It's been pretty frigid in the New York City area these last few weeks, which has got me thinking about ice climbing. I have very little experience in it and I don't own the gear, but I'm eager to get out a few times this winter. Given how cold it is all this week, there might be some good lines in this weekend in the the Catskills and the 'Dacks.
It has just come to my attention that there's a brand new website dedicated to ice climbing in the Catskills: ClimbCatskillIce.com. In addition to regular conditions updates (which you can also find at the Alpine Endeavors website and on NEIce.com's forums), the creator of the site is adding guidebook features including topos to the most popular ice climbing areas. It looks like a site worth watching, and I'm adding it to my list of links over on the right side of my page.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Gunks Routes: Oscar's Variation (5.7), Strictly From Nowhere (5.7), and Shockley's Ceiling (5.6)
Strictly From Nowhere (5.7) and Shockley’s Ceiling (5.6) are both great classics. But both have flaws.
Strictly’s has a fantastic first pitch, highlighted by the final bit of climbing up into an overhanging corner, and then around right to a bolted anchor. The easier pitch two begins with nice juggy climbing to the GT Ledge, but unfortunately this is over quickly, and then the rest of the way to the top is undistinguished and dirty.
On Shockley’s, the third pitch is the real business. The climbing through the namesake ceiling is followed by a fun dihedral and then another, smaller roof crux. It is a world-class pitch, with great protection at the crux and very exciting moves at the moderate 5.6 grade. But the two pitches that precede it involve pretty forgettable 5.4 climbing, in my opinion.
As I (and others) have noted before, by combining these two climbs, doing Strictly’s to the chains, then doing a short 5.easy pitch up and right to a belay beneath the ceiling, and then finally doing Shockley’s third pitch, you get one of the best moderate multipitch climbs in the Gunks. But I recently went back and tried Oscar’s Variation (5.7) just to the left of Strictly’s, and I think the addition of this variation to the climb makes it even better.
Oscar’s Variation is easy to find. Only a few feet left of the start of Strictly From Nowhere is a prominent left-facing corner that goes up about 50 feet. Oscar’s variation climbs the corner. The pro is great; There is a crack in the back that will allow you to place gear at will. The climbing is very good, and I thought a bit stiff for 5.7. There are a couple of bulgy moments where the fingers are locked into that crack, but the feet are thin, and a committing step up is required. Remember to make use of both walls. When in doubt, stem!
In Williams’ guidebook, he suggests doing Oscar’s Variation as one pitch, and then doing Strictly’s from that point up to the chains as another pitch. But there’s really no reason to break the climbing here into two pitches. It is only 100 feet from the ground to the chains, and when I led it recently there were no drag issues created by doing Oscar’s and Strictly’s together in one pitch. Putting them together makes for a much more sustained and varied start to the climb, and I recommend it highly. You don’t lose much from Strictly’s if you start on Oscar’s. You’ll still climb the part of Strictly’s everyone comes for: the overhanging final moves to the anchor. I don’t really have any advice to offer about this part of the climb except that you should just place some gear and then keep on moving. The holds are great, don’t worry.
Now, the other week when we did this climb, I was sending my partner Adrian up from the chains to do the crux pitch of Shockley’s. It occurred to me that there was no reason to stop and build a belay before the crux roof. I was pretty sure you could go from the chains on Strictly's to the top of Shockley’s in one 60 meter pitch—it couldn’t be more than 200 feet from the chains to the top of the cliff, right? It turned out I was right, but not by much. My partner Adrian made it to the top and had enough rope left over to build a belay on a tree set back ten or fifteen feet from the cliff edge. But he used the entire length of the rope to do so. It is a rope stretcher of a pitch, and of course the actual length of various 60 meter ropes will vary, so your rope might not make it with quite so much room to spare. With a 70 meter rope you wouldn't have any stress about the rope length at all. Another caveat: I wouldn't do the crux pitch of Shockley's this way if I were being followed by a new climber who might have trouble with the crux ceiling. It might be wiser in that circumstance to build a belay right after the ceiling, as Williams suggests in his book.
Doing Oscar's to Strictly's to Shockley's as two outstanding pitches is to my mind one of the best moderate climbing experiences the Gunks has to offer. You get crack and corner climbing, followed by juggy steepness, and then a classic roof problem followed by still more quality rock to the top of the cliff. It just doesn't get any better than that.
Strictly’s has a fantastic first pitch, highlighted by the final bit of climbing up into an overhanging corner, and then around right to a bolted anchor. The easier pitch two begins with nice juggy climbing to the GT Ledge, but unfortunately this is over quickly, and then the rest of the way to the top is undistinguished and dirty.
On Shockley’s, the third pitch is the real business. The climbing through the namesake ceiling is followed by a fun dihedral and then another, smaller roof crux. It is a world-class pitch, with great protection at the crux and very exciting moves at the moderate 5.6 grade. But the two pitches that precede it involve pretty forgettable 5.4 climbing, in my opinion.
As I (and others) have noted before, by combining these two climbs, doing Strictly’s to the chains, then doing a short 5.easy pitch up and right to a belay beneath the ceiling, and then finally doing Shockley’s third pitch, you get one of the best moderate multipitch climbs in the Gunks. But I recently went back and tried Oscar’s Variation (5.7) just to the left of Strictly’s, and I think the addition of this variation to the climb makes it even better.
Oscar’s Variation is easy to find. Only a few feet left of the start of Strictly From Nowhere is a prominent left-facing corner that goes up about 50 feet. Oscar’s variation climbs the corner. The pro is great; There is a crack in the back that will allow you to place gear at will. The climbing is very good, and I thought a bit stiff for 5.7. There are a couple of bulgy moments where the fingers are locked into that crack, but the feet are thin, and a committing step up is required. Remember to make use of both walls. When in doubt, stem!
In Williams’ guidebook, he suggests doing Oscar’s Variation as one pitch, and then doing Strictly’s from that point up to the chains as another pitch. But there’s really no reason to break the climbing here into two pitches. It is only 100 feet from the ground to the chains, and when I led it recently there were no drag issues created by doing Oscar’s and Strictly’s together in one pitch. Putting them together makes for a much more sustained and varied start to the climb, and I recommend it highly. You don’t lose much from Strictly’s if you start on Oscar’s. You’ll still climb the part of Strictly’s everyone comes for: the overhanging final moves to the anchor. I don’t really have any advice to offer about this part of the climb except that you should just place some gear and then keep on moving. The holds are great, don’t worry.
Now, the other week when we did this climb, I was sending my partner Adrian up from the chains to do the crux pitch of Shockley’s. It occurred to me that there was no reason to stop and build a belay before the crux roof. I was pretty sure you could go from the chains on Strictly's to the top of Shockley’s in one 60 meter pitch—it couldn’t be more than 200 feet from the chains to the top of the cliff, right? It turned out I was right, but not by much. My partner Adrian made it to the top and had enough rope left over to build a belay on a tree set back ten or fifteen feet from the cliff edge. But he used the entire length of the rope to do so. It is a rope stretcher of a pitch, and of course the actual length of various 60 meter ropes will vary, so your rope might not make it with quite so much room to spare. With a 70 meter rope you wouldn't have any stress about the rope length at all. Another caveat: I wouldn't do the crux pitch of Shockley's this way if I were being followed by a new climber who might have trouble with the crux ceiling. It might be wiser in that circumstance to build a belay right after the ceiling, as Williams suggests in his book.
Doing Oscar's to Strictly's to Shockley's as two outstanding pitches is to my mind one of the best moderate climbing experiences the Gunks has to offer. You get crack and corner climbing, followed by juggy steepness, and then a classic roof problem followed by still more quality rock to the top of the cliff. It just doesn't get any better than that.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Help a Climber: Rich Romano
I only know Rich Romano by his reputation as the primary developer and caretaker of Millbrook cliff in the Gunks. Known as "The Manager of the Bank," Romano has essentially single-handedly developed this cliff, putting up countless 5.10 and 5.11 R-rated routes over the decades without placing a single bolt.
Romano had a serious accident recently in Idaho. Richard Goldstone, another legendary Gunks climber, has started a campaign to raise some cash for Romano's medical bills. I reprint his appeal in blue below:
Rich Romano, one of the most prolific climbers in the history of the Shawangunks and the primary developer of the Millbrook Cliff as well as other outlying areas, recently had a serious accident at City of Rocks, Idaho. His rope, which was too short for the pitch he was lowering off, ran through the belay, resulting in a serious fall. Full details about the accident and his recovery are on the gunks.com thread
http://gunks.com/ubbthreads7/ubbthreads.php/topics/54460/ALWAYS_tie_a_knot_at_the_end_o#Post54460
Rich's insurance is supposed to cover the enormous helicopter evacuation and hospitalization costs, but it does not cover his ongoing post-ER visits and the various co-pays and deductibles, all at a time of lost income from the inability to work.
A few of us have have started a project to raise some cash for Rich for his ongoing medical expenses and at the same time provide some value to climbers, based on Rich's extensive and in many cases exclusive knowledge of Millbrook. We are producing a series of "harness route cards" for "The Bank," Rich's affectionate name for the cliff. These are 4 X 6 cards, laminated, with a cord loop that can be clipped to a harness. The cards will have two or three classic routes on a high-resolution photo. The photos we are using afford nearly straight-across views that show superb cliff detail, at an angle that is easily interpreted by a climber at the base of the routes. There is no comparison between the photos we are using and the aerial photos in any of the current guidebooks, which are exceptionally hard to interpret and which, because of the time of day they were taken, fail to reveal even massive features of the cliff.
In large part because of Rich's efforts, Millbrook is one of the "traddest" cliffs in the country. There isn't a single bolt anywhere, and perhaps a handful of fixed pitons, just about all of them from the early soft-iron days of climbing in the U.S. Almost every route is in the same condition as it was on the first ascent. It's steepness, functionally remote location, and the seriousness of many (but not all) of the routes makes Millbrook one of the premier destinations for high-level trad climbing in the country.
The route cards are an attempt to make some of the mysteries of Millbrook just a touch more accessible without, we fervently hope, reducing the cliff to the modern paint-in-the numbers beta-fest that now dilutes the trad experience worldwide. In keeping with the adventurous spirit of Millbrook climbing pioneered by Rich, the cards show clearly where the routes go, give their grades, but leave all the other details of the ascent to the climber.
We are planning on producing a combination of classics at various levels of difficulty, some of which do not appear in any of the Shawangunk guidebooks. The first card is now ready. It lists two of the best and most accessible routes at Millbrook, Westward Ha!, among the best 5.7's in the Gunks, and Cruise Control (a Romano Route), a superb line at 5.9-. On the flip side is a schematic map of the best trail approach to Millbrook from the West Trapps parking lot and the location of the standard rappel tree.
We are selling the cards through Rock and Snow for $5. Because of the support and generosity of Rock and Snow, every penny of the $5 price of the card goes to Rich. Please feel free to add an additional donation if the spirit moves you. We can only handle either cash, if you want to send it through the mail, or a personal check made out to Rich Romano. Send a stamped self-addressed envelope big enough to hold a 4x 6 card to
Romano Fund
Rock & Snow
44 Main Street
New Paltz, NY 12561,
Or stop by Rock and Snow if you are up at the Gunks.
Have a safe and happy holiday season, and remember to tie a knot in the end of your rope whenever lowering is involved.
12/13/10 update: there are some nice photos on the Supertopo thread Goldstone started about Romano. Also Goldstone has created a paypal account from which you can purchase the route card or make a donation. Just follow the above link to paypal and make the payment to this address: RomanoFund@yahoo.com.
Romano had a serious accident recently in Idaho. Richard Goldstone, another legendary Gunks climber, has started a campaign to raise some cash for Romano's medical bills. I reprint his appeal in blue below:
Rich Romano, one of the most prolific climbers in the history of the Shawangunks and the primary developer of the Millbrook Cliff as well as other outlying areas, recently had a serious accident at City of Rocks, Idaho. His rope, which was too short for the pitch he was lowering off, ran through the belay, resulting in a serious fall. Full details about the accident and his recovery are on the gunks.com thread
http://gunks.com/ubbthreads7/ubbthreads.php/topics/54460/ALWAYS_tie_a_knot_at_the_end_o#Post54460
Rich's insurance is supposed to cover the enormous helicopter evacuation and hospitalization costs, but it does not cover his ongoing post-ER visits and the various co-pays and deductibles, all at a time of lost income from the inability to work.
A few of us have have started a project to raise some cash for Rich for his ongoing medical expenses and at the same time provide some value to climbers, based on Rich's extensive and in many cases exclusive knowledge of Millbrook. We are producing a series of "harness route cards" for "The Bank," Rich's affectionate name for the cliff. These are 4 X 6 cards, laminated, with a cord loop that can be clipped to a harness. The cards will have two or three classic routes on a high-resolution photo. The photos we are using afford nearly straight-across views that show superb cliff detail, at an angle that is easily interpreted by a climber at the base of the routes. There is no comparison between the photos we are using and the aerial photos in any of the current guidebooks, which are exceptionally hard to interpret and which, because of the time of day they were taken, fail to reveal even massive features of the cliff.
In large part because of Rich's efforts, Millbrook is one of the "traddest" cliffs in the country. There isn't a single bolt anywhere, and perhaps a handful of fixed pitons, just about all of them from the early soft-iron days of climbing in the U.S. Almost every route is in the same condition as it was on the first ascent. It's steepness, functionally remote location, and the seriousness of many (but not all) of the routes makes Millbrook one of the premier destinations for high-level trad climbing in the country.
The route cards are an attempt to make some of the mysteries of Millbrook just a touch more accessible without, we fervently hope, reducing the cliff to the modern paint-in-the numbers beta-fest that now dilutes the trad experience worldwide. In keeping with the adventurous spirit of Millbrook climbing pioneered by Rich, the cards show clearly where the routes go, give their grades, but leave all the other details of the ascent to the climber.
We are planning on producing a combination of classics at various levels of difficulty, some of which do not appear in any of the Shawangunk guidebooks. The first card is now ready. It lists two of the best and most accessible routes at Millbrook, Westward Ha!, among the best 5.7's in the Gunks, and Cruise Control (a Romano Route), a superb line at 5.9-. On the flip side is a schematic map of the best trail approach to Millbrook from the West Trapps parking lot and the location of the standard rappel tree.
We are selling the cards through Rock and Snow for $5. Because of the support and generosity of Rock and Snow, every penny of the $5 price of the card goes to Rich. Please feel free to add an additional donation if the spirit moves you. We can only handle either cash, if you want to send it through the mail, or a personal check made out to Rich Romano. Send a stamped self-addressed envelope big enough to hold a 4x 6 card to
Romano Fund
Rock & Snow
44 Main Street
New Paltz, NY 12561,
Or stop by Rock and Snow if you are up at the Gunks.
Have a safe and happy holiday season, and remember to tie a knot in the end of your rope whenever lowering is involved.
12/13/10 update: there are some nice photos on the Supertopo thread Goldstone started about Romano. Also Goldstone has created a paypal account from which you can purchase the route card or make a donation. Just follow the above link to paypal and make the payment to this address: RomanoFund@yahoo.com.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Gunks Routes: Asphodel (5.5), Credibility Gap (5.6) & Welcome to the Gunks (5.10b)
A few summers ago, when I was just getting into leading, my friend Greg suggested we do a project together in which we would climb every 5.5 in the Gunks. I had just started leading 5.5s, so it seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but the project barely got under way before we abandoned it. We did most of the best 5.5s fairly quickly, and after I had several under my belt I'd had enough of 5.5 and wanted to move on to 5.6. Greg then got very busy at work and he wasn't available to climb much. I moved on with other partners and the project fell by the wayside.
One of the climbs we did get to that summer was Asphodel. I haven't been back since, and there's not too much I remember about the climb. The large corner it ascends is impressive. I recall enjoying the first pitch, and even though I was a pretty green leader I found the climb straightforward and well protected. Really I mention the climb here for one reason: there is an error in Williams' guidebook. He puts the first pitch of Asphodel at 90 feet long, which might lead you to believe you can rap from the end of pitch one with a single rope. But the pitch ends at the belay tree for Welcome to the Gunks (5.10b), which is 160 feet off the ground. Now, Asphodel starts around the corner a little bit uphill from Welcome to the Gunks, so the first pitch of Asphodel is probably a little shorter than 160 feet, but believe me, it is way more than 100 feet. I was well beyond the halfway point of our 60 meter single when I finished the pitch. Whatever the actual length of the pitch, in order to descend from the Welcome to the Gunks tree you need two ropes, unless you want to angle to climber's right as you descend and use the ubersketchoid anchor for Laughing Man (5.11b) as a second rappel station. Do yourself a favor and use double ropes; then the descent from the tree is easy. If you only have a single I'd advise you to climb something other than Asphodel. The Laughing Man anchor does not inspire confidence and your other option, the second pitch of Asphodel, quickly turns into a bushwhack to the top, as Greg and I discovered a few years ago. I remember not liking that pitch at all.
Another climb subject to the same issues is Credibility Gap (5.6), which is just to the left of Asphodel. The first pitch of this climb also ends at the same tree, and thus also requires two ropes to descend after pitch one. Williams again makes an error and inaccurately lists the pitch as 80 feet, even shorter than Asphodel, even though both climbs start and end at the exact same place! My speculation is that Williams eliminated some intermediate belays when he updated the descriptions of these routes for his latest guidebook in 2004, but neglected to update the pitch lengths. It is rare to find this kind of error in his books. Nobody's perfect.
I led Credibility Gap during the same year in which I led Asphodel, but my memory of Credibility Gap is much sharper. What I remember most is that I pondered the crux a good long time before I was willing to try it. The pitch starts out with that Gunks rarity, a vertical finger crack. Williams rates this part of the pitch as 5.5; it would be a major draw if it were a little longer. The finger crack is nice, but it is over quickly and then some easy moves up a slab, around a corner, and left up a ramp lead you to a dead end in a right-facing corner capped by a roof. The crux involves a blind move out around the outside corner and onto the face. The airy, intimidating position is similar to the crux of the second pitch of Moonlight (5.6), but this crux, unlike Moonlight's, offers you great gear. The hands are good too. You just have to commit to that left wall, step to the corner, and it's all good, cruiser climbing to the finish.
Of course, it helps to know beforehand that it will all work out fine. I remember the deliberate concentration with which I placed two perfect cams before I made the crux move the first time. And the way I panted with relief after I made it around that corner. It was thrilling to me at the time. But when I returned to Credibility Gap a couple weeks ago, I couldn't find that feeling again. The crux seemed routine. Just one little step and then there's a great foothold at the corner, nothing to worry about. It was good. It was exciting for the grade, with all the backhandedness and condescension that the qualifier for the grade provides.
Will I one day feel this way about the harder climbs that have excited me? About Dry Heaves (5.8), for instance, or Ants' Line (5.9)?
I'd sure love to feel that way one day about Welcome to the Gunks (5.10b), but I doubt that's in the cards. We did this on top rope after doing Credibility Gap, and I tip my helmet to anyone who can calmly lead it. It is difficult, varied, and sustained, and two of the five cruxes are not well protected.
Before I talk about the climbing, I should address the mechanics of top-roping this climb. The belay tree is, as mentioned above, about 160 feet off the ground. This is too far for a slingshot belay with either a 60 or 70 meter single rope. There are two ways to deal with this issue. You can just belay from above, lowering each climber in turn to try the route. Or you can tie two ropes together and belay from the ground, but then you have the troublesome problem of passing the knot while a climber is mid-pitch. We were a party of three, so we tied two ropes together and passed the knot by having the third person take over the belay as the knot approached the belay device, which may sound complicated but actually works quite well. Also, the route is to the climber's left of the rappel tree, and it helps to place a directional. We placed one in the chalked-up horizontal to the left of the final roof on the climb.
When you look at Welcome to the Gunks from below, it is hard not to be intimidated by all the roofs. They are large and numerous. And the kicker is that the roofs are not the only cruxes on the climb! The diciest parts of the pitch for the leader, in fact, come on the faces below the first and second roofs.
I had the benefit of watching my two partners try the route before I went at it. None of us did the route clean in one go, but I thought given my preview of some of the moves I might have the best shot at it. I made it up crux # 1, the initial slab below the first roof (scary and unprotected for the leader). Then I made it up crux # 2, the giant first roof, which has some pretty acceptable crimps and good feet at the lip. Then I was thrilled to get through crux # 3 (the 5.9 R section for the leader), which is the thin face leading up to the second roof. I was starting to think I had this climb's number. But then crux # 4, the second roof, shut me down several times. Once I unlocked it, it seemed doable, more strenuous than technical. I also fell once at crux # 5, the fourth roof, but then went up to the left the second time instead of to the right and thought it wasn't that big a deal.
Welcome to the Gunks is packed with good, hard climbing, and not just for the grade. I really enjoyed working on it and hope to return. I could see coming back and sending it next time, so long as I attack the second roof correctly. But I remain intimidated by the R section just below that second roof. The insecure slopers just before the good holds will probably forever keep me from leading this route no matter how much I might rehearse it.
One of the climbs we did get to that summer was Asphodel. I haven't been back since, and there's not too much I remember about the climb. The large corner it ascends is impressive. I recall enjoying the first pitch, and even though I was a pretty green leader I found the climb straightforward and well protected. Really I mention the climb here for one reason: there is an error in Williams' guidebook. He puts the first pitch of Asphodel at 90 feet long, which might lead you to believe you can rap from the end of pitch one with a single rope. But the pitch ends at the belay tree for Welcome to the Gunks (5.10b), which is 160 feet off the ground. Now, Asphodel starts around the corner a little bit uphill from Welcome to the Gunks, so the first pitch of Asphodel is probably a little shorter than 160 feet, but believe me, it is way more than 100 feet. I was well beyond the halfway point of our 60 meter single when I finished the pitch. Whatever the actual length of the pitch, in order to descend from the Welcome to the Gunks tree you need two ropes, unless you want to angle to climber's right as you descend and use the ubersketchoid anchor for Laughing Man (5.11b) as a second rappel station. Do yourself a favor and use double ropes; then the descent from the tree is easy. If you only have a single I'd advise you to climb something other than Asphodel. The Laughing Man anchor does not inspire confidence and your other option, the second pitch of Asphodel, quickly turns into a bushwhack to the top, as Greg and I discovered a few years ago. I remember not liking that pitch at all.
Another climb subject to the same issues is Credibility Gap (5.6), which is just to the left of Asphodel. The first pitch of this climb also ends at the same tree, and thus also requires two ropes to descend after pitch one. Williams again makes an error and inaccurately lists the pitch as 80 feet, even shorter than Asphodel, even though both climbs start and end at the exact same place! My speculation is that Williams eliminated some intermediate belays when he updated the descriptions of these routes for his latest guidebook in 2004, but neglected to update the pitch lengths. It is rare to find this kind of error in his books. Nobody's perfect.
I led Credibility Gap during the same year in which I led Asphodel, but my memory of Credibility Gap is much sharper. What I remember most is that I pondered the crux a good long time before I was willing to try it. The pitch starts out with that Gunks rarity, a vertical finger crack. Williams rates this part of the pitch as 5.5; it would be a major draw if it were a little longer. The finger crack is nice, but it is over quickly and then some easy moves up a slab, around a corner, and left up a ramp lead you to a dead end in a right-facing corner capped by a roof. The crux involves a blind move out around the outside corner and onto the face. The airy, intimidating position is similar to the crux of the second pitch of Moonlight (5.6), but this crux, unlike Moonlight's, offers you great gear. The hands are good too. You just have to commit to that left wall, step to the corner, and it's all good, cruiser climbing to the finish.
Of course, it helps to know beforehand that it will all work out fine. I remember the deliberate concentration with which I placed two perfect cams before I made the crux move the first time. And the way I panted with relief after I made it around that corner. It was thrilling to me at the time. But when I returned to Credibility Gap a couple weeks ago, I couldn't find that feeling again. The crux seemed routine. Just one little step and then there's a great foothold at the corner, nothing to worry about. It was good. It was exciting for the grade, with all the backhandedness and condescension that the qualifier for the grade provides.
Will I one day feel this way about the harder climbs that have excited me? About Dry Heaves (5.8), for instance, or Ants' Line (5.9)?
I'd sure love to feel that way one day about Welcome to the Gunks (5.10b), but I doubt that's in the cards. We did this on top rope after doing Credibility Gap, and I tip my helmet to anyone who can calmly lead it. It is difficult, varied, and sustained, and two of the five cruxes are not well protected.
Before I talk about the climbing, I should address the mechanics of top-roping this climb. The belay tree is, as mentioned above, about 160 feet off the ground. This is too far for a slingshot belay with either a 60 or 70 meter single rope. There are two ways to deal with this issue. You can just belay from above, lowering each climber in turn to try the route. Or you can tie two ropes together and belay from the ground, but then you have the troublesome problem of passing the knot while a climber is mid-pitch. We were a party of three, so we tied two ropes together and passed the knot by having the third person take over the belay as the knot approached the belay device, which may sound complicated but actually works quite well. Also, the route is to the climber's left of the rappel tree, and it helps to place a directional. We placed one in the chalked-up horizontal to the left of the final roof on the climb.
When you look at Welcome to the Gunks from below, it is hard not to be intimidated by all the roofs. They are large and numerous. And the kicker is that the roofs are not the only cruxes on the climb! The diciest parts of the pitch for the leader, in fact, come on the faces below the first and second roofs.
I had the benefit of watching my two partners try the route before I went at it. None of us did the route clean in one go, but I thought given my preview of some of the moves I might have the best shot at it. I made it up crux # 1, the initial slab below the first roof (scary and unprotected for the leader). Then I made it up crux # 2, the giant first roof, which has some pretty acceptable crimps and good feet at the lip. Then I was thrilled to get through crux # 3 (the 5.9 R section for the leader), which is the thin face leading up to the second roof. I was starting to think I had this climb's number. But then crux # 4, the second roof, shut me down several times. Once I unlocked it, it seemed doable, more strenuous than technical. I also fell once at crux # 5, the fourth roof, but then went up to the left the second time instead of to the right and thought it wasn't that big a deal.
Welcome to the Gunks is packed with good, hard climbing, and not just for the grade. I really enjoyed working on it and hope to return. I could see coming back and sending it next time, so long as I attack the second roof correctly. But I remain intimidated by the R section just below that second roof. The insecure slopers just before the good holds will probably forever keep me from leading this route no matter how much I might rehearse it.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Getting With The Program
I used to love to ride my bicycle.
I came to it late in life, in the spring of 2006, around the same time I started rock climbing. I realized if I was going to get better at climbing I needed to lose some weight and improve my general fitness. It seemed like a good time to buy a road bike. Once I did, I discovered that I really enjoyed cycling.
I started out just riding for fun, first in the city parks and eventually in New Jersey and Westchester County. I was no speed demon but I loved the feeling of freedom that came with cycling. I was amazed at how with only my legs and two wheels I could escape the city and find myself in beautiful environments with rolling hills and wildlife. It was like I'd stumbled into a whole new world. I found it most enjoyable if I rode hard most of the time, but I didn't use any special tools to keep track of how much effort I was putting forth. I loved riding for its own sake and tried to squeeze in time on the bike whenever I could, both before and after work. And since I was basically starting from nothing I improved constantly. I was always getting faster, riding longer, feeling stronger and thinner. Before I knew it I'd lost a ton of weight. I went to buy some new pants and discovered my waist size had shrunk by two inches.
Then one day in mid-2007, my friend Greg, who was also a cyclist, told me he was thinking about entering a local bicycle race. This was something I had never considered before. The idea of riding in a pack of cyclists, just inches away from my competitors, was frightening to me. I had seen these groups in the city parks and they had seemed like an elite species far above my level. But ever the joiner, I decided that if Greg was going to do it than I might as well try it out as well.
I couldn't keep up with the pack in my first few races. In cycling the term for it is "getting dropped." I got dropped several times and in the process I learned that nothing motivates you better than getting dropped. I started working harder in my rides and before the year was out I was able to hang on in the races that were held in Prospect Park. Don't get me wrong, I was no great talent. I did not come close to winning any of these races, and the people I was racing against were all beginners like me who'd never won anything in their lives. But I could complete the races and finish with the main group, which was in itself a great thrill. The first time I was in the thick of it at the beginning of the final lap, wooshing by the line with the official's bell ringing in my ears-- I'll never forget that feeling. It was an adrenaline rush unlike anything else I'd ever experienced.
The next season I continued racing, finishing with the pack most of the time, feeling like I was in pretty good shape. I was still highly motivated. I would regularly get up at absurd hours in the morning to get two-hour rides in before returning home to help get the kids ready for school. But in spite of all the effort, I wasn't really improving much any more. I'd reached the point of diminishing returns. I was using a heart-rate monitor for training now, but crudely. My workouts weren't varied or periodized; I just identified a few zones and tried to work out in different zones on different days of the week. In races, I felt like I could move about the pack at will, but it seemed clear that on my own I was never going to get myself strong enough to outpace the pack or beat several fast guys in a contested sprint. I realized that if I wanted to do better, I had to train smarter, and I needed someone to impose more discipline on my training schedule.
So when Greg told me at the end of the 2008 racing season that he was considering joining a team, I was already on the same wavelength. With some real coaching and teammates to work with, I figured I could keep improving, and maybe place in a race the next year or at least play a key role in helping a teammate win. We bot ended up joining a team that was dedicated to introducing cyclists to racing. The team provided intensive coaching with daily instructions and feedback, and regular weekend rides together to work on specific racing skills and strategies.
Joining this team turned out to be my big mistake.
There was nothing wrong with the team. The coaching was amazing. We each had personal access to the team guru, who gave us assignments every day, and who also set up a team strategy for every race. His approach was totally sound and within the mainstream of current thinking on how to train best for bicycle races.
The problem was the relentlessness and monotony of the training schedule. We were generally expected to ride six days a week. (The seventh was optional!) Most of the riding, especially early on, was low-intensity endurance riding, designed to build a good base for the season. I found this kind of riding dull. Doing it outside was not a lot of fun. As it got colder and I had to do my endurance riding on a stationary trainer, it became positively mind-numbing. Nevertheless I stuck with it. Through the winter I did more riding on a trainer indoors than I ever had before, and as winter turned into a very rainy spring I did more riding in the rain than I ever would have imagined possible. By the time the racing schedule really got under way in March and April of 2009 I was already feeling burnt out.
As the year wore on, I got more and more tired of the never-ending training, and my results in races were not spectacular enough to make it all seem worthwhile. I was definitely a better racer than ever before. While in prior years I had just been keeping up with the group on good days, now I could actually rest and recover while keeping up, and expend extra effort from time to time but still stay with the pack. My cycling instincts also improved and I felt more comfortable in the field, especially on descents, which had always terrified me in the past. But I was still no threat to win anything. I couldn't sprint to save my life, and I often struggled even to do the jobs I was assigned in races by the coach. I would chase down a break or two and then be spent, just hanging on at the finish instead of helping to set up one of my teammates. In out-of-town races, which always featured much tougher hills than the races in the city parks, I was regularly dropped.
By the time the season wound down in September and October, I was half-heartedly doing my assigned workouts, cutting it short on many days and feeling guilty and inadequate most of the time. Nevertheless I planned to stay on the team for 2010. I hoped after some time off to recharge my batteries I could build a great base for the next season and maybe have a better year.
Then I broke my ankle in late October and took a much bigger break from cycling than I'd planned. And after about a month off the bike I realized that somewhere along the way I'd lost touch with everything I loved about cycling. I'd lost all desire to ride. Instead, even after my extended holiday from cycling, I now looked at my bicycle with dread. Whereas in prior years I had enjoyed simply riding around in the park, now, after countless thousands of trips around that stupid park loop, I couldn't conceive of such a feeling. Imagining riding had become like contemplating parking my car, or doing the dishes. There was no fun in it any more. I had to make a change. I decided I had to quit racing and hope that if I just started riding again for fun the love might eventually come back.
I'm sorry to say that even a year later the love hasn't returned. I don't really know how to ride for fun any more. If I don't monitor my heart rate while riding and stick to a zone the whole thing seems pointless. All year I've resolved to get on some sort of regular schedule of riding for fun and fitness but it has been an enormous struggle to motivate myself to get out of bed to ride. So I've gone through the year riding in fits and starts, getting a bit better from time to time but then taking whole weeks off and falling backward again. I am slow and weak and I don't enjoy my time on the bike. It remains a chore.
By now you must be wondering why I am writing at such length about cycling on a climbing blog. If you're still with me I applaud your patience.
Here is the connection:
For four years I have climbed for fun and I have improved greatly without making any particular effort to get better. I have just climbed routes that seemed fun, and I have improved pretty steadily. But not so much recently. I reached the point of diminishing returns quite some time ago, and I think if I wish to get better I have to change the way I go about it.
I want to train with more purpose. But I worry. I do not want to ruin myself for climbing the way I inadvertently spoiled myself for cycling. I enjoy climbing at the gym. I dearly love climbing outside. I don't want any of my climbing to become just a chore. It has to stay fun.
I own two well-regarded books on climbing performance, The Self-Coached Climber, by Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter, and How to Climb 5.12, by Eric J. Horst. I would like to say that I've read them, but I've really only skimmed through them several times, considering a few tips and strategies until, inevitably, my eyes have started to glaze over.
Part of the issue for me, I think, is that I don't really care if I ever climb 5.12. It would be nice but I would be satisfied with much less. Really my goal is to be a solid 5.9-5.10 Gunks climber. I'd like to lead MF (5.9), Le Teton (5.9), Feast of Fools (5.10b) and Directississima (5.10b). I'd like to take trips to climb Epinephrine (5.9), the Regular Route on Fairview Dome (5.9), The Yellow Spur (5.9), or even the Casual Route up Long's Peak (5.10a) and feel like these climbs are straightforward and well within my limits. I think there exist a lifetime of climbs like these out there in the world and that I would be satisfied, given my limited climbing time, with these sorts of climbs as my objective.
The best way to achieve these goals, of course, would be to climb outside every weekend. But that is never going to happen. This year I was very lucky and got outside as much as a family man with a job could possibly get out. And in a good month I got two to four days on real rock.
Given my objectives I don't think I need to do relentless conditioning of my crimping muscles. I don't think I need to do tons of monotonous campus training. I don't think I need a rigid, periodized schedule. But if I want to keep getting better I need to improve my general physical condition and train with a bit more purpose. And I need to lose weight. So I've identified a few goals, along with the methods by which I intend to achieve these goals.
Goal # 1: improve endurance. There are two things I can do that I hope will make a big difference in this area. The first is that I have to make myself start cycling regularly again. Even if it is just for one hour, three or four days a week, if I do it regularly it will make a big difference in my overall fitness. I have considered other sports and given the time constraints I have, and my antipathy towards running, I think it's cycling or nothing. So I just have to make myself do it. The second thing I intend to do is to take a portion of my gym time and reserve it for endurance work. I don't intend to devote my entire gym session to it for weeks on end-- that would risk misery and burnout. But maybe once every two weeks I will spend a session simply trying to stay on a wall at the gym without pumping out for long periods, traversing on an easy bouldering wall for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
Goal #2: lose weight. Here again I have two ways I intend to make progress. The first is, again, to get back to cycling regularly. When I was at the height of my cycling mania, I was starving all the time. I was constantly burning calories and constantly losing weight even though I ate like a teenager. And I weighed at my best about a dozen pounds less than I do now. I know I will not get back to the same amount of cycling I used to do. But if I ride regularly I will make progress. The second thing I intend to do is to improve what I eat. I won't go on some fad diet or eliminate all bread from my meals or anything crazy like that. I am fortunate in that I currently eat tons of crap that I can easily eliminate from my diet and still be left eating reasonable food. I can stop eating potato chips with lunch, stop snacking on candy that people leave around the office, stop having ice cream in freezer at home, and I think these steps alone will make a huge difference. The main thing, I think, is to get myself motivated to do better on a daily basis. So I have purchased a bathroom scale and I think I will start keeping a log of my exercise, diet and weight, just to try to make myself do some basic, regular things to get fit. And I may start bringing healthy lunches to work from home so I can avoid the temptation to eat some huge deli sandwich or pizza in the middle of the day.
Goal #3: improve pull muscles and core strength. I hate lifting weights and I don't own a hangboard. But I do have a neglected pull-up bar and there are many simple exercises one can do at home. At first I plan to just try to do some of Horst's recommended strength exercises after every cycling session-- pull-ups and crunches three or four times a week. Since I am currently doing no strength exercises, I believe adding these two regularly may make a real difference. If at some point I want to add more, then fine. Additionally in the gym I can make it a point once every couple weeks to devote a session to repeats of very overhanging routes, and maybe even to campusing easy (V0-V1) boulder problems.
Goal #4: improve my climbing skill set. This will require a shift in my attitude more than anything else. I believe I am in a bit of a rut at the gym. When I climb roped routes, I gravitate towards the 5.10s. When I boulder, I tend to do V3s. I do these routes because I usually can do them. I try harder routes and sometimes I am surprised and find them easy. Most of the time they are hard for me, but only on rare occasions do I take a route that is hard for me and work at it until I tame it. I see other people take a different approach. I have seen a climber struggle on a V3 bouldering route I have found easy, but then I have seen that same climber move on to a V5 that I have never even considered trying. The difference between that climber and me is that that climber believes anything is possible, while I am held back by an imaginary ceiling. I want to break through the imaginary ceiling and devote at least one of my gym days every week or two to taming routes that are harder than my current level.
So now you know my plan. I hope it adds things to my program that will improve my climbing, without making my climbing sessions into a never-ending chore. I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that I won't be posting my daily progress here, but as the months go by I will let you know how it's going!
I came to it late in life, in the spring of 2006, around the same time I started rock climbing. I realized if I was going to get better at climbing I needed to lose some weight and improve my general fitness. It seemed like a good time to buy a road bike. Once I did, I discovered that I really enjoyed cycling.
I started out just riding for fun, first in the city parks and eventually in New Jersey and Westchester County. I was no speed demon but I loved the feeling of freedom that came with cycling. I was amazed at how with only my legs and two wheels I could escape the city and find myself in beautiful environments with rolling hills and wildlife. It was like I'd stumbled into a whole new world. I found it most enjoyable if I rode hard most of the time, but I didn't use any special tools to keep track of how much effort I was putting forth. I loved riding for its own sake and tried to squeeze in time on the bike whenever I could, both before and after work. And since I was basically starting from nothing I improved constantly. I was always getting faster, riding longer, feeling stronger and thinner. Before I knew it I'd lost a ton of weight. I went to buy some new pants and discovered my waist size had shrunk by two inches.
Then one day in mid-2007, my friend Greg, who was also a cyclist, told me he was thinking about entering a local bicycle race. This was something I had never considered before. The idea of riding in a pack of cyclists, just inches away from my competitors, was frightening to me. I had seen these groups in the city parks and they had seemed like an elite species far above my level. But ever the joiner, I decided that if Greg was going to do it than I might as well try it out as well.
I couldn't keep up with the pack in my first few races. In cycling the term for it is "getting dropped." I got dropped several times and in the process I learned that nothing motivates you better than getting dropped. I started working harder in my rides and before the year was out I was able to hang on in the races that were held in Prospect Park. Don't get me wrong, I was no great talent. I did not come close to winning any of these races, and the people I was racing against were all beginners like me who'd never won anything in their lives. But I could complete the races and finish with the main group, which was in itself a great thrill. The first time I was in the thick of it at the beginning of the final lap, wooshing by the line with the official's bell ringing in my ears-- I'll never forget that feeling. It was an adrenaline rush unlike anything else I'd ever experienced.
The next season I continued racing, finishing with the pack most of the time, feeling like I was in pretty good shape. I was still highly motivated. I would regularly get up at absurd hours in the morning to get two-hour rides in before returning home to help get the kids ready for school. But in spite of all the effort, I wasn't really improving much any more. I'd reached the point of diminishing returns. I was using a heart-rate monitor for training now, but crudely. My workouts weren't varied or periodized; I just identified a few zones and tried to work out in different zones on different days of the week. In races, I felt like I could move about the pack at will, but it seemed clear that on my own I was never going to get myself strong enough to outpace the pack or beat several fast guys in a contested sprint. I realized that if I wanted to do better, I had to train smarter, and I needed someone to impose more discipline on my training schedule.
So when Greg told me at the end of the 2008 racing season that he was considering joining a team, I was already on the same wavelength. With some real coaching and teammates to work with, I figured I could keep improving, and maybe place in a race the next year or at least play a key role in helping a teammate win. We bot ended up joining a team that was dedicated to introducing cyclists to racing. The team provided intensive coaching with daily instructions and feedback, and regular weekend rides together to work on specific racing skills and strategies.
Joining this team turned out to be my big mistake.
There was nothing wrong with the team. The coaching was amazing. We each had personal access to the team guru, who gave us assignments every day, and who also set up a team strategy for every race. His approach was totally sound and within the mainstream of current thinking on how to train best for bicycle races.
The problem was the relentlessness and monotony of the training schedule. We were generally expected to ride six days a week. (The seventh was optional!) Most of the riding, especially early on, was low-intensity endurance riding, designed to build a good base for the season. I found this kind of riding dull. Doing it outside was not a lot of fun. As it got colder and I had to do my endurance riding on a stationary trainer, it became positively mind-numbing. Nevertheless I stuck with it. Through the winter I did more riding on a trainer indoors than I ever had before, and as winter turned into a very rainy spring I did more riding in the rain than I ever would have imagined possible. By the time the racing schedule really got under way in March and April of 2009 I was already feeling burnt out.
As the year wore on, I got more and more tired of the never-ending training, and my results in races were not spectacular enough to make it all seem worthwhile. I was definitely a better racer than ever before. While in prior years I had just been keeping up with the group on good days, now I could actually rest and recover while keeping up, and expend extra effort from time to time but still stay with the pack. My cycling instincts also improved and I felt more comfortable in the field, especially on descents, which had always terrified me in the past. But I was still no threat to win anything. I couldn't sprint to save my life, and I often struggled even to do the jobs I was assigned in races by the coach. I would chase down a break or two and then be spent, just hanging on at the finish instead of helping to set up one of my teammates. In out-of-town races, which always featured much tougher hills than the races in the city parks, I was regularly dropped.
By the time the season wound down in September and October, I was half-heartedly doing my assigned workouts, cutting it short on many days and feeling guilty and inadequate most of the time. Nevertheless I planned to stay on the team for 2010. I hoped after some time off to recharge my batteries I could build a great base for the next season and maybe have a better year.
Then I broke my ankle in late October and took a much bigger break from cycling than I'd planned. And after about a month off the bike I realized that somewhere along the way I'd lost touch with everything I loved about cycling. I'd lost all desire to ride. Instead, even after my extended holiday from cycling, I now looked at my bicycle with dread. Whereas in prior years I had enjoyed simply riding around in the park, now, after countless thousands of trips around that stupid park loop, I couldn't conceive of such a feeling. Imagining riding had become like contemplating parking my car, or doing the dishes. There was no fun in it any more. I had to make a change. I decided I had to quit racing and hope that if I just started riding again for fun the love might eventually come back.
I'm sorry to say that even a year later the love hasn't returned. I don't really know how to ride for fun any more. If I don't monitor my heart rate while riding and stick to a zone the whole thing seems pointless. All year I've resolved to get on some sort of regular schedule of riding for fun and fitness but it has been an enormous struggle to motivate myself to get out of bed to ride. So I've gone through the year riding in fits and starts, getting a bit better from time to time but then taking whole weeks off and falling backward again. I am slow and weak and I don't enjoy my time on the bike. It remains a chore.
By now you must be wondering why I am writing at such length about cycling on a climbing blog. If you're still with me I applaud your patience.
Here is the connection:
For four years I have climbed for fun and I have improved greatly without making any particular effort to get better. I have just climbed routes that seemed fun, and I have improved pretty steadily. But not so much recently. I reached the point of diminishing returns quite some time ago, and I think if I wish to get better I have to change the way I go about it.
I want to train with more purpose. But I worry. I do not want to ruin myself for climbing the way I inadvertently spoiled myself for cycling. I enjoy climbing at the gym. I dearly love climbing outside. I don't want any of my climbing to become just a chore. It has to stay fun.
I own two well-regarded books on climbing performance, The Self-Coached Climber, by Dan Hague and Douglas Hunter, and How to Climb 5.12, by Eric J. Horst. I would like to say that I've read them, but I've really only skimmed through them several times, considering a few tips and strategies until, inevitably, my eyes have started to glaze over.
Part of the issue for me, I think, is that I don't really care if I ever climb 5.12. It would be nice but I would be satisfied with much less. Really my goal is to be a solid 5.9-5.10 Gunks climber. I'd like to lead MF (5.9), Le Teton (5.9), Feast of Fools (5.10b) and Directississima (5.10b). I'd like to take trips to climb Epinephrine (5.9), the Regular Route on Fairview Dome (5.9), The Yellow Spur (5.9), or even the Casual Route up Long's Peak (5.10a) and feel like these climbs are straightforward and well within my limits. I think there exist a lifetime of climbs like these out there in the world and that I would be satisfied, given my limited climbing time, with these sorts of climbs as my objective.
The best way to achieve these goals, of course, would be to climb outside every weekend. But that is never going to happen. This year I was very lucky and got outside as much as a family man with a job could possibly get out. And in a good month I got two to four days on real rock.
Given my objectives I don't think I need to do relentless conditioning of my crimping muscles. I don't think I need to do tons of monotonous campus training. I don't think I need a rigid, periodized schedule. But if I want to keep getting better I need to improve my general physical condition and train with a bit more purpose. And I need to lose weight. So I've identified a few goals, along with the methods by which I intend to achieve these goals.
Goal # 1: improve endurance. There are two things I can do that I hope will make a big difference in this area. The first is that I have to make myself start cycling regularly again. Even if it is just for one hour, three or four days a week, if I do it regularly it will make a big difference in my overall fitness. I have considered other sports and given the time constraints I have, and my antipathy towards running, I think it's cycling or nothing. So I just have to make myself do it. The second thing I intend to do is to take a portion of my gym time and reserve it for endurance work. I don't intend to devote my entire gym session to it for weeks on end-- that would risk misery and burnout. But maybe once every two weeks I will spend a session simply trying to stay on a wall at the gym without pumping out for long periods, traversing on an easy bouldering wall for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
Goal #2: lose weight. Here again I have two ways I intend to make progress. The first is, again, to get back to cycling regularly. When I was at the height of my cycling mania, I was starving all the time. I was constantly burning calories and constantly losing weight even though I ate like a teenager. And I weighed at my best about a dozen pounds less than I do now. I know I will not get back to the same amount of cycling I used to do. But if I ride regularly I will make progress. The second thing I intend to do is to improve what I eat. I won't go on some fad diet or eliminate all bread from my meals or anything crazy like that. I am fortunate in that I currently eat tons of crap that I can easily eliminate from my diet and still be left eating reasonable food. I can stop eating potato chips with lunch, stop snacking on candy that people leave around the office, stop having ice cream in freezer at home, and I think these steps alone will make a huge difference. The main thing, I think, is to get myself motivated to do better on a daily basis. So I have purchased a bathroom scale and I think I will start keeping a log of my exercise, diet and weight, just to try to make myself do some basic, regular things to get fit. And I may start bringing healthy lunches to work from home so I can avoid the temptation to eat some huge deli sandwich or pizza in the middle of the day.
Goal #3: improve pull muscles and core strength. I hate lifting weights and I don't own a hangboard. But I do have a neglected pull-up bar and there are many simple exercises one can do at home. At first I plan to just try to do some of Horst's recommended strength exercises after every cycling session-- pull-ups and crunches three or four times a week. Since I am currently doing no strength exercises, I believe adding these two regularly may make a real difference. If at some point I want to add more, then fine. Additionally in the gym I can make it a point once every couple weeks to devote a session to repeats of very overhanging routes, and maybe even to campusing easy (V0-V1) boulder problems.
Goal #4: improve my climbing skill set. This will require a shift in my attitude more than anything else. I believe I am in a bit of a rut at the gym. When I climb roped routes, I gravitate towards the 5.10s. When I boulder, I tend to do V3s. I do these routes because I usually can do them. I try harder routes and sometimes I am surprised and find them easy. Most of the time they are hard for me, but only on rare occasions do I take a route that is hard for me and work at it until I tame it. I see other people take a different approach. I have seen a climber struggle on a V3 bouldering route I have found easy, but then I have seen that same climber move on to a V5 that I have never even considered trying. The difference between that climber and me is that that climber believes anything is possible, while I am held back by an imaginary ceiling. I want to break through the imaginary ceiling and devote at least one of my gym days every week or two to taming routes that are harder than my current level.
So now you know my plan. I hope it adds things to my program that will improve my climbing, without making my climbing sessions into a never-ending chore. I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that I won't be posting my daily progress here, but as the months go by I will let you know how it's going!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Gunks Routes: Snooky's Return (5.8) & Friends and Lovers (5.9)
This is a bit of a redemption story. It also involves a smidgen of humiliation.
Snooky's Return is a 5.8 I've been wanting to do for quite some time. It has eluded me until recently in part because of the curse of the bolted anchors above the first pitch. Without these bolted anchors Snooky's would surely be quite popular. But with those anchors, oy! The chains make it so easy to do just the first pitch and then throw a rope over the harder Friends and Lovers (5.9) next door. As a result the climb is constantly occupied by parties hogging both lines.
Back in 2009, Snooky's was high on my hit list. I had burning questions I wanted to resolve. Many people claim the route takes great gear, but others say it is difficult to protect and requires small wires. Williams says in his guidebook that if you do the entire climb it is "one of the best," but it seems like most people don't bother with pitches two and three. I wanted to find out the truth about these issues for myself. But the climb was always occupied. Weekdays, weekends, it did not matter. I could never find it open.
Then one day earlier this year, during my backing-off phase, I was climbing with Greg and found Snooky's suddenly available. So I jumped right on pitch one, got off the ground, and promptly confronted the low crux moves at the beginning of the thin vertical crack that defines the pitch. (Why do the crux moves always have to come so low?) I only had one small nut in the wall for protection. As I hung out there, looking up, I couldn't see any obvious placements coming up. So then I looked to the right, because Williams says if you step right, move up, and then come back to the crack it is only 5.7. And the climbing over there didn't look bad; it was just that I couldn't see where I was going to find pro.
After thinking it over for a minute I accepted that I didn't have a good feeling about the climb. I decided to bail without even trying the moves. My head just wasn't in the right place that day for the low crux. I was preoccupied with worries that I would fall on the nut and tweak my bad ankle or end up on my ass.
So then I tried to pull my little nut out of the rock and found it was pretty well stuck in there. This was a good nut! But no matter, I'd already decided to bail, and so after I got the nut out I climbed down and we went to do something else.
Ever since, I've been meaning to go back and confront the climb again.
Last week I walked up to Snooky's and just sent the stupid thing. I placed a cam horizontally right off the deck in order to protect against a zipper pull, slotted the bomber small nut right below the crux again, and did the old-school trick of attaching two 'biners to the nut instead of a sling, to minimize extension. Then I went ahead and did the crux move. It's all about getting your feet up so you can reach the good holds; it is literally a single move of 5.8 and then the crux is over. The rest of the way up to the anchor is a lovely, consistent 5.7 face-climbing pitch, straight as an arrow to the bolts. There's great pro, and you don't need any specialty gear like micronuts. I know I passed up a placement I shouldn't have, right after the crux move. It was just another step to a better stance so I went ahead and made the move before placing gear, surely moving into ground-fall range in the process. But I felt the step was very secure at the time. Next time I'll place another piece, I promise.
We were a party of three and one of my partners, Adrian, led the second pitch. Also rated 5.8, it too probably has only one 5.8 move on it, a single delicate step to the right just past an angle piton. The pitch has nice face climbing and the pro is good, but the line isn't really natural or obvious and the crux isn't terribly interesting or unique. I believe we followed Williams' instructions exactly, up the corner directly above the chains, heading left at the little overlap for about 10 feet, then up a steepening face with a step to the right at the piton and then straight up to the GT Ledge.
Pitch three is a short roof escape pitch, rated 5.7. I regret that we did not bring the book up with us, because I forgot whether we were supposed to escape to the left or the right. From below, it appeared that the escape to the right would involve a couple of awkward, overhanging maneuvers under the roof, while going left would require a committing layback move or two. It looked like there was a path through the lichen in either direction. I decided to just climb up there and see what I found. When I got to the roof both paths seemed feasible, but I couldn't see what the holds would be like once I escaped the roof to the right, while I could tell that the path to the left looked easily climbable. So I took the conservative path and headed left; the left escape also seemed like the more natural line. One awkward laybacking move up (at probably 5.5 or so) and the pitch was over, save for some dirty scrambling to the top. As soon as I got above the roof I knew I'd picked the wrong direction. From above I could see a slightly cleaner path through the lichen on the other side of the roof. Even though I now know I went the wrong way I can tell you that pitch three of Snooky's Return is kind of a throwaway. Assuming there's one great move in the part of the pitch I skipped, that great move is bookended above and below by dirty, uninteresting climbing. If you do pitch two you may as well do pitch three, as it's the easiest way to get off the cliff. If you wish to skip it there is no easy tree from which to descend in the immediate vicinity on the GT Ledge.
Having done the whole climb, I see why pitch one of Snooky's gets most of the traffic. It is a terrific pitch. It looks hard to protect from below but it isn't. Pitch two is pretty good, and pitch three is kind of a waste. If you go all the way to the top, descending is easy so long as you are familiar enough with the cliff to recognize the Madame G rappel station from above. Walk to climber's right as you top out and a trail will take you to the short scramble down to the bolts. Two single-rope rappels or one double-rope rappel will get you back to the ground. (You also probably can walk to climber's right on the GT Ledge to the bolts after pitch two if you wish to skip pitch three, but I have not tried it.)
As we walked back to our packs I was feeling great about making progress and conquering situations that had intimidated me in the past. Then we reached the base of Snooky's and found a family of four climbing the route. Leading pitch one was an eight-year-old boy. His ten-year-old brother also led it. These kids were using pre-placed gear put up by their dad, but nevertheless I was pretty amazed and humbled to see these kids climbing at such a level. I mean, these kids weren't just working on a 5.8. It was absolutely clear that this climb was far below their abilities. It seemed they could climb circles around me today and who knows how good they'll be by age 15 or so.
As impressive as it was, there was something a little disturbing to me about watching such a young kid, sixty feet off the ground, arguing with his father about the sorts of things kids and dads argue about.
Dad: Clip both of those pieces, son.
Son: Why?? They're right next to each other!
Dad: Because I said so! Clip them both or we're not climbing tomorrow!
I want to be clear that I do not disapprove of this family in any way. I thought the boys were both incredible climbers and very well behaved. The parents were extremely nice and the dad really protected the heck out of the pitch, placing much more gear than I did when I led it, so that it was basically sport-bolted for his children.
But I still couldn't imagine myself in the same situation with my seven-year-old son. Partly this is because I know I couldn't trust my son as much as these parents clearly trust their boys when it comes to safety. My son is just too impulsive; I would constantly worry that, sixty or eighty feet off the ground, he would do something in an instant to jeopardize his life that I would be powerless to prevent.
I also don't trust myself enough. I would be constantly worried about the gear. It is one thing to place trad gear for yourself, but quite another to place it for little kids. When I imagine myself standing below my son, watching him move past a cam, thinking about where a fall would take him if the cam blew... I just shudder.
A part of me wants my kids to fall in love with climbing. (I think it is much less likely to happen with my daughter, which is why I'm writing mostly about my son.) I picture us in ten years taking a day every weekend to climb together and it seems like heaven. But another part of me worries about what could happen. And that part of me wants the kids to reject climbing entirely. Let it be dad's crazy obsession. My kids are still young enough that I haven't had to confront what every parent deals with eventually: they will make their own decisions and take risks in their lives. I know that day is coming, but I don't want to feel I put them in a position to take more risks than they should. I can't imagine potentially putting them in that position now, when they are still so young.
After we got back to our packs Adrian said he was looking for a 5.9 to lead. Friends and Lovers seemed like the obvious candidate, since it was sitting there unoccupied right in front of our faces. I knew that most people do it on toprope after leading Snooky's, but Williams calls it a PG lead and I recalled a thread on Gunks.com in which the consensus seemed to be that it was a reasonable lead. I did not know that Swain says it is rated R.
Well, I can tell you I won't be leading it any time soon, even though Adrian did a fine job and I really do think it is a PG lead.
The first crux, working over a small overhang twenty feet up, is very well protected. Adrian had two pieces nearby and worked in a third, a nut over his head, just before pulling this crux.
The second crux, however, cannot be sewn up. There's great gear at your feet, but the move is stiff for 5.9, in my opinion, and involves a very insecure smear-step up, and then at least two more moves before additional gear can be found. My partner Adrian hemmed and hawed at this second crux for a good long time before he made the move on lead and I was the same way following it. It is an intimidating move even with a rope over your head.
You may recall that a few weeks ago I said the 5.9s were feeling easy (on toprope)? I thought Friends and Lovers was hard, with two different, tricky, thoughtful cruxes. I actually misread the first crux and took a fall, then got it on my second try. The second crux I thought was the more difficult of the two, but I got that one on the first try. I'll wait until I'm more confident before I consider taking the sharp end on this one. It is a high quality pitch, though, and Adrian said he'd happily lead it again.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Gunks Routes: Columbia (5.8)
I've been curious about Columbia. The route sits right next to my favorite 5.6 in the Gunks, Madame G's. Columbia ascends the left edge of the same buttress, and I've always wondered if it would provide the same sort of steep, juggy fun.
It seems that most people only do the first pitch as an alternate 5.8 start to Madame G's. I led the pitch earlier this year in just such a fashion. It is a short but good pitch. It follows an obvious crack that arches to the right, and then you pass a crux bulge. One committing move with great pro and it's easy sailing up and right to the Madame G belay tree. As the crack begins its move to the right there is an eyebrow-shaped block (coated in chalk) that is loose. Back in June it seemed to me that this block was quite loose, and I neither pulled on it nor placed any gear behind it. This past week when I returned to Columbia I warned my partner Adrian about the block as he led up to it, but he thought it was fine and went ahead and yarded on it. And so I went ahead and used it too, although it isn't difficult to avoid. It's probably not going to pop out, but I still wouldn't place any pro behind it.
Back in June I looked up at pitch two and it appeared kind of tough to me. The mystique of the pitch for me only grew when I checked the guidebooks. Williams grades it a 5.7 but Swain calls it a 5.9-. It starts up a shallow left-facing corner about ten feet left of the Madame G corner. (People are often fooled into starting up this corner when they mean to do Madame G's.) You'll know you're choosing the correct corner for Columbia because there are two pitons in pretty quick succession not far off of the ledge at the beginning of the pitch.
When I went back to Columbia to lead pitch two the other day I thought the first hundred feet or so were outstanding. The initial delicate moves past the pins are the technical crux moves of the pitch. There is a small slot next to the first pin that will take a microcam or a small nut, but the second pin cannot be backed up. Once past the pins, prepare yourself for steepness! The climb continues up the corner through bulging rock. There are numerous jugs and great horizontals for pro, but it is overhanging and sustained. The climb reminded me of the crux portions of Strictly From Nowhere (5.7) and pitch two of Son of Easy O (5.8), but the steep section of Columbia is far longer than the crux sections of both of those other climbs.
As I approached the end of the bulging section I shook out the pump and thought to myself that Columbia is a hidden gem, and that the second pitch is one of the best 5.7s in the Gunks. But the top portion of the pitch turned out to be less distinguished. As the angle eases off the last thirty feet or so is up the corner to the right through easy terrain and rather dirty rock. This detracts from the greatness of the climb, but only a bit. Pitch two of Columbia has a ton of quality climbing on it, and I'd encourage you to go and do it. (There's also a 5.9 variation that goes to the right out on the face and through a roof instead of continuing up the corner when the angle eases, but Williams says it is difficult to protect.)
And as for the grading of Columbia's pitch two, I'm with Williams. The pitch is sustained and you have to hang in there, but I thnk 5.7 is fair, and 5.9 is certainly too high. Perhaps my partner Adrian said it best when he arrived at the belay: "That was a 5.7 pitch for the 5.9 leader!"
It seems that most people only do the first pitch as an alternate 5.8 start to Madame G's. I led the pitch earlier this year in just such a fashion. It is a short but good pitch. It follows an obvious crack that arches to the right, and then you pass a crux bulge. One committing move with great pro and it's easy sailing up and right to the Madame G belay tree. As the crack begins its move to the right there is an eyebrow-shaped block (coated in chalk) that is loose. Back in June it seemed to me that this block was quite loose, and I neither pulled on it nor placed any gear behind it. This past week when I returned to Columbia I warned my partner Adrian about the block as he led up to it, but he thought it was fine and went ahead and yarded on it. And so I went ahead and used it too, although it isn't difficult to avoid. It's probably not going to pop out, but I still wouldn't place any pro behind it.
Back in June I looked up at pitch two and it appeared kind of tough to me. The mystique of the pitch for me only grew when I checked the guidebooks. Williams grades it a 5.7 but Swain calls it a 5.9-. It starts up a shallow left-facing corner about ten feet left of the Madame G corner. (People are often fooled into starting up this corner when they mean to do Madame G's.) You'll know you're choosing the correct corner for Columbia because there are two pitons in pretty quick succession not far off of the ledge at the beginning of the pitch.
When I went back to Columbia to lead pitch two the other day I thought the first hundred feet or so were outstanding. The initial delicate moves past the pins are the technical crux moves of the pitch. There is a small slot next to the first pin that will take a microcam or a small nut, but the second pin cannot be backed up. Once past the pins, prepare yourself for steepness! The climb continues up the corner through bulging rock. There are numerous jugs and great horizontals for pro, but it is overhanging and sustained. The climb reminded me of the crux portions of Strictly From Nowhere (5.7) and pitch two of Son of Easy O (5.8), but the steep section of Columbia is far longer than the crux sections of both of those other climbs.
As I approached the end of the bulging section I shook out the pump and thought to myself that Columbia is a hidden gem, and that the second pitch is one of the best 5.7s in the Gunks. But the top portion of the pitch turned out to be less distinguished. As the angle eases off the last thirty feet or so is up the corner to the right through easy terrain and rather dirty rock. This detracts from the greatness of the climb, but only a bit. Pitch two of Columbia has a ton of quality climbing on it, and I'd encourage you to go and do it. (There's also a 5.9 variation that goes to the right out on the face and through a roof instead of continuing up the corner when the angle eases, but Williams says it is difficult to protect.)
And as for the grading of Columbia's pitch two, I'm with Williams. The pitch is sustained and you have to hang in there, but I thnk 5.7 is fair, and 5.9 is certainly too high. Perhaps my partner Adrian said it best when he arrived at the belay: "That was a 5.7 pitch for the 5.9 leader!"
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