so we sat down and waited. We figured that if we gave them an hour, they'd be safely up the crux, and it would be OK to start. I was wrong. I was leading up the first pitch, and the second above me sent down a barrage of ice, which clunked me repeatedly on the head. I was definitely not very excited about this. The ice was brittle, but hooked out, so I was tapping in my hooks carefully. But of course, those placements aren't as secure as when you're actually swinging. I know I can climb grade 5 ice without falling under normal conditions, but no bets on whether I can do it if I get hit in the face with a big chunk of ice. I brought Dave and Jimmy up to the ledge and noticed that Jimmy had forgotten the rock rack. I lowered him on a redirected ATC and brought him back up. Then we waited for another hour. The team above us was crawling up. It was getting into the afternoon, so we decided to bail and do Goofer's. After some shenanigans, we got up and down that. Argh! This might have been the only chance I get this season! But maybe not. Maybe I can convince Jimmy to try it again. But if we do, we're driving before dawn to get on it. I can't understand these people. They show up from New York, have no clue what they're on, and just start up. You'd think they'd be super good or something to do that, but no! They look like they went to an ice climbing store, swept off a shelf into a loot bag, and made off like bandits! The leader had leashes and umbilicals! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Anyways, that's probably enough ranting and raving.

I took a cute girl out to dinner and a movie last night. She had a slightly wild and crazy look in her eyes. I think that's good, unless that means she's going to write plays where an ostensibly completely unrelated, but eponymous crazy woman chops me up into bits. That would be bad. She's good at skiing and doesn't mind roughing it in the outdoors, which is cool. We'll see where it goes...

Tonight is the Mt. Washington Ice Fest. I'm going go watch the drytooling competition.