Adventures during July 15-16th, 2006

Saturday, July 15th, 2006

9:30 AM Ecstasy (5.7) is the ultra classic Seneca climb. It's the equivalent of the Gunk's High Exposure or Cathedral Ledge's Thin Air. Of course, I had no balls to lead it, so we decided to settle for the Southwest Buttress Variation that goes at 5.5. P1 started with an easy chimney that lead to some sweet crack climbing. Twin cracks about 3 feet apart provided all the jams and gear you could ask for. Things didn't stay so peachy when I setup an anchor "on a ledge under a roof with an orange face." I should have known something was wrong when a blue alien was my best piece in the anchor. The crusty soft iron piton might have held bodyweight but I still used it. I was able to get 4 pieces and that pin rigged together. The ledge wasn't all that big so I had to use this shady anchor for a semi-hanging belay. Jason cast off and things were fine until Jason yells "take, I need to work on this piece." Oh great, I really want to test this anchor. Well, we tested it - a few times actually and it held up no problem. I soon found out the real belay ledge was ten feet higher. P2 is where you stop following Ecstasy. Half way up the pitch, you go straight up instead of doing the "wild and exposed" traverse right. God only knows what the traverse must be like because the crack leading up to it is just as exposed as any climb I've ever been on. You can't even see the rock face under you; nothing but trees just like P2 of Directissima. 1:00 PM Once we got back to the ground, it was Jason's turn to lead. I recommended Ecstasy Jr. and he agreed without fully understanding what he was in store for on P2. Some brief showers almost made us bail but they quickly passed and Jason geared up for the lead. He lead P1 as smooth as anyone could. He used the doubles like a champ and ran two straight lines. He even placed several bomber, passive tricams. I didn't tell Jason all the details about P2. I just told him some of it was intense. Jason started moving his way up the right facing corner. Once he got 2 or 3 pieces in, he was looking at a ground fall from a piss poor stance. With some sewing machine legs, he quickly placed an over cammed #4 C4 and kept moving. Once he finished the corner, he pulled the bulge and searched like hell for gear in the cave above. "How do you protect this cave" he yelled down. "Medium size, passive tricam" I told him. Jason took my well intentioned but poor advice and then ran it out to the top. It was on this pitch that I realized my slippers were not made for crack climbing. My feet felt pain I didn't even know existed. Lesson learned. Bring your lace ups for crack climbing. That #4 C4 gave me some seriously trouble but it wasn't quite as bad as the #4 he over cammed on Beginners Delight a while back. Once I got to the cave, I noticed he placed the same exact tricam that I did last summer. It's not great but I'm not sure how else to protect it. 4:00 PM We wanted to have Jason lead all the way to the summit but the weather was looking questionable so I took the lead. We climbed Old Ladies (5.2) since I've done it twice. This climb basically sucks but it gets you to the top. Now I didn't tell Jason about all the unroped scrambling around the summit but he handled it pretty well, better than I did my first time up there. We tied together the doubles and did a nice 200 ft rappel but we were still about 30 ft off the deck. I told Jason "Down climbing, it's standard practice at Seneca." Jason responses "dude, what the fuck." But once he saw how easy the downclimb was, he didn't have any problems. 8:50 PM We got back to the car, cracked open some beers and took a quick dip in the swimming hole. Even though we brought food with us, we were too tired to cook so we made the mistake of checking out the The Honey Bear Restaurant. I've eaten at a few other places around Seneca so my expectations weren't very high. I ordered their "Spaghetti Special" that they had advertised and when they were making up the bill, they didn't even know how much it costs. They had to ask me.

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

10:00 AM Jason and I were really sore in the morning, so we decided to take it "easy" and climb the single pitch stuff on the Lower Slabs. We're not sure why they are called slabs because they look dead vertical to us. There's a beautiful hand crack that widens to off width at its crux called Scuttle. I top roped it last year and thought I could lead it. It was pretty sandbagged at 5.5 so it was upgraded to 5.7 in the new guide book. A perfect route for my first 5.7 trad lead; I climbed it before, the route finding was straightforward, the gear is everywhere except the off width section and it's only 50 ft long. I knew the bottom section was difficult so I placed a #3 C4 as high as I could get it and clipped just into its sling in an attempt to minimize a ground fall. Jason was ready to jump backwards if needed. The open moves went smoothly, hand jams in the crack and smeared feet to the left of the crack. I sure was happy to reach a small tree I could sling. Then came more hand and foot jamming and all the passive gear you'd ever want. There's nothing quite like reaching high for a hand jam, slotting it in like a nut, then placing a bomber passive piece of gear. Right before the off width, I had a right hand fist jam that started to slip as I moved my feet up. By the luck of God, I found a sidepull in the crack just as the jam was slipping out. I soon learned this sidepull was total garbage as I struggled to get a #4 C4 in to protect the start of the off width. I couldn't get a good placement no matter how much I tried and the position was tiring so I just kept moving above the #4 that might have held bodyweight. Soon enough I was past the off width and was able to drop in a bomber #11 nut and finish out the climb. Jason followed up strong, he had to hang on the rope a few times to clean all that passive gear but that doesn't count as hang dogging in my book. We realized that we could snap some good pictures from the top of the climb. So we both top roped it again for our "photo shoot." We finished up on Discrepancy (5.8) which was a nice finger crack with plenty of face holds. The team who let us climb this on their rope told us their camping stories from the Gunks. They camped at the MUA at a site that wasn't marked but had a fire pit that was obviously used the night before. When they got back from climbing, the rangers actually took their tent and they would have had to go thru lots of red tape to get it back. Jason and I finished the day by killing a six pack at the swimming hole in preparation for a long drive home.