Climbing at Seneca - day 1 of 2
My left elbow has been bothering me again lately (I have tendonitis from climbing too much), so Megan and I decided that this weekend would be a good time to take someone who has never done multipitch out to Seneca and do a weekend of easy climbing. I posted this idea early in the week to the DCORC group, and Jason Chapman replied with interest.
We were suppose to meet at 8 am Saturday morning in a parking lot off I-66, so I can leave my truck there. But I got a late start, coupled with the fact that the highway construction people closed the I-495 on ramp for my intended direction of travel, I had to go in the complete opposite direction, then turn around at the next exit. By the time I got to our meeting place I was about 20 minutes late. If Jason was annoyed by this, he didn't show it. I've never climbed with Jason before, but he seemed nice and easy going.
We piled all the gear into Jason's car then took off for Seneca. It was a little before noon when we arrived. After a quick inquiry at the Seneca Climbing School about Megan's camera ("oh, ummm, I think someone send it off for repairs. Why don't you come back later and maybe speak with him"), we hiked to the Southern End of Seneca. I planned for us to climb the first pitch of Totem (the first pitch is 5.4ish) and then rappel, just to get Jason familiar with climbing in a team of three, and see how he react to the height.
Megan led the first pitch of Totem, Jason climbed second, and I climbed third. We then rapped from the anchor, everything went fine, Jason seemed to be a pretty competent climber, and handled the height well.
Jason rappelling from P1 of Totem
We then moved over to Ecstasy Jr (5.4). I planned to take all our gear with us and climb it to Luncheon Ledge, where we can then choose to climb something else. I've never done Ecstasy Jr before, but it's a 5.4, right? The first section was just a scramble, I didn't place any gear until I get to the traverse, then decided to place small cams. I traverse over to a vertical crack, the moves looked easy, but since I didn't have much pro in, I placed another two pieces right off the traverse with the intension of back clean them once I placed some pro higher up. That was what I did.
Of course it made for slow climbing, by the time I got to the belay ledge, I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance, and the wind picked up. A thunderstorm was coming. I called down to Megan and told her that only one of them should climb and clean the gear, and we were going to rappel from this pitch. So Jason climbed and cleaned gear, since another party was rapping from the bolted anchors off to the side, we set up the rappel on the big tree with sling far back on the ledge (I didn't see the glue-ins right below the ledge). The middle mark on my single had fallen off, and I haven't had a chance to replace it. We yelled down to the party below to see if our rope reached the ground, and they told us that both ends were off the ground. Oh yeah... this was one pitch in Seneca a single rope doesn't quite reach, I remember now. No problem, we can easily down climb the last bit. So I sent Jason down first, asking him to be extra careful. He made it down fine. I went down next, spotting a nut just resting on a bush next to the rappel line as I went down. I went over and picked it up, and was confused to see it was one of mine! It must have fallen out of the biner when I was taking a biner full of nuts off my gear sling for a placement, but I never noticed that it had fallen out. Well lucky me I guess. I got to the end of the rappel, got on a stance, pulled one strand of the rope through my belay device, tied a knot in the other end, and downclimbed while pulling the rope with me. We then quickly packed up and moved over to the Cave area, where a whole bunch of other climbers were hanging out waiting for the rain to die down.
But it never did. After goofing around in the Cave, showing Jason how to place gear and stuff, we eventually got tired of waiting and hiked back to the car. Then it was setting up camp in the rain, cooking a way too early dinner, playing cards, until it was finally dark, and the rain finally stopped. The forecast for tomorrow didn't look very promising, but we decided to wait and see in the morning.
We were suppose to meet at 8 am Saturday morning in a parking lot off I-66, so I can leave my truck there. But I got a late start, coupled with the fact that the highway construction people closed the I-495 on ramp for my intended direction of travel, I had to go in the complete opposite direction, then turn around at the next exit. By the time I got to our meeting place I was about 20 minutes late. If Jason was annoyed by this, he didn't show it. I've never climbed with Jason before, but he seemed nice and easy going.
We piled all the gear into Jason's car then took off for Seneca. It was a little before noon when we arrived. After a quick inquiry at the Seneca Climbing School about Megan's camera ("oh, ummm, I think someone send it off for repairs. Why don't you come back later and maybe speak with him"), we hiked to the Southern End of Seneca. I planned for us to climb the first pitch of Totem (the first pitch is 5.4ish) and then rappel, just to get Jason familiar with climbing in a team of three, and see how he react to the height.
Megan led the first pitch of Totem, Jason climbed second, and I climbed third. We then rapped from the anchor, everything went fine, Jason seemed to be a pretty competent climber, and handled the height well.
We then moved over to Ecstasy Jr (5.4). I planned to take all our gear with us and climb it to Luncheon Ledge, where we can then choose to climb something else. I've never done Ecstasy Jr before, but it's a 5.4, right? The first section was just a scramble, I didn't place any gear until I get to the traverse, then decided to place small cams. I traverse over to a vertical crack, the moves looked easy, but since I didn't have much pro in, I placed another two pieces right off the traverse with the intension of back clean them once I placed some pro higher up. That was what I did.
Of course it made for slow climbing, by the time I got to the belay ledge, I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance, and the wind picked up. A thunderstorm was coming. I called down to Megan and told her that only one of them should climb and clean the gear, and we were going to rappel from this pitch. So Jason climbed and cleaned gear, since another party was rapping from the bolted anchors off to the side, we set up the rappel on the big tree with sling far back on the ledge (I didn't see the glue-ins right below the ledge). The middle mark on my single had fallen off, and I haven't had a chance to replace it. We yelled down to the party below to see if our rope reached the ground, and they told us that both ends were off the ground. Oh yeah... this was one pitch in Seneca a single rope doesn't quite reach, I remember now. No problem, we can easily down climb the last bit. So I sent Jason down first, asking him to be extra careful. He made it down fine. I went down next, spotting a nut just resting on a bush next to the rappel line as I went down. I went over and picked it up, and was confused to see it was one of mine! It must have fallen out of the biner when I was taking a biner full of nuts off my gear sling for a placement, but I never noticed that it had fallen out. Well lucky me I guess. I got to the end of the rappel, got on a stance, pulled one strand of the rope through my belay device, tied a knot in the other end, and downclimbed while pulling the rope with me. We then quickly packed up and moved over to the Cave area, where a whole bunch of other climbers were hanging out waiting for the rain to die down.
But it never did. After goofing around in the Cave, showing Jason how to place gear and stuff, we eventually got tired of waiting and hiked back to the car. Then it was setting up camp in the rain, cooking a way too early dinner, playing cards, until it was finally dark, and the rain finally stopped. The forecast for tomorrow didn't look very promising, but we decided to wait and see in the morning.
posted by Boer @ 8/06/2005
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