Adventures during October 15-16, 2005

Friday, October 14, 2005

6:00pm: I leave work heading for a Gunks trip with a bunch of strangers I meet on the Internet. Of course, I had to bring my bodyguards and trusty climbing partners: Doug and Jason. 11:00pm: After insane amounts of traffic and rain, we arrive at the New Paltz Hostel. Since the rain eliminated camping, Doug was without a place to sleep. Luckily, he was able to convince the Hostel to let him sleep on their couch. They even gave him $2 off. Jason, on the other hand, took a slightly different approach. Jason reserved a bed at the Hostel in advance so he decided to steal some poor girl's bed while she was out putting gas in her car. "Oh, I didn't know this was your bed." Jason tells the girl. Alright, he didn't exactly steal her bed and she didn't make it beforehand so it was an innocent mistake but saying he stole it makes for a much better story.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

8:30am: We have a leisurely wake up since the Gunks received 13 inches of rain over the past week and it was still raining late last night. No worries, we kill some time eating breakfast at a shady diner, staring at gear we couldn't afford at Rock and Snow, and hiking around the Near Trapps. 2:00pm: Things seem dry enough, so we looked around for a while and found ourselves at 69 (5.3). I offer the lead to Jason but he's not interested yet so I take off for one short pitch of nice and mostly dry climbing. Jason and Doug follow and we all rap down. 3:00pm: We want some multipitch action so we head over to the finest 5.2 in the entire world; Easy Overhang. We chat with the team that just came down from the climb and they said it was a little wet and wasps were all over P2 so they rapped after P1. I'm not sure why I brought my rack with me since the only pieces I placed were a slung tree at 15 ft and a slung rock at 60 ft. Once Jason and Doug come up, we check out P2 which has 100s of wasps swarming around it. We decided not to take our chances so we rap off it. By the luck of God, we manage to find the popular Jackie (5.5) available and dry. So we take advantage of it and I cast off for the lead. Now, I've lead this once before, about a year ago in the freezing cold. It was actually the first 5.5 I ever lead and I remember that I had both my rack and Jim's rack with me. I'm much better now so I should be ok without all that gear. Since I wanted to conserve gear, I go about 20 ft without placing anything until I can sling a tree. About 8 ft higher I place a green alien. Now I get above that piece and right under the first of the three crux roofs. I'm a little pissed since if this alien pops, it's possible I'll deck. I can't find another good piece so I just pull the small roof and place something after it. Now the second roof gets a bit more interesting. You're jammed in a right facing corner under a roof (maybe 2 ft). Your feet are stemmed out a bit and there's not much room in there. I struggle to put in a piece in a horizontal under the roof, drop my left knee, lean out, twist to my right and reach with my left hand. Oh hell yeah, I find a giant jug. Easy moves - tough gear. The third and largest roof is supposed to be the crux. I load it up with a #1 C4 and bomber #6 nut (ask Jason how fun it was to take that one out). Both these pieces backed up an old pin that I put a screamer on. I start cranking and get both my hands out to the left on a nice jug. Just when I think I'm outta there, my right foot slips off a wet hold and I almost barn door and send myself airborne. Once I felt my foot slip, I recovered quickly by throw the high right foot and mantling my way to the belay. Doug and Jason follow up making it look much easier than I did. Jason makes the funniest facial expressions when he leans out to pull a roof. Doug has the pictures to prove it. The moon comes out as we climb P2. It becomes obvious that we're going to have to rap down in the dark. At least Jason was smart enough to bring his headlamp. By the time we all do the first rappel, it's so dark that we can't see the ground. Being the idiot, I mean leader, I'm the first to rap down into the nothing that appears below us. When we all make it to the ground, we agreed it was one of the funniest rappels we've ever done. 7:00pm: We head back to the Hostel, eat some good dinner prepared by Gail and her crew. We see Kim and Kurt. Kurt was fortunate enough to do his first lead on Friday, his birthday - and what a fine choice: Easy Overhang. After drinking a few beers, I was in bed around 11pm.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

9:00am: We're at the base of Shockley's Ceiling, it's dry and there's no one on it. We just couldn't resist. I tell Jason and Doug that some of the pitches may be more than 100 ft, so they may have to do some simul climbing. They weren't too thrilled about the idea but they let me take off for the lead anyway. Trying to minimize their chances of simul climbing, I lead P1 and half of P2. They make it up without any simul climbing. The same goes for the rest of P2, which brought us under the famous roof that claimed my first trad fall. I try to convince Jason to lead on the other end of the rope to get into position to take some really sick video/pictures of me on the roof but he decided not too. Maybe next time… I place my standard three pieces of gear (green alien, #1 C4, #2 C4) and clip the pin under the ceiling. I pull some undocumented moves over the ceiling. "Welcome to Shockley's boys!" I yell down to Doug and Jason. "You really don't want any pictures of that" Jason responds. Despite two teams waiting to pull the ceiling, I setup the "optional" hanging belay so I'll be able to see Doug and Jason pull the roof. After receiving some beta from an old guy, Jason pull over the roof a completely different way than me, going up with his left foot first. "It felt easy" he tells me. Doug followed up with similar comments. Having the three of us on the hanging belay was nice and cozy. I lead the rest of P3, almost falling on the smaller but tricky ceiling. Doug and Jason agree that the second ceiling was pretty tricky. 2:00pm: We head over to Minty. "Jason, this is all you" I tell him "It will be your first onsight." "Where's the route go?" he asks me. "Just go up and left, following the path of less resistant to that tree." I tell him. Jason takes off, places a good .5 C4, slings a tree and goes straight instead of left. Now I wasn't really sure where to start going left so at that point I just told him to keep it at the grade. And he did; a wet 5.3. He pulls through steep, wet rock and traverses straight left to belay. I follow on the middle of the rope and Doug on the other end. We were short on rope, so we had to do some simul climbing but it worked out pretty nicely. For his third trad lead ever, Jason's placements were all good except for one tricam and a hex (who still climbs with hexes anyway?). Jason keeps looking up at the wet P2. "Stop looking up there. Just climb it." I tell him. Jason leads it like a champ placing some nice pro along the way. Now P3 is easy so I tell Jason to "place enough pro so you'd never deck." Jason translated this into "place two pieces of pro in the first 25 ft, move left to where there is no pro, and run it out for 40 ft." Nice. Thank God he didn't fall. 6:00pm: After rappelling down, we head to best place in New Paltz to get food: "My Hero." This pizza/sandwich place will give you giant 18 inch "heros" for $6-8. It has to be the best deal in town. 11:00pm: We get back in town and end a climbing trip without any epics. No epics! How'd we do that? You'll notice that all the routes we climbed, I've already done before. The real fun is in climbing new routes.