live! or die trying

Happy birthday, moose.

2007-02-17T19:25:00.000-05:00

RIP, Shaggy

2007-02-16T21:27:00.000-05:00

Even though I don't know you that well, having only met you a couple of times, your death still came as a shock to me. RIP, Shaggy.

Feb 1-14: Climbing on Mt. Kinabalu, Malaysia

2007-02-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

I spend two weeks on Mt. Kinabalu with Logan (Australia) and Brad (US) climbing on the granite faces around the summit. The climbing was ok, but the hike up and then the hike down, with climbing gear, camera gear, and two weeks worth of food was just too much for me. My body nearly broke under the 90 lbs packs we were carrying, up a 13300 feet mountain. We (strictly speaking it was Logan) made the first ascent of a 5.12b up there, so that was really cool. But will I ever do a trip like this again? Not likely. Even the FA wasn't worth all the pain. My body is just not build for carrying 66% of my bodyweight up and down a big hill.

Sorting out gear at the base of Mt. Kinabalu.

Edd going nuts. Photo: Logan Barber

Shot from the summit: Lowe's Peak.

Our home for two weeks.

Raining day. Photo: Logan Barber

Logan in the second crux of his new route: Alpine Birdie (5.12b, 3 pitches)

Jan 26: a day wondering in Macau

2007-01-26T06:22:00.000-05:00

Jan 10-22: traveling through Yunnan

2007-01-23T06:09:00.000-05:00

Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang. Jan 12, 2007

Temple on Mei Li Snow Mountain, Lijiang. Jan 12, 2007

Songzanlin Temple, Zhongdian. Jan 17, 2007

Tiger Leaping Gorge. Jan 19, 2007

Some photos of me

2006-11-29T03:17:00.000-05:00

The grade in Yangshuo is soft compare to the US east coast grade, for the most part, which allowed me to finally send some 5.12s.

Lily (5.12b). The Chicken Cave, Yangshuo

Photo: Liang

The overhanging Lily (5.12b) seen from the bottom.

Photo: Liang

Bouldering at the Boss Boulder, Yangshuo

Photo: Coltan

Cutting loose on the second crux on China White (5.12b). White Mountain, Yangshuo

Photo: Logan Barber

Update from Yangshuo

2006-11-06T08:28:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

It's been two months since I arrived in Yangshuo, and I haven't been
climbing nearly as much as I should. There's the work I'm doing for
Chinaclimb, but there's also drinking parties at night. Yangshuo has
been a very different climbing experience for me, I've never been to a
climbing destination where there are so many parties and so much
alcohol at night. I'm sorry to say that I was slightly distracted by
it all. I had my first, second, and third hangover all in Yangshuo.
But after some thinking and realignment of my goals, my focus is back
on climbing. I managed to flash a 11a and a 11b last week, but it's
probably because the softer grade here. Still haven't send any 5.12s
yet, but I did get some good rope burn while trying.

Colton working on The Axeman (5.13b/c), White Mountain

Jessy on the Missing Link (5.10a), White Mountain

Julian on Red Dragon (5.12c), Moon Hill

Logan on Over The Moon (5.12c), Moon Hill

Logan on Pegasus (5.11b), Moon Hill

Edd on Apollo (5.12a), Moon Hill

Yann on Open Team (5.11b), the Banyan Tree

Logan on Weakened Warriors (5.12d), Chicken Cave

Xiao Sai on unamed 5.12b, Banyan Tree

Deepwater soloing in Yangshuo

2006-09-05T02:38:00.000-04:00

It has been hot in Yangshuo, way too hot. Plans were made to go climbing at Moonhill today, and plans were forgotten when people mentioned deepwater soloing. So three taxi loads of people from Chinaclimb went to a little place by the river called Silong for a little DWS action. Fun were had by all, except yours truly, who spent the whole time rigging, rapping, and jugging the line to take pictures.

China update

2006-09-02T08:07:00.000-04:00

Hello all,

After a 15-hour flight, a night spent sleeping (rather uncomfortably)
in the Hong Kong airport, walking around with 90 lbs of luggage (and
everyone starring at me on the street), and catching an overnight bus,
I finally arrived in Yangshuo two days ago.

Life in Yangshuo is good so far. I've settled into a pretty basic, but
comfortable apartment. The weather is REALLY hot, I don't think I've
stopped sweating since I left the air conditioned Hong Kong airport.
But on the plus side, it will only cool down from now on. Last night I
resorted to sleeping on the roof of our building under the stars. All
the nearby karst towers are lit up by the light from the town, it's
really cool.

All my co-workers at Chinaclimb are really cool people. I'm running
into some old faces, people I've met in my other trips, and meeting a
lot more new friends. It's a very chill, very relaxed atmosphere.

For the last two days I've been getting certified by two professional
climbing instructors from Australia, so I haven't had much chance to
climb. But the climbing here looks awesome. If any of you find the
time to visit, I'll definitely show you around.

Hope this find you all well, take care!

Boer

Sleeper bus

Ready for take off!

2006-08-27T17:13:00.000-04:00

I spent the last week packing, unpacking, and repacking. But I think I'm finally ready, the packs are good to go. My flight to Hong Kong is tomorrow morning. Once I'm in HK I plan to crash in the airport for the night (in true dirtbagging style), next day I make my way across the China/HK border to Shengzhen, then take the sleeper bus overnight to Yangshuo. I should be in Yangshuo by 7 am on the 30th local time.

I just weighed myself while carry all my luggage. The scale reads about 230 lbs. Without the luggage the scale reads about 140 lbs. Great, my packs weigh about 90 lbs... I think I'm going to have a rough time catching buses and trains in China.

Packing list:
Clothes: two pairs of pants (convertible), one pair of softshell pants (winter), three pairs of shorts, three t-shirts, six pairs of boxers, four pairs of socks, three long sleeve shirts, two pairs of long john, one softshell jacket, one insulated jacket, one rainjacket, two hats, two pairs of gloves

Other things: dSLR camera, portable CD writer, battery chargers, headlamp, two pairs of climbing shoes, hiking boots, sandals, helmet, harness, chalk bag and chalk, one and half set of nuts, three tri-cams, two Maxcams, ascender, Gri-gri, Reverso, slings and quickdraws, climbing rope, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, camping hammock, books, and other small stuff

I won't go on a climbing trip without bringing any climbing gear again.

By the way, blogspot.com is probably blocked from within China, so I may not be able to keep this blog going. If I stopped blogging, don't get too concerned! For those of you whom I known, I will try to e-mail you with updates from China. If I don't e-mail you... e-mail me and I'll fix that.

Well I'm totally excited, tomorrow is the start of a new adventure!

Aug 18-20: Climbing in Sandrock, Alabama

2006-08-20T02:36:00.000-04:00

So not much blogging lately. Well, I'm in Florida, so there isn't much climbing happening. I did go freediving in Blue Springs once again, but I barely broke 45 feet on my deepest dive. Or I COULD tell you about the time we took a "roadtrip" to the Melbourne climbing gym so I could get my hands in some fake crack, but that would be really lame. Rest assured, I haven't stopped climbing. In fact I may be climbing too much, I go to the gym three or four times a week, and recently the base of my middle left finger is getting really sore. I know a few climbers with finger injuries, so I'm careful. I've stopped bouldering (which is what hurts my finger the most), I even avoid hard routes on toprope. I've just been doing laps on 5.8ish routes on TR to work on my endurance.

Anyway, apart from lots of plastic pulling, I got to get back on real rock again last weekend at Sandrock in Alabama. Last time I was in Sandrock was last Thanksgiving with Hung and Eric, I got spanked on a 5.11a/b called Never Believe. This time my goal was to redpoint it. But I totally forgot the sequence for the crux, so I had to work it again from the beginning. After working out the sequence on the first day, I came back the second day hoping for a redpoint. We had to leave by noon to make it back to Florida by midnight, so I only had one shot. The crux started right after the first bolt until you pull the small roof past the third bolt. I was too pumped to link all the moves to push through the crux. I fell twice near the crux, then had to take near the top when I ran out of juice. Not even close to redpoint.

Maybe next year.

July 1-16: Climbing in WV, NC, and TN

2006-07-17T03:14:00.000-04:00

I took a two-week road trip with some climbers from Florida (yes they
do exist!) earlier this month. We climbed at the New/Summersville for
five days, most of them flew back home afterwards. I went on to climb
at Seneca with James for five more days, then met up with my ride Joe
in DC. We drove to Looking Class, climbed there for three days, and
onward to climb in Foster Falls for two days. Considering the weather
on the east coast in summer (hot, humid, and often raining), it was a
good trip. It was good to get on some real rock again.

The best part of my trip was probably leading West Pole (5.7+) at
Seneca. I first followed Hung up this route two years ago on my first
trad experience. The overhang on the second pitch was so intimidating,
it took five minutes standing under the roof for me to work up the
courage and commit to the moves. It has been my goal to come back and
lead this climb ever since I started leading trad, and it was a great
feeling to finally have done it.

James is leading really well these days, while we were there he first
led Castor (5.10a), then Sunshine (5.10a). Both were great leads on
his part. I struggled up Sunshine on toprope two years ago after Hung,
this time around it felt much easier, I guess it means I have been
improving as a climber, even though I don't feel it. But it will be a
while before I'm willing to lead this route. I have just started
pushing my lead on sport and falling on bolts, it will be a while
before I'm willing to commit to moves at my limit above microwire
placements.

Maybe next time I'm back in Seneca, I'll be ready to lead some 5.10s.

Joe following on the first pitch of Second Coming (5.7, 2 pitches). Looking Glass, North Carolina

Yangshuo

2006-06-28T11:51:00.000-04:00

I've always liked to travel, I just didn't know how much. After spending three months traveling around Australia and New Zealand, I still want to keep on traveling. So I decided to take this chance, while I'm still unemployed, to go back to China for six months. The first three months I will be working in Yangshuo, then I'll take off for three months exploring southwest China. I'm leaving in two months from today, I can't wait!

Climbing at Moonhill, Yangshuo

Photo: Marty Blumen

It is broken

2006-06-23T23:12:00.000-04:00

The memento of the past. It broke, during the Aikido practice tonight.

The trial

2006-06-22T00:53:00.000-04:00

So some of you know that shortly after I came back to the US from Australia, I was attacked while out running in the neighborhood, by a group of teenagers who wanted to take my ipod. The police was able to arrest one of the them, and today that case went on trial in court. Yes, I had to sit in a little witness stand getting drilled by the defense lawyer. But at the end, he was found guilty. The system works! Now hopefully the police can locate some of the other people involved. I got away unscratched except for a bruise on my forehead from a punch, and they were not able to take anything from me, but I don't want these kids think for a minute that they can do something like this and get away with it. The next time, the next person may not be so lucky.

OZ and NZ trip summary

2006-06-13T12:44:00.000-04:00

Trip length: 3 months (Mar 3 - May 31, 2006. 90 days)
Longest time spent in one place: Arapiles, 30 days
Total spending: USD$3,500 (not including roundtrip airfare to Australia)
Biggest single expense: roundtrip airfare to New Zealand (USD$444), and 3-day live-on-board diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef (USD$444)
Total pack weight: around 28 kg / 60 lbs?
Clothes: a pair of long pants (convertible), one pair of shorts, one pair of swim trunks, three t-shirts, six pair of boxers, three pairs of socks, three long sleeve shirts, one pair of long john, one softshell jacket, one insulated jacket, one rainjacket, two fleece beanies
Other things: small digital camera, underwater housing, mask, snorkel, two pairs of climbing shoes, approach shoes, sandals, helmet, harness, chalk bag, all my cams, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and a bunch of other small stuff
Things I brought but never used: gloves (two pairs), chemical hand warmers
Things I didn't bring but wish I did: tent, stove, cooking gear, my rope, most of my rack, a second pair of long pants
Nights in a hotel: 0
Nights in a hostel: 9
Nights on a boat: 3
Nights in a vehicle: 7
Nights in a tent: 22
Nights under a tarp: 14
Nights under the sky: 4
Nights staying with friends: 28
Nights in an airport: 2
Countries visited: 2
New climbing areas visited: 13
Total days climbing: 49 days
Nationalities of the climbers I met: Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Austria, France, Norway
Hardest bouldering problem: The Unrepeatable, V6, Castle Hill. But in terms of real difficulty it was Crankshaft, V4/V5, Arapiles.
Hardest sport redpoint/pinkpoint: Meaty Mesmo, 22 / 5.11a; Engorged, 22 / 5.11a, Nowra.
Hardest sport onsight/flash: A Day At The Beach, 21 / 5.10d; V Lix The Cat, 21 / 5.10d, Nowra.
Hardest trad onsight: Equilibrium, 17 / 5.9, Booroomba. (Deserve a "R" rating. The second pitch is 50 meters long with only two bolts)

Where to next? China!

May 16 - 30: Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, and back to Sydney

2006-05-31T12:05:00.000-04:00

A little break from climbing.

Red sea fan.

Nemo!

Dory and her twin sister?

Crush!

Goodbye Sydney, goodbye Australia.

May 2-15: Sydney and surrounding areas

2006-05-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

Boer attempting to lead Mekong Charlie, 21 or 5.10d, Blue Mountains

Mikl Law bolting in the Blue Mountains

Mikl Law leading Closer In, 23 or 5.11b, Booroomba

Mikl Law bouldering on Prism Rock, Booroomba

Diamond Bay sea cliffs

Mikl leading These People are Sandwiches, 22 or 5.11a, Blue Mountains

Jammed sling and biners, psychological protection for the desperate leader

Ness leading in the Blue Mountains

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2006-05-08T02:02:00.000-04:00

A lot of people have told me this is a good movie, but I never watched it, because I don't like Jim Carrey and never want to see any movie with him in it. But I finally saw it in a hostel in Melbourne, when I was waiting to use the telephone. I guess it's good that I didn't watch it when it first came out. Then I would probably felt it was just another “good movie”, but now I can really feel the deep emotions that I couldn’t relate to before.

In many ways, I’m quite similar to Joel Barish. He’s a pretty average person, living a pretty dull life. He’s quiet and socially awkward. He sits by himself at parties, can’t interact with other people very well, and prefer to keep most of his thoughts to himself. That describes me quite well (and probably many others). Because of this, I can really put myself in his shoes.

So if a procedure as described in the movie really existed, would I choose to go through the same treatment? Yes, I would. Even knowing it’s doing low-level brain damage, I would gladly do it, just to get rid of the pain. I can understand why Joel wanted the procedure done to him, because I can understand the pain he’s going through. You can’t sleep, you don’t feel like eating, you can’t do anything that you used to enjoy doing. It feels like the end of the world, nothing really matters anymore. Anything, anything is better than this. Anything to get rid of this pain.

Before I’ve seen the movie, I tried to do my version of the procedure without even realizing it, trying to erase her from my memory. I won’t write to her, won’t ever see her again. I want to forget her so the pain would stop. But I can’t forget, no matter how hard I tried. Memories can’t be erased that easily. I thought about getting rid of all her pictures (there are many), and everything she’s ever given to me.

But I didn’t.

In the movie, Joel finally realized that he didn’t want to loose the memories of Clementine as the procedure was underway, so he did his best to fight the procedure. He almost succeed. Almost.

Now, almost a month later for me, the pain has slowly went away, and I also realized that I don’t want to loose my memories. We’ve taken a lot of trips together: Seneca, Red Rocks, New River Gorge, Summersville, Red River Gorge, the Gunks, Squamish, Skaha, and Colorado. These were some of the happiest time of my life. Erasing those memories would mean that I’ll have nothing else left to remember. And I don’t want that.

The sharp pain of last month is just a dull ache now. With time, maybe it will go away completely. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter now. I’ve started climbing again, started to do the things I used to enjoy, instead of just drowning myself in depression.

The movie has a (somewhat) happy ending, even with each others memories erased, Joel and Clementine still found each other. Maybe it’s according to the Hollywood formula that two people are always meant to be together. Whether Joel and Clementine can make their relationship work beyond the movie, that’s a different story.

In real life, it’s not always a happy ending. Two people don’t always end up together, no matter how right you think it is. But life goes on, a month later I realized, it only felt like the end of the world, but it isn't.

The pain will be forgotten, but you will not.

The story of my life

2006-04-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

Boy meets world, boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl, boy thinks she's the one. They spend a few months together enjoying each other's company, but eventually girl has to go back to where she lives. Boy sees her off at the airport (or bus station), girl cries, but boy doesn't. Boy never cries, but he feels the ache in his heart.

A few months passes, boy holds his heart unchanging, but girl's heart has changed. Then girl says "we are just friends" (or "we should see other people"). Boy tries to stay in touch, but soon he never hears from girl anymore. Well, at least not from the first one anymore.

That's the story of my life, repeated twice. You figure I would have learned the first time. But nope, being a big idiot, I picked up myself in pieces and then went for it again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Hopefully this time I've learned my lesson.

Mar 13 - 24: Castle Hill, New Zealand

2006-03-24T01:28:00.000-05:00

Mar 6 - 13: climbing in Tasmania

2006-03-13T07:06:00.000-05:00

Megan and I took the ferry to Tasmania on the 6th, and spent the week driving around Tassie and climbing at different spots.

Day 1:

Melbourne beach at sunrise

Batman bridge, under which we camped many nights for free

Day 2:

The black, volcanic rock of Hillwood

Day 3:

Megan gearing up at Ben Lomond

Following Local Loser (grade 14)

The hellish approach and de-proach

Sunset at Ben Lomond

Moon and gum tree

Megan cooking under a Tassie sunset

Day 4:

Jacob's Ladder

Megan at the summit of Ben Lomond

The Tasman Sea

Sea cliffs of Freycinet National Park

Megan following on Apline (12) at White Water Wall

Megan leading Ice Nine (16) at Harlequin Buttress

Following Ice Nine

Day 5:

White Water Wall at sunrise

Sunrise over the Tasman Sea

Megan following on Cordon Bleu (15), Lassie's Wall

Megan bouldering at Honeymoon Bay

A small wallaby

Red granite on the Hazards

Day 6:

Megan in Honeymoon Bay

Sandbars

The approach in Tasman National Park

The sea cliff we wanted to climb, but the belay ledge was a little wet

Megan checking out an alternative

Very cool black rock with some really hard routes

And massive waves crashing onto the beach

Megan following a 21

Day 7:

Tasman National Park in the morning

Sandstone crag of Blackwood Rocks

Day 8:

Cataract Gorge

Megan on the beach

Water polished rocks

I'm melting, melting!

2006-03-04T03:48:00.000-05:00

More than 24 hours after I got on my flight at Orlando International Airport, I finally arrived in Melbourne, Australia around noon on March 3rd. Megan picked me up at the Melbourne airport. We dropped off my luggage at her place, then took the tram to downtown... or CBD (central business district) as they are called here.

We wondered around CBD for a bit so I could look around and pretend to be a tourist. I snapped a few photos, but the sun was unbelieveable, making most taking any decent photo impossible.

After almost getting heat stroke under the Australian sun, Megan took me to her climbing gym - Hard Rock. So first day off my flight, about 3 am US Eastern Time, I was trying to pass the lead test in an Australian climbing gym. My body was confused and bewildered. Needless to say I climbed as well as an one-legged zombie.

Nex Monday Megan and I will be going to Tasmania for a week of climbing and camping. We are coming back on the 14th of March, then I will be boarding a plane to New Zealand on the same day. I plan to go to Castle Hill for some bouldering while Megan stay in Melbourne and do some work. So from now to the 24th of March, there probably won't be much updates from me.

Ten things I will miss about...

2006-02-24T02:11:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's because I'm too excited about meeting a high school classmate (whom I haven't seen in 9 years) at the climbing gym tomorrow, maybe I'm just trying to get a jump start on getting over the jet lag, but it's 2:18 in the morning and I'm wide awake. So following the evilmoose's example, I will make a list: "ten things I will miss about Maryland".

1 ...

Errrrr.... let's make that "ten things I will miss about the Mid-Atlantic states".

1. Deepwater soloing at Summersville Lake, West Virginia.

2. Eating a big bowl of Pho, then go snowboarding.
3. Getting green tea mochi ice cream from Trader Joes for dinner.
4. Some people were crazy enough to go climbing with me when it's snowing.

5. The autumn colors.

6. Having access to four REIs. Count them, four!
7. Night sailing on the Chesapeake Bay.
8. The hard sandstone at the New River Gorge, West Virginia.

9. Scaring myself on a 5.4 at Seneca.

10. The friendly climbers.

Catching up

2006-02-21T20:28:00.000-05:00

Wow, it has been a busy month with no blogs. I'll do a short recap.

First, I quit my job. My last day at work was Feb 3rd. I went climbing and bouldering a few times, but mostly I stayed home and packed. I went to Great Falls twice, Franklin once, and as my last climbing trip in Maryland, I went to McAfee's Knob with a bunch of climbers from St. Mary's College.

SMC climbers at McAfee's Knob

I got my things packed up and move them all to my parent's house for storage. All my life's belongs fit inside a 5 x 8 Uhaul trailer. From here, I will fly to Australia on March 1st, and pretend to be a climbing bum for three months. What's after that? I don't know... haven't planned that far. Vaguely, when I get back I want to buy an used mini-van and become a soccer mom... no, go on a road trip across the country, and ideally, end up in Colorado somehow. How? I don't know. But I'm sure everything is going to work out just fine. =)

Almost sending Pocket Arete (V4)

My first official climbing injury

2006-01-22T15:03:00.000-05:00

This weekend was not one of my better weekends. It started out ok, rain was forecasted for Saturday, so I stayed home and packed. However the forecast was wrong, it didn't rain a drop. I was a bit disappointed for not going climbing (Don invited me to Talking Headwall), but I was very anxious to go to Governor Stable on Sunday and work on some of my projects.

Sunday morning I picked up Tre' from his house, and made the 3-hour drive to Governor Stable. The weather was just perfect: sunny, dry, and cool. Perfect sending weather. We warmed up a little bit on some V0-V1s, I made a few attempt on some harder problems, but didn't get very far. We then moved to Moby Dick, a really cool problem, but a bit soft at V6. Personally I think there were no moves harder than a V5 on the problem, it was just long and pumpy. The last time I tried it, the rock was wet, and the boulder was covered in snow, but I was just three move away from topping out. With the condition much better this time, I thought I had a very high chance of ticking my first above-V4 problem.

So I eagerly started on Moby Dick. It was a long traverse fairly low to the ground, the crashpad had to be constantly moved along with the climber to keep the climber from landing on the ground. Instead of just dragging the crashpad beneath me as I traversed, Tre' was leepfrogging the two crashpads we have, so he could stand on one of them the whole time and keep his shoes clean. Well on my third or fourth try, my right hand slipped off a crimper unexpectedly while I was trying to catch a sloper with my left hand. As the result instead of just falling straight down, I fell backwards away from the rock. I landed on the crashpad, but the momentum kept pushing me backwards. Since the crashpad was placed fairly close to the wall, I was going to fall on my back outside the crashpad, so instinctively I stuck my hands out behind me to brake the fall. My right palm struck a rock on the ground, and the pain made my head spin. I sat there for a while, until the pain dulled a little. After figuring out the pain was in the meaty part of my palm, I decided that it was probably just a bruise, no bone damage. I forgot my Ibuprofen in my other backpack, so I sucked up the pain and went back to work on Moby Dick. But since I couldn't close my fist without pain, my grip strength was reduced, and after a while my palm swelled up. There was no way I could finish Moby Dick like that, and really I shouldn't be climbing with that hand at all. So I decided to stop climbing and just watch and spot Tre' for the rest of the day.

To say I was not angry would be lying. I was pretty mad. I didn't drive 3 hours (then 3 hours back home) just to do a couple of warm up problems. To have a rare winter weekend with perfect climbing weather ruined by some minor injury that was totally preventable with good spotting was pretty upsetting.

Interestingly, this time I injured myself, and that one time I almost injured myself, both occurred when I had spotters. When I boulder by myself I tend to be a lot more cautious, a lot more aware of my landings, and just generally take much less risks. When I have spotters I tend to commit to harder moves more easily, and totally trust my spotters in spotting me correctly. I think I may have to think this over again, and maybe be a little more wary of what my spotter is doing.

Moby's Mantle (V2)

Maryland Weather, I curse you!

2006-01-16T17:12:00.000-05:00

I had last Friday off as part of my Compressed Work Schedule, and Monday was MLK Day, so it was a rare 4-day weekend for me. Unfortunately the weather sucked, so the weekend ended up being pretty uneventful.

Friday I went to Great Falls with Tre'. It was in the 50s and really foggy in the morning, which meant the rock was really slimy. We went to Aid Box and set up three routes: Diagonal, Lost Arrow, and PV Wall. Aid Box was a special place for me, because that was where I climbed outdoors for the first time. It was July of 2003, and I flailed for 10 minutes on a 30-foot 5.5, and couldn't get up a 5.7 without my belayer hauling on the other end of the rope. Ahhhhh, good times.

I also went to the REI in Rockville to pick up an order and returned two of my Aliens due to the recent CCH recall.

Saturday it was pouring rain as forecasted. I stayed home, installed the new toe strap for my snowboard binding that I got from REI, tuned the edge of my board using the new edge tuner I got from REI, and waxed it. After the snow storm in December, we haven't had any new snow, and the weather has constantly been above 50 degrees. I doubt I'll get any use out of my snowboard before I leave Maryland, which really sucks. I was waxing my board because I was expecting to put it away for the season, and feeling glad that I will be leaving soon. The crappy weather in Maryland was really starting to make me mad.

Sunday was sunny, cold, but very windy. I stayed home again, trying to get some things organized in my room, did laundry, watched some TV, and generally just being very unproductive. But tomorrow... tomorrow I will go to Great Falls again.

Monday I woke up early to drive up to GF. Met with Jerry, Jason, and Carlene in the parking lot. John, Lily, and Gil showed up later. We dropped a rope on almost every route in Aid Box, and since it was colder and drier than Friday, I had a much better time working on PV Wall. But I think I'm still a long way before I can climb that route clean. It was a pretty good day of climbing, the weather was perfect for me, and it was good to see a few people I haven't climbed with in a while, and meet a couple new climbers to DC.

Bouldering at Coopers - Jan 7-8

2006-01-08T13:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday: Drove 4.5 hours to Coopers on my own. There was more snow than I expected from the weather forecast, and the sky was overcast. The gate at Coopers was closed, so it was another hour of hike in to get to the boulders. It was already 1:30 pm by the time I unfolded the crashpad and started working on Woody's Arete (V4). It was cold and windy, but the friction was very good, so after 4 or 5 tries I was able to finally get this problem. Sweeet!! Then I walked over to Helicopter (V5) and worked on the crux move pulling out from the overhang. I figured out a good sequence, but it's pretty powerful, and right at the limit of my reach. I tried a few times to link up all the moves from the beginning, but always fell right at the crux. Maybe tomorrow.

Doing the Helicopter (V5)

Sunday: I spent the night camped at Chestnut Creek campground on the other side of I-68, I was the only person in the campground. After catching up on some much needed sleep, I drove over to Coopers and made the long hike in. I decided to get on Helicopter right away, hoping to link up all the moves. Unfortunately I still couldn't latch the crux move. I took a break around 11 am, to wait for some climbers from the DCORC group. Alyce and David showed up, but the rest of the climbers bailed. They warmed up on the Warmup Boulders, while I gave Helicopter a few more unsuccessful tries. We played around on four other problems, by 3 pm we were all pretty beat. We made the long hike back, said our goodbyes, and went our separate ways.

Working on Helicopter (V5)

New Years weekend: an adventure in driving and bushwhacking - Dec 30-Jan 1

2006-01-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

Friday: met up with Hung then went to Franklin. The weather was cloudy and a little chilly, but not terrible. Warmed up on Shipwrecked (5.9+); finally redpointed Super Amazing Sea Monkeys (5.10d); got totally spanked trying to lead Walk the Plank (5.11a), and after Hung led it, still got spanked on a toprope. Hung led Dynosaurus (5.12a), I toproped it with lots of tension from the other end. Hung then toproped the unknown route to the left of Dynosaurus. That night Hung drove us to Pilot Mountain, NC. All the campgrounds were closed for the night, so we pulled over in a hiking trail parking lot, Hung slept in the car, and I slept on top of the covered picnic table. Around 1 am a Sheriff came by to check us out and asked for our IDs, but he left us alone after that.

Saturday (New Years Eve): Woke up, bought a jug of water at the gas station, and drove to Sauratown Mountain. We parked outside the Mountain Top Youth Camp, and hiked along the road to the top of the mountain looking for the rumored sport climbing there. There were no guidebooks covering the area, except some vague directions printed out from the web. We followed every trail we came across, bushwhacked to every cliff we saw, but we never found a single bolt. After half a day of hiking and bushwhacking, we finally gave up and drove a little further to Moore's Wall, where we climbed on some sweet bouldering problems. That night we decided to drive to Summersville Lake, WV - a place where we can find the routes. Most of the campgrounds were closed for the season, we were the only ones camping at Rogers.

Sunday (New Years Day): Woke up to a beautiful red sunrise over the New River Gorge. Drove to Summersville Lake, where we were the only climbers there the whole day. We didn't have a guidebook, so we climbed a few routes we know, and a few we didn't know. I onsighted She Got the Bosch, I got Drilled (5.10a) as a warm up, flashed BSIAGE (5.10b) after Hung led it, toproped the three-bolt Short Pirouette (5.10d, hard for short people), and hangdogged Satisfaction Guaranteed (5.11b). I took a short fall over the roof on Satisfaction Guaranteed, and swang under the roof. It was freaky. After that I was done leading for the day. Hung wanted to try Mutiny (5.11c), but it was wet from the water run off, so he got on Under the Milkway (5.11d), which was really sequency and technical. I tried toprope it, but only got about half way up before the sun started to dip below the horizon. Hung went up on toprope and cleaned it, then we began the long drive home. I got in my bed at 2 am Monday morning.

Christmas in DC - Dec 24-26

2005-12-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

Friday night: left work and drove to DC, Terence had a little Christmas gathering at his house for people who were in town. We watched Dosage III, I got inspired by Sharma on Witness the Fitness (V15), and went down to Terence's home bouldering wall and set a problem called Witness the Phatness. Little pinches, gastons, and underclings on the roof. It's pretty hard... like V4? Went to sleep way too late at night.

Saturday (Christmas Eve): picked up Eric at the metro, then went to Great Falls where we met up with Tom and Hung. We set up on Z-Slash (5.11c), something both Eric and I were working on. Eric finally got it clean, but I still couldn't pull the crux move. Tom left to meet up with some people in the gym, the rest of us moved to Aid Box and set up on PV Wall (5.12a). After falling off every move, and Eric hauling on the other end of the rope, I got to the top, totally beat. Eric and I went back to Terence's house to shower and change, then we drove to Hung's house for dinner with his family, and got totally lost along the way. The dinner was great, afterwards we exchanged gifts, I got Eric some wiregate biners, and he got me the Pilgrimage DVD. We watched the DVD until the metro stopped running, I drove Eric back to his apartment, then drove back to Terence's house to crash.

Sunday (Christmas Day): I woke up feeling like I got ran over by a truck, I was sore all over the place. Terence busied himself with church and visiting with friends, so I just parked myself on his couch down in the basement and played Final Fantasy X-2 on his playstation. Don't ever give me a video game, because my OCD nature made me very easily addicted to things. Terence came home in the evening and I haven't moved since parking myself on his couch. He drove me to Bombay Bistro and we met with Nelson, Sue, and Sue's sister for dinner.

Monday: Terence drove us to pick up Lara, then we drove to Whitetail Ski Resort to meet up with Nelson. Lara, Nelson, and myself were on snowboards, and Terence was on his ski blades. The weather was ok, a bit windy at times, and the snow was a little slushy. But we made some good runs down most of the trails on the mountain. By 3 o'clock or so we were all pretty tired, so we went back to DC, had dinner at Pho 47, then I got all my stuff from Terence's house and went home.

The End.

Warning: pointless random jumble of thoughts ahead

2005-12-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

So it's official, I'll be leaving southern Maryland soon. I've had my airfare booked a long time ago, and gotten my visa to Australia. But the point of no return was when I handed my supervisor my resignation letter on Monday. My last day at work should be February 3rd. I gave them six weeks of notice, so we have plenty of time to get someone to replace me in the projects I'm involved with.

Right now I have a 3-month tourist visa to Australia, a round-trip ticket departing on March 1st and returning on May 31st. Other than that, everything else is pretty uncertain. I don't have a job lined up, I don't know where I will go after Australia, and worst of all, I don't have a lot of money saved up. By my estimate, I can survive on my savings for 6 months on a very low budget. Half of this time I'll be in Australia, so I only have about 3 to 4 months to move and find a job. After that I'll have to go stand at a freeway exit and hold a piece of cardboard in front of me.

Am I just crazy for quitting my job without any plan for the future? I know this is what my heart wants to do, but at the same time there's this little voice of "reasoning" in my head. To give up a well-paid job with good benefits, just for a hobby I'm at best average at, to a lot of people that's pretty dumb. For sure I am quitting my job just to climb more. I'm not going to try and be a guide or anything, but I do plan to move to a place with closer rocks and better weather for climbing.

People like stability. A routine. Going to work everyday, coming home to a familiar house, surrounding themselves with people they known. But some people also get bored with routine. They want adventures, try out new things, and visit new places. A change in a person's life brings excitement and also anxiety. I think that's what I have, anxiety. It's not knowing what the future holds for me. It's an exciting feeling, but also a scary feeling.

But this is what I want. I know I just can't settle into a normal 9-to-5 life, not yet anyway. I feel trapped, my mind is always elsewhere when I'm at work. I've always admired people who took the risk and didn't settle into the normal routine. Traveling around the world, working, studying abroad. I always wished I can do that as well. In a sense I did just that when I moved to the states. Maybe that's why I can't settle back into a "normal" life. What's "normal" is all relative anyway. But I'm not wishing anymore, wishing doesn't get you anywhere. I'm going to do it. It's scary, not knowing what's going to happen, but it's also a liberating feeling at the same time. It feels like the first time Ness and Mikl dragged me onto the intermediate skiing trail. Standing there looking down what seemed like an awfully steep slope, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. I'll probably fall down a lot along the way, but at the end, I think I'll enjoy the ride.

A weekend of snowboarding and bouldering - Dec 16-18

2005-12-18T11:22:00.000-05:00

It was an activity-filled weekend.

On Thursday night I drove up to Gaithersburg and crashed on Nathan's futon.

Friday morning Nathan and I left Gaithersburg at 7 am for Whitetail. The roads were icy from the freezing rain the previous night, combined with the morning traffic, driving was slow. We got to Whitetail around 9 am, I went snowboarding while Nathan rented skis and took a ski class. We spent about seven and half hour skiing/snowboarding, the condition was pretty good compare to last year when I was snowboarding at night. Many of the blue trails had some pretty good packed powder. I was afraid that I might be rusty after a 9-month break, but it felt like I picked it up right where I left.

We drove back to Gaithersburg, showered and changed, then drove to Alexandria to a parting gathering for Karin, who is moving to Chicago for a new job and to be closer to her family. It was fun talking to everyone (or rather, listening to the conversation because I was pretty beat), before I knew it, it was 10 o'clock. Nathan and I left to get some rest for the next day.

On Saturday we left Gathersburg at 7:30, when we got to Whitetail the parking lot was a lot more filled than Friday. The slopes were slightly more icy than yesterday, we went down the blue slopes a few times until the chairlift was stuck shortly after noon. Then everyone started going on the green slope including us, so it was extra crowded. After a couple of hours though, people started to thin out, and they finally fixed the chairlift that served the blue slopes. Also at this point, I spotted Mike (who works on the base as well) skiing down from the chairlift. I met up with him, his son Nick (who has grown so much in a year), and Nick's friend Tim. I ran their last two runs down the blue slope with them. After they left, Nathan and I took two more runs down the blue, and decided it was time to go.

After getting some inexpensive Chinese food in Gaithersburg and watching the Apprentice on Nathan's TiVo, we picked up Eric from the metro station around 11 pm so he can crash in Nathan's apartment as well.

The 8 hours of sleep I had felt awfully short when I woke up at 7 on Sunday morning. We all got up and met up with Hung shortly after 7:30. After two and half hours of driving and $12.75 in tolls because we didn't (couldn't) get a ticket out of the ticket booth, we arrived at Governor Stables with about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. But it was a clear day and the sun soon warmed everything up. We started in the Upstream area and just moved along the trail looking for stuff that were dry enough to climb. It was a good day for me, I went further on a few problems than I've ever did last winter. I also got spanked on a few hard problems, and Tut (V3) still eluded me. A key hold broke off this year, making a small right hand crimper even harder to hold on now. We also ran into some climbers from the St. Mary's College: Chris, Miranda, Dav, and Dean. They got to GS pretty late and I didn't see them until late in the afternoon. We all worked on Tut for a while, then everyone else in my group was done for the day, so we left while the college climbers went to look for a warm down problem.

A long drive back to Gaithersburg because we decided not to take the toll road again, then another long drive back to my home. Got back around 8:30, just enough time to unpack everything, lay stuff out to dry, and crawl into bed and fall asleep within minutes.

Eric warming up as best as he could on the Scoop (V1)

A hangboard, and some bouldering

2005-12-11T08:12:00.000-05:00

I'm recovering from a cold, so I didn't do much this weekend. On Saturday Tre' helped me build a frame for my hangboard. I designed it to be a free-standing A frame, the major joints are held together with 1/2 inch hex bolts and nuts, so I can take this apart and put it together by myself. There are seven holes drilled into the support beams, that allows me to vary the angle of the hangboard between 90-degrees (vertical) to about 50-degrees. There is a small "foot board" on the bottom of the frame, I planned to put some screw-on jibs, I can use them to train body tension when the hangboard is at a low angle. Overall, I'm very pleased with how everything turned out.

My hangboard

On Sunday I went to DC so I could pick up an order from REI (the aforementioned jibs and some other stuff), but it's such a long drive just to go shopping, so I decided to check out some of the boulderig problems at Great Falls with Hung. There were not many, and they were all further down stream from the main climbing areas. The problems were ok, some were pretty fun, some were really hard, but all looked rarely climbed, and getting to some of them over snow and ice covered boulders was a little tricky.

Bouldering around Morgantown - Dec 2-3

2005-12-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

My original plan for this weekend was to go to Franklin with Tre' for a little sport climbing. But we changed our mind at the last minute after checking the weather forecast (chance of snow Thursday night, cold and breezy on Friday). We decided to go to Coopers for some bouldering.

We woke up Friday morning to three inches of snow on the ground. "Chance" of snow, huh?

Season's Greetings

Tre' on Woody's Arete (V4)

Climbing and bouldering in Alabama - Nov 26-27

2005-11-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

So my weekend of adventure with Super Hung and his sidekick Eric the Draw Monkey started on Wednesday night. I picked up Eric from DC around 7:30 pm and we made the long ass drive to Atlanta. Roughly ten hours later we arrived at Hung's brother in law's house, and crashed in their entertainment room. That house is huuuuge! I didn't know before but Hung's relatives are pretty wealthy. We woke up around 9 or 10, went to another one of Hung's in law's house for lunch (pho noodles), then left to go climbing at Boat Rock, which is an Atlanta urban bouldering area only 15 minutes away from Hung's in laws. I warmed up on a V1, flailed on a few different problems, sent a short powerful V4, and never quite getting this V3(?) with a slopey mantel topout. I blame it on the weather because it was in the 60s, and my palms were greasing off the mantel. The rock is granite, so our finger tips were already missing one layer of skin on the first day. That night we had a good Thanksgiving meal at Hung's in law's house.

Hung bouldering at Boat Rock, Atlanta

The next day we woke up at 5:30 to make the 2-hour drive to Horse Pen 40 in Alabama. When we got to HP40, the temperature was just hovering above freezing. We warmed up on some V1s, then we flailed on this "V2" called "Sandbox" (change the "ox" to "ag" then it's an appropriate name). Only Hung was able to sent it, and this was after he had failed two years ago. Terence had told me that "you gotta try Mortal Combat (V3) and Pope in a Cowboy Hat (V4)!", so we went over to check them out. One look and I decided that Terence was trying to get me killed. Mortal Combat was a sharp clean arete that's about 15 feet high with bad landing, and Pope in a Cowboy Hat was a high slab with no hand holds and equally bad landing. I decided to try a lowball V2 double arete next to them instead, and sent it after a few tries. Meanwhile an army of boulderers showed up to try Mortal Combat, with lots of pads and spotters, Hung and Eric both gave Mortal Combat a try, Eric was only able to get two moves off the ground. Hung got half way up the arete before he was sketched and jumped down.

I think Terence earned penalty slack next time I climb with him.

We moved to Turtle Head area and had a lunch break. Hung tried a V7 and Eric tried a V5, but neither got very far. I flashed Turtle Head (V2, which is on this rock formation that looked like - surprise - a turtle head) after getting some beta on where the route REALLY went (I was going in the wrong direction and making it way too hard). We then tried what we dubbed Turtle Neck (not in the guidebook, probably V3), the route stayed underneath the turtle head formation, hugging the turtle's neck, move both hands in turtle's mouth, then slap for the top of turtle's head for a mantle top out. I never did manage the top out, but I came really close. It was a really fun route, I'm surprised that it was not in the guidebook.

Doing what I do best: making a V2 into a V4

Photo: Eric Stemer

In another area, we tried Crisifix (apt named V5), a low roof that involved a long reach behind you for a gaston, crossing over hands, then throw for crimpers over the lip and mantel top out. It was painful and terrible on the shoulders, only Eric was able to sent it with his longer reach. We went to another area so Hung could work on one of his projects, Hammer Head (V5), which climbs an overhang with a thin flake and some big pockets on the side. The first move was a left hand/heelhook match, a hell of a move, neither Eric and I were even able to make that heelhook stay. Hung was the only one who sent it. That was the end of the day for us, my record was one V1 and two V2s, not really good.

Eric feeling the pain on Crisifix

That night we went with Hung's in laws to a sushi restaurant some of their relatives co-owned. Hung said it was one of the best sushi restaurant in Atlanta, and it was very very good. Both Eric and I stuffed ourselves, and later when I found out how expensive the whole meal was ($900!! for 14 adults) I almost had a heart attack. It was Hung's in law's treat, but I felt kind of bad (I think Eric and I ate a third of the food).

On Saturday we woke up at 5:30 again for the 2-hour drive to Sandrock, Alabama. But we had some problems with starting the car (an almost empty gas tank and highly inclined driveway do not mix very well), so we arrived about half an hour late. David from DC and his sister Stephanie were already there waiting for us. We started in an area called Holiday Blocks to warm up on some easier routes. The temperature was just as cold as on Saturday, so we were all reluctant to get on a route. Eventually we talked Eric into hanging up all the draws on a 5.8, I lead it after Eric, and David toproped it. Meanwhile Hung warmed up on a route next to us with unknown rating (we didn't have a guidebook, only some vague online printouts). He onsighted it, but he did have some trouble getting to the fourth bolt. Stephanie tried to toprope it, but since she's a pretty new climber, she didn't get very far. Eric then led it, he also had some trouble getting to the fourth bolt, but with his reach he was able to grap a higher hold. I tried to lead it as well, and was totally shut down by the move getting to the fourth bolt. The moves were very sequency and felt like 5.10 moves, but some other guy in the same area were telling us that it was a 5.9 route. I tried a few times to pull the move using the sequence Eric was shouting up to me (laybacking on a very bad crimper), but just couldn't do it. It wasn't possible to layback on a rounded crimper you can barely get the first joint of three fingers on it. I got fed up and asked to be lowered. Hung went up to clean the route, and he also couldn't do the move using the sequence I was trying (now I don't feel so bad). We decided that Eric was giving me wrong beta, so from now on I will never listen to his beta anymore. But we still don't think that route is a 5.9 though.

While I was trying that "5.9", David led his first 5.8 on the warm up we did. He set up to let Stephanie to toprope it, and we walked around the corner to an overhanging line that looked very good. We didn't know the rating, so we convinced Eric to climb it. He did it with a few falls and a few takes, and he thought it was a 5.11d. But some locals said it was a 5.11b. It looked overhanging and juggy, with safe falls except the first three bolts. I decided to give it a shot, but I was a bit nervous. The start was quite bouldery and a little reachy, I had to do a deadpoint between the first and second bolt, another deadpoint between the second and third, then a third deadpoint pulling over the small roof at the third bolt. I hangdogged the route to the maximum, hanging off the first three bolts. But eventually I made it to the top. The only thing was that I asked for a lot more takes on this route than I should have, since most of the falls are pretty clean. Oh well, my first 5.11 on lead, can't ask too much. Hung went up after me and flashed the route without much trouble.

After Hung cleaned and we had a bit to eat, we moved over to the Sun Wall, and talked Eric into leading another unknown route. This route goes up a slightly overhanging orange face, and there was a quicklink on the third bolt. Eric got to the third bolt without much trouble, then he took and fell a few times trying to get to the fourth bolt. Finally he gave up because his strength is waning and his hands were all teared up. I went up for a try, got to the third bolt, took a bunch of times, going above it involved a long throw for a sloper from a bad knob and a small crimper and bad feet. It was beyond me. So I got lowered, and Hung went up. He had the same problem: couldn't reach the next sloper. He tried a few times, finally he gave up as well, and bailed from the same quicklink. I guess that was there for a good reason.

The route we had to bail from: Super Grover (5.11c)

Eric was pretty much done with climbing by now. I had the choice of lead some routes, or try some Sandrock bouldering. I saw a big cave on the way to the Sun Wall that I wanted to play in, so I put on my beanie (actually I never took it off) and took out the crashpad, and did some monkey bar type of stuff in the cave. Hung and Eric weren't as fond of caves as I was, so they did a V1 slab and worked on this V3 arete. Hung came really close to sending it, but the sun was getting low in the sky, and we were all missing two layers of skin on our finger tips by now. We decided to call it a day, said goodbye to David and Stephanie, and drove back to Atlanta.

That night we made summer rolls for dinner, which was unfortunate for Eric, whose hands were in the worst condition out of the three of us. It was painful for us to roll the summer rolls, but it was a good meal nontheless.

Climbing at Franklin and Seneca - Nov 18-20

2005-11-20T14:45:00.000-05:00

Spent the weekend climbing in Franklin/Seneca. Friday we left Lexington Park around 7:30 am, arrived in Franklin at noon, had enough time to do Castaways (5.8), Aqualung (5.9+), and hangdog Super Amazing Sea Monkeys (5.10d). Saturday we went back to Franklin at 10:30, I warmed up Aloha (5.9), hangdogged Birchman's Beach (5.10a), and finally redpointed Blood, Sweat, and Chalk (5.9+). Sunday I took Miranda on her first multi-pitch trad climb at Seneca, we did P1 of Skyline Traverse (5.3), P1 of Kauffman Cardon (5.4), Cardon's Rib (5.4R), then Gunsight to South Peak Direct (5.4). The weather was great all weekend, sunny and calm. All the south facing routes at Franklin were pleasant to climb on, and on Sunday it was even a bit warm in the sun. I kept pushing into leading 5.10s on sport, and finally climbed something I couldn't climb clean on toprope a little more than a year ago. It was a good weekend.

Climbing at Cotton Hill - Day 3 of 3

2005-11-13T14:47:00.000-05:00

I spent quite a bit of time and typed up a nice long account of our third day at the New, then my computer crashed and needless to say I lost all of it. I'm feeling a bit disgruntled, and really don't feel like retyping everything. So here's a short account of our third day:

All of us decided to go to Upper Cotton Hill, some went bouldering, most climbed routes. The first wall we came upon had three routes, we didn't know the name nor the grade of the routes, but we climbed it anyway, and agreed that they were 5.10b, 5.10d, and 5.10a from left to right. I led the 5.10a as a warm up, as a continuation of yesterdays good style, never asked for take and just climbed till I was too pumped, took a 10-footer above the last bolt. I toproped the 5.10d in the middle, then led the 5.10b on the left. The technical crux was getting past the first bolt, it took me two tries to get the move. I fell twice more, but eventually got to the anchor, cleaned the route, and we all packed up for the long drive home.

The end.

Fighting hard to staying on the 5.10a

Photo: Eric Stemer

Climbing at Summersville - Day 2 of 3

2005-11-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

Hung felt that we didn't get enough climbing yesterday because we got up late, so today we woke up at 7, and left the campground by 8 o'clock, along with Eric and Rob, who arrived late the previous night. We planned to go back to Summersville so Hung can work on some of his projects, and also so I can get on some 5.10s. I was skeptical about me getting on any 5.10s, but I went along. The rest of the group, by now a fairly large group, was heading to Bubba City for some easy climbs.

We were again the first to arrive at Summersville. Eric went up Jeff's Bunny Hop (5.8) while Rob led Sniff the Drill (5.8) as warm ups. After Eric and Hung were sufficiently warmed up, they left so Eric can get on Narcissus (5.12a). I led and cleaned Sniff the Drill, which I have done over a year ago, but I still felt kind of sketched on it. Rob and I both led another easy route - That Eight (5.7) to continue our warm up, and that 5.7 didn't feel any easier than the 5.8. I was really doubting my lead head at this point.

We moved to where Hung and Eric were and watched Eric put up a great fight on Narcissus. The route looked very overhanging and fun, I thought about getting on it on a toprope, but I also didn't want to spend another day just toproping. So Rob got on it on toprope after Eric finished leading, Hung and I left to look for a 5.10 that I can get on.

Hung belaying Eric's shadow on Narcissus (5.12a)

The Long Wall has a 5.9, two 5.10b, a 5.10d, and a bunch of 5.11s. Hung wanted to put me on the 5.9 or one of the 5.10b, but there was a large group there who had a toprope on all the easier routes. So we decided to let Hung get on Flirting with E (5.11d) and come back later when that group is done toproping. Flirting with E looked like a fun route, thin face moves, a deadpoint, and some funky traverse moves. Hung didn't get it clean the first time, got lowered, and redpointed it later.

Rob and Eric also came over, and Rob decided to try Maximum Overdrive (5.11c). Meanwhile, the group that was toproping around the corner showed no sign that they were leaving. The only two routes that were open were a 5.10b and a 5.11d. I decided to try the 4-bolt 5.10b called For What?, but only if Hung clipped the high first bolt for me. He did it without complain, then I went up. The route climbs a smooth face that was slightly overhanging. The holds were incut, and sometimes a bit reachy. I really wanted to work on my lead head, get over the fear of falling, so from the beginning I decided that I wasn't going to ask for take. I tried to shake out whenever I had a pretty decent stance, but the angle of the climb make it impossible to depump completely. Soon I was pumped and shaking because of the lactic acid in my system, but I fought on. I climbed until the third bolt was 6 feet or so below my waist, but I was so pumped that I couldn't hold on to the jugs anymore. I yelled "falling!" and just let go. It was a nice, clean 15 feet fall. I came to a slow stop, and I wasn't freaked out at all, unlike when I was in RRG. I batman up to the third bolt, rested for a bit, then climbed on. I took another short fall above the fourth bolt going for a deadpoint, but I made it to the anchor without much difficulty, and more importantly, I didn't freak out taking the falls. I did what I wanted to do: break the mental barrier I had of taking lead falls, and climb until I fall instead of asking for take.

I got lowered, then belayed Hung on Flirting with E again for his redpoint. I was pretty happy at this point, I completely my goal for the day: to get on a 5.10 on lead. The day was growing short, Hung still wanted to try Mutiny - a climb you can only get on in winter when the water level is low, so I opted not to toprope Flirting with E. Rob toproped it, then belayed Eric as Eric tried to lead it. Eric wasn't able to get to the top because he was just trashed, so Hung led it a final time and cleaned the route.

The big group that was toproping around the corner was finally ready to pull their gear. Rob decided to lead Chewy (5.10b) on their pre-placed draws, and clean the anchor for them. Unfortunately the crux for Chewy was getting off the ground. After many tries, Rob eventually gave up. I didn't intend to climb Chewy, but all the sudden it seemed like I should, otherwise we'll have to ask either Eric or Hung to clean the route. So I asked Hung the Human Stick Clip to clip the first bolt for me, then I tried to get on it... which proved to be harder than I thought. After many false starts, and some beta from people, I made a desperate lunge for a jug, and finally was able to get myself off the ground. The rest of the route was no where as hard as the start, but it was pumpy. I messed up the sequence on a move, got my body in a weird position and couldn't reach the next hold, and peeled off for my third lead fall of the day. But it was a short one, and after some rest, I was able to complete the route.

But finishing Chewy really took some time, by now the sun was dipping close to the western horizon, and it doesn't seem like we have enough time to try Mutiny. Hung had already led another 5.11b called Spice while I was hangdogging Chewy, Rob gave it a go on toprope, and we packed up to leave.

On the way back to the parking lot, we stopped by the Coliseum where many of the hardest routes at Summersville is located, and watched for a while a young girl working Apollo Reed (5.13a). It was really impressive to watch.

Back to the campground for dinner, the rest of the group arrived at about the same time. They also had a pretty good day out, it was crowded where they were, but they climbed a lot of routes. After Terence cooked up a huge spaghetti and meatball dinner, Hung had the brilliant idea of going climbing under the bright moonlight. Not one to pass up on an opportunity to be totally hardcore, I agreed to go with him. He wanted to lead Mutiny, I told him the route would be in the shadows until early morning, so we settled for night bouldering instead. Ocean, being a hardcore boulderer, was not too hard to convince into going with us. The rest of the group thought we were nuts.

We drove over to Lower Cotton Hill, where the boulders were only a 2 minute approach from the parking lot. First Ocean put us on this V3 problem that starts with a dyno. We worked on it for a long time, each of us got the dyno move at one point, but none of us was able to top out. Then we moved on, did a couple easier problems, then got on a short V4 that involved slopers and an ugly top out. My elbows were starting to hurt at this point, but I gave it a shot anyway, and topped out when I said, "this is the last time I'm going to try it". By now it's about 10 o'clock, we went back to camp, and scattered to our individual tents.

Ocean going for the dyno

Climbing at Summersville - Day 1 of 3

2005-11-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

Went to the New River Gorge for some sport climbing this Veteran's Day weekend. I carpooled with Hung after work on Thursday, and we got to the Chestnut Creek campground at half past midnight.

Summersville Lake in summer and in winter

Friday morning, the few of us that were there went to Summersville Lake - Hung, Terence, Jeff, Abby, Nate, Steph, and myself. Hung warmed up on (5.10b) at Orange Oswald Wall, while Jeff led Orange Dihedral (5.9), and Terence led an Unnamed 5.6 trad route. While Abby, Steph, and Nate toproped these routes, Terence also led and cleaned Chunko Goes Bowling (5.9). My lead head was not in place that day, plus the fact that Abby, Nate, and Steph were all not experienced in cleaning anchors, so I volunteered to be the cleaning boy, and toprope both Orange Dihedral and the Unnamed 5.6 to clean the anchors.

By the time I finished cleaning Terence's 4-piece gear anchor, traversed over to a bolted belay, and rapped down ("Dude! Just clip the bolted anchor next time!"), Hung had redpointed Simple Minds (5.12a). Hung was cleaning the route when I walked over there, and he promptly talked me into trying it on toprope. The route followed the overhanging arete formed by a 45-degree overhang and a vertical face. The crux was getting to the second bolt, a very bouldery start. It was like working a V3 on a toprope. It took me many tries, but I finally managed to pull myself up to the second bolt, after that the route became a 5.10 according to Hung, but it was still technical and very balancy. I got rapidly pumped and fell off the face, and since all the draws above me have been cleaned, I swung out into space and was not able to get back on the wall. I got lowered, then Hung talked Terence and Nate into trying the route as well. Hung was very impressed when Terence demostrated how to clip the rope into the first draw with a stick clip.

Nate sticking the deadpoint on Simple Minds (5.12a)

While Terence and Nate worked on Simple Minds, Abby and Steph toproped Jeff's Bunny Hop (5.8). When Hung, Terence, and Nate pulled the rope so Terence can try Satisfaction Guaranteed (5.11b), I stayed behind to see if the others needed me to clean the anchor, it turned out that Abby made it to the top of Jeff's Bunny Hop nicely. After she cleaned the anchor, we walked over to Satisfaction Guaranteed and listened to Terence complain loadly from above, "You've got to be kidding me", "I have to pull on THAT?!" "There's no way, man!" But after much beta from Hung ("Go up!"), Terence made it up the thin slab, pulled the roof, and got to the anchor. When he was lowered, he said he is very satisfied. Awesome lead, Terence!

Nate was sent up to clean the route, I was feeling quite sub par for the day, so I just played around on the "bouldering start" of Satisfaction Guaranteed. It was actually a pretty cool bouldering problem by itself, I'd say V3-V4ish, requiring lots of body tension. I worked out the individual moves, but I'd like a pad to cover the pointy rock at the bottom before trying to link up all the moves.

After Nate cleaned the anchor, the sun was already touching the tree tops to our west. We packed up the gear and went back to camp. All in all, an ok day for me, a great day for most.

Bouldering at Coopers - Nov 5-6

2005-11-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

Spent another weekend bouldering at Coopers. More people around this time, and it was warmer. I bouldered with Alyce, Gabe, David, Nathan from the DCORC, Miranda, Grant, Andy, and Mike from St. Mary's College. The autumn colors were at the peak this weekend, it was great to be out. Linked all the moves on the Bully (V3) at Anti-Elvis area, but still left with many unfinished problems.

Autumn color at Coopers

Nathan on Moby Dick, with Miranda, Alyce, and David watching

Bouldering at Coopers - Oct 29-30

2005-10-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

Spent the weekend bouldering at Coopers. It was cold, there were snow on the ground at some places. Saturday Hung, Eric, and Rob bouldered with me, they went back to DC that evening. I spent Sunday morning bouldering by myself. Got on a bunch of problems, but didn't sent anything really hard.

Working on Moby Dick (V3)

Photo: Eric Stemer

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 8 of 8

2005-09-24T16:52:00.000-04:00

This was our last full day in Colorado, tomorrow we would fly back to the east coast. There was still so many places to see, but we decided to go climbing in Eldorado Canyon, located in Eldorado Springs just south of Boulder.

We packed up camp, and made the half hour drive to Eldorado Springs from the Peak to Peak Highway. Eldorado Springs was much smaller than I had imagined, it was just a few houses along a dirt road. Where the dirt road ended was the entrance to Eldorado Canyon State Park. Eldorado Canyon wasn't what I had imagined also. I've heard so much about it, I thought it would be much bigger than it was in reality. It wasn't really a canyon either, at least not what a canyon looked like in my mind.

I've never been to Eldorado Canyon before, but I've been warned that the rating here is pretty stiff. To be safe, I picked a classic beginners route Calypso (5.6 3 pitches) to test the water. If I felt good on it, then I planned try something harder. Calypso was a popular route, when we got to its base there was already a guy leading the first pitch, and two other guys appeared to be waiting at the base. Megan and I patiently got in line. As a way to strike up a conversation, I asked the one of the guys at the base if they were waiting to climb Calypso. They glanced at each other and replied no, they were not. I was a bit surprised, but since they insisted that I should climb next, I started to rack up much sooner than I expected. Then the party already on Calypso called down and told me that they were rappelling after the first pitch. I noted with satisfaction that Megan and I always had good luck getting on popular and busy routes that we planned to climb. Red Rocks, Squamish, Flatirons, Longs Peak, we never had to climb behind anyone.

I tied in and started on Calypso, taking the easier 5.5 variation start to get up to a crack in a dihedral. Unfortunately I had forgotten my camera in my backpack, so there was no record of my heroic effort on Calypso. Which is just as well, that camera would have slowed me down anyway. A party of two older ladies from Denver had arrived and waited patiently behind us. There were a few tricky moves right at the start of the dihedral. The crack was worn smooth by the climbing traffic, my sweaty hands just couldn't get a very secure grip on the rock. So I spent quite a bit of time placing gear.

Here I should pause for a second to tell you a little about myself as a climber. I am a very... ummmm... cautious climber. And by "cautious", I mean "scared". Especially falling, I hate the feeling of falling. For those of you who don't climb, you think that's a good thing, right? I mean, isn't falling while climbing a bad thing? Well, not always. When there are well placed gears to protect you, falling is often pretty safe. But to me, I just don't like the feeling of falling. Even when I have strong bolts to protect me (sport climbing), I still avoid falling as much as I can, which means I never pushed myself close to my physical climbing limit. On trad (traditional climbing), I place gear whenever I'm not feeling very solid or when I'm about to go into a hard section. And if I have any doubts about the gear I just placed, I would place more piece(s) to backup the first. So the amount of gear I place is proportional to how scared I feel.

Here I was, not 20 feet off the ground, and I was already placing three pieces of gear that were close enough to touch each other. So of course the going was slow. I finally placed enough gear between me and the ground to make me feel confident, then I laybacked on some small crimpers with sweaty hands, and got past the tricky section. The next 30 feet eased up a little, but not by much. Then I came to a small overhang in the dihedral. The original route traversed right under the overhang then followed a right leaning dihedral up to the belay for a 5.6 finish. There was a 5.8 variation that pulled directly over the overhang. I took one look at the overhang and decided that I was to follow the 5.6 finish. Like I said, I'm a... cautious climber. I placed two pieces before the overhang, made the short traverse to the right by underclinging the overhang, and ended at a stance at the end of the overhang that was a bit strenuous because of the undercling. I thought about forgoing placing any gear at this point and climb to a better stance, but then I thought better of it, and fiddled in something at the end of the traverse. I was very glad that I did stop to place gear, because the next section was a combination of laybacking and undercling following the right leaning dihedral, felt pretty desperate for a just 5.6. By the time I found another semi-good stance to place gear, I was already 15 feet above my last piece. Some more tricky moves (and more time spent placing gear), I made it to the belay for the first pitch with much relief. Man! That was a hard 5.6. By comparison, Deidre (5.8) on the Apron in Squamish didn't have anything as hard as the pitch I had just climbed. I felt a little bit of apprehension about the next pitch.

I brought Megan up to the anchor, and she said she thought the pitch was a little scary even on toprope. That made me feel better, It seemed that I didn't get all scared just on a super easy 5.6. Megan and I were supposed to swap leads, but considering how stiff the first pitch was, and Megan's finger haven't completely healed yet, we decided it was best if I lead the second pitch as well. The two older ladies behind us have already started on the first pitch below me, they would probably catch up with me soon. But since I was close to the anchor, I wasn't going to take any chances by moving too quickly and make a mistake. The second pitch started with a slightly overhanging crack, but at least I could plug in as much gear as I want to, which was exactly what I did. I spent a long time below the small overhang fiddling with gear placement, getting pumped in the process. Finally, I got three pieces between me and the anchor, and pulled over the small overhang in a blink of an eye. The moves were easy, I just psyched myself out.

The rest of the pitch was slabby and easy, but I climbed carefully and slowly, looking around to make sure I was on route, stopping to place gear at regular intervals. Finally I made it to a big loose ledge that can almost be called a gully. This was logically the place for a belay station. But I looked around and scratched my head: there were just no placements within 10 feet to build a solid anchor. Sure there were a few large sandy huecos, but nothing on my rack save for the biggest cam would fit in them. And even then I didn't trust that placement 100%. But if I climb higher in the gully, I know the rope drag would just be horrible, not to mention that the rope would probably knock something loose and sent it flying toward Megan. After much fiddling and scrambling about, I finally built an anchor that consisted of the above mentioned cam in a heuco, a sling-through hourglass about 10 feet left of the max cam, a red tricam above the hourglass, and my solid stance on the ledge.

Of course, this epic anchor building took quite a while, during which the two older ladies from Denver were debating whether they should climb the 5.8 variation just to pass me. When I finally brought Megan up to the belay she said I need to work on building anchors faster.

So we were at the second pitch, now what? I didn't plan to climb the third pitch from the beginning, because my beta suggested this pitch was vegetated and loose, not a pleasant climb. From the beta I thought that you could "scramble" to climber's right and rappel from two bolts on a 5.8 nearby. But now that I was standing on this ledge, I wasn't sure if I was in the right place. The "scramble" to the right looked rather hard and not well protected at all, I was wondering if I had gone off route. No matter, if I remembered correctly, you could also scramble climber's left along a ledge to the anchor for a 5.10 nearby. I assumed that anchor would have bolts for rappelling, but turned out my assumption was wrong.

To make a long story short, basically we made the scramble up the gully and the traverse across the ledge into two short pitches. There was a couple climbing on the 5.10, so I asked them if there was a rap anchor there, and the guy answered in the negative. I was really confused, until he told me that it was a walk off. A walk-off? I never considered this as an option since we were two pitches up on a cliff, but sure enough, the ledge connected with a trail that took us to the base of the cliff.

We coiled the ropes and hiked the trail back to our backpacks at the base of the cliff, but not before I accidentally set off a huge (and I do mean HUGE!) boulder on the edge of the hiking trail when I was trying to crawl over a big pine tree that had fallen across the trail. I took that as a sign and decided I wasn't going to climb anything else for the day. Since it was our last day in Colorado, we had other things to take care of anyway.

We left Eldorado Canyon and drove to Boulder, where we picked up some food (including cranberry walnut scones of course) from Wild Oats for tonight's dinner and for the flight home tomorrow. We never wanted to be at the mercy of the Milwaukee airport food court again. We also picked up some Fat Tire Amber Ale for Terence because he said he'd trade his soul to me for some Fat Tire.

After eating our dinner in little park just under the Flatirons, we went to the Boulder REI so I could get rid of the extra white gas that we haven't used. You can't transport fuel on an airplane, and it's hazardous and environmentally unsound to just dump it in the trash. We picked up a few extra items from REI while we were there, reorganized and repacked our gear in the parking lot, then slept in the van for our last night in Colorado.

Until next time, goodbye, Colorado!

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 7 of 8

2005-09-23T15:37:00.000-04:00

Mt. Elbert, standing at 14,440 feet, takes the crown as the highest peak in Colorado and in the Rockies mountains. It is also the second highest peak in the contiguous US. But although it is 179 feet higher than Longs Peak, it is a much easier hike. The North and South Mt. Elbert Trail are both class 1 trails, extending to the summit from the parking lot in a relatively straight line. According to the guidebook, the normal roundtrip time is only 6 hours.

For these reasons, I set my alarm for 6 am (instead of the 1 am for Longs Peak) this morning. I hoped that we could catch the sunrise above the treeline when we started our hike. However, when the alarm went off, it was still chilly and very foggy outside the van. My hope of catching the sunrise lost, I uncharacteristically turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.

I awoke again at 7 o'clock to the sound of other cars arriving at the trailhead. Looking through the window, I saw three more cars have arrived. I supposed it was time to get moving. Megan and I got up, packing the exact same gear as we had brought for Longs Peak, and set off for the summit. The people who arrived in the other cars were ahead of us.

Half an hour into our hike, we caught up with two other hikers with a large husky. They were both carrying overnight-size packs. Thinking they were carrying climbing gears, I casually inquired if they were going rock climbing. "No, we are just going to the summit. But at 14,000 feet anything can happen, you need to be prepared." I nodded my understanding, wished them a good day, and we passed them. We would meet them again on our way down from the summit, gaining about 2 hours of time on them.

Slowly hiking uphill

Photo: Megan Dunn

An hour from the parking lot, we came above the treeline. The morning mist was a long way below now, leaving us a clear view miles around us. Mt. Elbert was still about 3,000 feet above us. Fresh snow had fallen the night before, covering the trails at higher elevation. The trail was not technically challenging, but the grade was steeper than the Keyhole trail, so even though I had just hiked Longs Peak two days prior, I was still breathing pretty hard. The weather was still clear at this point, not a cloud in sight. But it was windy, and the clouds built with surprising speed. It seemed like one minute I was looking at clear blue skies, then the next minute I looked up there were ominous dark looking clouds everywhere.

The next few hours were spent slowly walking uphill. The fresh snow made some spots slippery, but still nothing technical. We made it to the summit after a long boring slog. The clouds were hanging much lower and darker now, we were afraid that an thunderstorm was imminent. Russell the Moose asked us to take a photo of him at the summit, we quickly did so, then turned around for the hike down without even stopping for food and water.

Dark clouds gathering all around us at the summit

But to my total dismay no sooner than we had left the summit the clouds started to clear. By the time we made it half way down to the timberline it was seemly a nice day again. Oh well, better safe than sorry. There were a few more people behind us going to the summit, but this highest peak in Colorado was certainly not as busy as Longs Peak. The descent to the parking lot was fairly uneventful, save for our encounter with a lost and scared puppy. We had seen the same dog earlier near the summit happily hiking along his owner, so we figured he must got separated from his owner somehow on the way down. The puppy was confused, looking around for his owner, barking and whimpering at the same time. We tried to call him to us and bring him back to the parking lot, but he was scared and didn't want to come to us. Fortunately his owner finally came jogging up the trail looking for him, and he ran to his owner like a bullet, barking happily. A happy ending for all.

The sky is clear again

Photo: Megan Dunn

It was 1:00 pm when we made it back to the parking lot, still early. Megan and I had lunch at a Mexican place in Leadville (I ate half of her food), and then we started driving back to the Boulder/Denver area. I would have liked to spend more time around Leadville, but since we were leaving in two days, it made sense to be closer to Denver tomorrow, so we don't have to drive a long way Saturday night to make our flight.

Another long scenic ride in the mountains of Colorado, we were back to the Front Ranges, spending the night in a little National Forest campground on the Peak to Peak Highway.

Twin Lakes viewed from the summit of Mt. Elbert

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 6 of 8

2005-09-22T13:43:00.000-04:00

Waking up late this morning, I was sore all over the place. Megan and I had breakfast, then lazily packed up camp. Today will be a day of rest. We dropped by the Estes Park public library to check weather on Mt. Elbert, then started on the long and scenic drive to Leadville through Rocky Mountain NP.

Aspen trees

The Rockies were really beautiful this time of the year, the mountains were painted with gold by patches of aspen trees. I've never seen aspen trees before. The autumn on the east coast is generally a colorful blend of red, orange, yellow, and green. But the aspen trees were uniformly gold. Whenever there was a gentle breeze, the leaves would shiver in the wind, making the whole forest glint in the sunlight. It was something that had to be seen in person, not a single picture I took could do it justice.

Our auto-tour was nice, allowing Megan and I to place the roles of tourists. Road 34 winded through the forests and alpine meadows in the Rockies, taking us as high as 12,183 feet. I was quite disgruntled when I noted this however, since my highpoint prior to Longs Peak was only 11,239 feet, and I worked hard for 7 hours to get that high. Yet you can drive higher than that in Colorado. It just seemed unfair. And don't even get me started on the mountains on the east coast.

Once out Rockie Mountains NP, we turned west on highway 40, passing rolling hills that looked remarkably like the Sunshine Valley in eastern British Columbia. Soon we came to a little town called Hot Sulphur Springs. Hot Sulphur Springs? I wondered... we stopped in a gas station for a quick break, and I asked the attendant, "this may be a silly question, but is there a hot spring nearby?" "Yes." she answered, and helpfully gave me directions, which was somehow completely wrong. But no matter, we made it to the hot spring after driving several miles in the wrong direction. Ahhhhhh... this was just what the doctor ordered after yesterday's long march on Longs Peak. We soaked our sore muscles in the warm, sulphuric water, watching the sun dipping behind the mountains, the thin clouds in the blue sky, the cute little rabbits hopping around in front of the pools...

Megan playing in a hot spring pool

But all too soon we had to leave the hot springs, if we hoped to make it to Leadville at a reasonable hour. We left the little town of Hot Sulphur Springs, feeling so relaxed that I thought I could fall asleep at the wheel at any moment (but I didn't!), drove through more scenic hills with snow capped peaks in the background, followed the shore of the Colorado River for a while near sunset, and arrived in the town of Leadville two and half hours after dark. We abandoned the idea of finding a campground and cook dinner, opted to have dinner at the local Subway. We then drove to the North Mt. Elbert Trailhead parking lot and crashed in the van.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 5 of 8

2005-09-21T17:54:00.000-04:00

My alarm went off at 1 am. It was earlier than most sane people would start, but after my performance in the last two days, I thought I'd need the extra time to make it up to the summit and get down before the dreaded afternoon thunderstorm Colorado that is famous for. Fortunately Megan required very little coaxing to get going in the morning. We were all geared up and at the trailhead by 1:30 am.

The moon over Longs Peak

The moon was still quite bright right now, only three days passed the full moon. We were able to keep the headlamps off even below treeline. The weather was not perfect, however. The clouds were rolling by very fast, and the wind was very strong. Above the treeline we were facing wind gusts up to 40 mph, which was strong enough to push us around a bit, even upset our balance. I could see there was a weather system that was moving in, and the air temperature was dropping. I was wearing a short sleeve synthetic t-shirt and a long-sleeve synthetic t-shirt, and in my backpack I packed a pair of gloves, a fleece cap, a softshell windstopper jacket, a hooded puffy (polarguard) belay jacket, and a gore-tex hardshell jacket. I had believe that I was overpacking, but "just in case", I thought. A the end I was very glad that I brought everything I packed.

The going was slow, but steady. We were the first ones on the trail, and for a long time seemed like the only one. The Keyhole route took the path of least resistance up Longs Peak, which happened to take us on a spiral path almost 360-degrees around the mountain. By the time we made it to 12,000 feet (my previous high point was Mt. Hood in Oregon, at 11,239 feet), the air temperature was hovering 35-degrees F, and with the windchill well below freezing. I was already wearing my gloves, my fleece cap, and my softshell jacket. We took some short breaks to drink some water and eat some snacks, but the strong wind meant that we get cold very quickly, and had to start moving. We saw some lights far below us around the treeline, we wondered if they were other hikers, but at the end they turned out to be fixed lights from either houses or parking lots. It felt like we had the whole mountain to ourselves, and it was a very spooky feeling.

We made it to the large Boulder Field at around 5:30 am. There were a few tent sites around the area, but they all stood empty, which added to the spooky feeling. Megan and I took another water/snack break by huddling under a big boulder to get a break from the wind. After the Boulder Field, the route finding became more difficult because there wasn't a trail to follow anymore, it became class-2 boulder hopping, and trying to follow cairns, which weren't always visible by the range of the headlamps. We made it to the little stone hut left of the Keyhole (a big hole in the ridgeline) around 6:40 am, and watched from the shelter of the stone hut a very red sunrise.
"Red sky in the morning,
Sailors take warning;
Red sky at night,
Sailor's delight."

A red sunrise

Photo: Megan Dunn

The wind was howling outside the stone shelter. The Keyhole acted as a big wind tunnel, even when clinging to the rocks on all fours, you still felt like you may get blown off the mountain. I had planned to get to Keyhole right around sunrise and hoped the wind would die down a little. But the weather did not look better now the sun is up. The guidebook said the Keyhole is the last good place to turn around if the weather is bad, after the Keyhole the going gets tough. I debated whether to continue or turn around, and asked Megan for her opinion. Being the Weathergirl, she convinced me that the dark ominous clouds were no threat to us at all, we should keep on going.

We crawled around the Keyhole under the rising sun, fortunately the wind on the other side was much calmer than in the wind tunnel. The trail at this point was class 2 or class 3 scramble with a long sloping drop off to one side. It was certainly fairly exposed, but viewing from rock climber's eyes, it wasn't as bad as I had imagined. The wind still gusted up to 30mph once in a while, so I kept my hands on the rock for balance, and we followed the red-and-yellow bull's eye that marked the trail from the Keyhole onward.

Megan scrambling the Trough

We ascended the Trough (a gully filled with loose rocks), traversed across the Narrows (supposedly the most exposed section of the trail), climbed around the Chockstone (supposedly the hardest move on the trail), and soon we were at the Homestretch - the last 300 feet or so of slabs before the summit. I was really sucking wind at this point, climbing very slowly, and stopping to catch my breathe frequently. Megan on the other hand, seemed to be doing really well, maybe she was born a mountaineer.

The Narrows

I pulled myself onto another boulder, and suddenly we were looking at a big flat boulder field. "I think we found the summit!" It was 8 am, it took us 6.5 hours to hike to the summit. The top of Longs Peak was huge and really flat, it didn't really have "summit" feel to it. We looked around for the highest point, and found the USGS marker on one of the boulders on the east side. It was really windy at the top, I put on all the layers I brought with me - the puffy jacket, the gore-tex shell and all. We were the first one to the top that day, there were some dark clouds in the sky, but they were rolling pass really fast, so we stayed at the summit for about half an hour, getting some water and food into our stomach, and taking summit photos. Russell the Moose came out from his hiding place to pose for a summit shot, and he was promptly blown off the boulder he was standing on. He had to hold on to his new friend the Nalgene bottle in order to get his picture taken.

Russell and his new friend the water bottle

Photo: Megan Dunn

After getting rested (and getting cold), Megan and I started hiking back down the mountain. Going down was a little harder on my knees, but much easier on my lungs. It wasn't until the top of the Trough did we meet another hiker. The first one we met was climbing by himself, we later learned from the trailhead register that he started at 5 am and made the roundtrip in just 7 hours. He was flying. We met two more hikers in the Trough, three more before the Keyhole, then 8 on the Boulder Field. It was around 10 o'clock by the time we got to the Boulder Field, but the temperature was still hovering around 40-degrees F. The dark clouds weren't blowing pass us anymore, they were starting to build around us. The people coming up the Keyhole route were asking us about the conditions at the summit, we told them it was windy, and warned them about the weather change.

The changing weather

Photo: Megan Dunn

In total there were 18 people intended for the summit via the Keyhole route that day, I think only about half of us made it to the summit. Some were more prepared than others, and some had dangerously little common sense. The last group (whom we didn't meet on the trail) started at 11:45 am for the summit, tomorrow we would found out from the trailhead register that they didn't make it the summit, and got back to the parking lot at 7 pm.

By the time Megan and I made it back to the parking lot at 1 pm, it had started drizzling. Later that night the drizzle would turn into steady rain, and of course at higher elevation, it would be sleeting and snowing. Some of the people who started late had to hike in the sleet and snow, Megan and I, however, remained dry all day. We took a much needed nap back at the camp that afternoon, and we went to Ed's Cantina (a climber's hangout) in Estes Park for Mexico food that night.

Peak: Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain NP
Elevation: 14,261 feet
Route: Keyhole Route (class 1 to class 3)
Distance: 16 miles roundtrip
Elevation gain: 4,845 feet
Starting from parking lot: 1:30 am
Summit: 8:00 am
Return to parking lot: 1:00 pm
Stop time (summit, breaks): around 1.5 hours
Moving time: 10 hours
Total time: 11.5 hours

Longs Peak

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 4 of 8

2005-09-20T17:13:00.000-04:00

Today the plan was to climb some easy trad routes up on Lumpy Ridge, just north of Estes Park, inside Rock Mountains NP. After a late morning start and much scenic stops, we arrived at the parking lot a bit pass noon. The day was hot, much hotter than I thought at 8,000 feet, and all Lumpy Ridge was south facing. Megan and I packed our gear and started hiking toward The Book, but soon I was out of breathe and overheating. After a quick rest under a shady pine tree, we decided to forgo trad climbing, and just go bouldering around the base of Lumpy Ridge instead. We need to save our energy for hiking up to Longs Peak tomorrow.

Megan bouldering at Lumpy Ridge

After getting my butt thoroughly kicked on some slab problem, and getting totally pumped on an overhang traverse, we called it a day, went to the public library at Estes Park to check weather for tomorrow (10% chance of PM showers), then went back to camp, cooked dinner, packed our backs for an alpine start tomorrow morning, and went to sleep.

The Twin Owls at Lumpy Ridge

Photo: Megan Dunn

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 3 of 8

2005-09-19T16:42:00.000-04:00

We woke up pretty late today, having gone to sleep at around 3 am last night. After a stop at Wild Oats for grocery and the cranberry walnut scones Megan fell in love with, we made the scenic drive to Estes Park, then to the Longs Peak campground on the eastern side of Rocky Mountain National Park, where we plan to camp for the next three nights.

The campground itself is above 9,000 feet, which was the highest point Megan has been to date. Her previous record was the highest point in Australia, Mt. Kosciuszko (2,229m or 7,310 feet). She would break this record two more times within a week's time, but first, we went on a short acclimatization hike after setting up camp. Not having done any kind of aerobic exercises in the last half year or so, I was going pretty slow. It took us about two hours to get above timberline, which was around 11,000 feet. The scenery reminded me (surprisingly) of Dolly Sods in West Virginia. Or maybe it was the other way around.

We took some pictures, stuck our feet in the bone chilling stream, then went back to camp and turned in after dinner.

Alpine Meadow with Longs Peak in the top left

Avoid horses, they are dangerous

Photo: Megan Dunn

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 2 of 8

2005-09-18T16:25:00.000-04:00

Initially, Megan wasn't totally keen on the idea of sleeping in the van, but after one night of surprisingly comfortable rest, she was a convert. We woke up on Sunday fully charged and ready to take on the Flatirons. But first, we made a trip to the Denver REI (one of the biggest REIs in the country) to pick up some fuel for the camp stove and some maps to the Colorado 14er's. While we were getting some information on camping around the Boulder area (not much), Russell the Moose was going wild running outside the REI and playing with some stranger bears he had just met.

Russell the Moose with his new friends

Photo: Megan Dunn

Back to the Flatirons, Megan and I packed a day pack and set off to scout out the approach, the start, and the descent of our intended route, so we don't get any surprises when we try to do it at night. This turned out to be a great idea, I was very glad that we decided not to push on last night, as the descent crossed some talus field. It wasn't difficult to follow in the light of the day, but doing it for the first time at night could potentially be a problem.

I was really out of breathe on the hike in, I blamed it on the altitude (the Flatirons were about 7,500 ft) but in reality, I was quite out of shape. After scouting out the descent trail, we went back to the van so I could take a nap to recharge (it's the altitude!). Then it was cooking dinner and sorting gear. By 7 pm mountain time, the sun was setting, but it was still a bit cloudy. The weather was not as clear as the night before, so I was a bit worried. Megan the Weathergirl assured me the clouds would clear out at night, so we set off as planned. On the hike in, we were rewarded with the sight of a red moon rising over the city of Boulder.

A bathroom on the right? Oh, a badmoon on the rise!

When we got there, there was another party on the standard East Face route (5.4R 8 pitches), but they were already about 4 or 5 pitches up. The route was wide open for us. We roped up and racked up, and Megan took the lead for the first pitch. She climbed mostly by the moonlight, only turning on her headlamp once in a while to look at her gear placements. Soon she found the giant eye bolt that marked the belay for the first pitch, and brought me up. I kept my headlamp off the whole time, using only the moonlight. The moon was up higher now, casting a silver glow on our route, which was east facing. It was bright enough to leave shadows on the rock, which made it sometimes tricky to see your foot placement. Climbing under the full moon was quite an experience, not something you can describe well with words. But I'll try anyway: It was like climbing in an alien world of black and white. It felt really surreal.

Megan shining her headlamp at me from the first eye bolt belay

We exchanged gear at the first eye bolt, and I set off to lead the second pitch (and unbeknownst to me, the third pitch as well). The moonlight was bright enough to see all the immediate moves, but it wasn't bright enough so route finding was interesting, and looking for the bolted anchors was a real challenge. I took what I thought was the easiest path up the slab, but I apparently had gone too far left, which caused me to miss the eye bolt belay for the second pitch. The gear placements were ok when you can get them, but they were hard to spot from afar, so my placements were a bit sparse. But the angle was slow, and the moves were easy. I climbed for what seemed like forever, getting more and more confused because I still haven't found the second eye bolt I was looking for (which was below me at this point), and the rope drag was getting bad enough that if I didn't find the eye bolt soon, I thought I'd get stuck somewhere because of rope drag. Finally I pulled over a lip, and spotted an giant eye bolt right in the middle of the slab.

I anchored in, brought Megan up, and half way up the "pitch" she yelled up, "I found the second eye bolt." Well, no wonder why the last "pitch" felt so long. I unintentionally linked the second and third pitch into one 200-feet pitch, and I placed all six pieces of pro on that pitch.

Megan made it up rest of the way without a pause, took the rest of the gear from me, and started on the fourth pitch. She found the fourth eye bolt anchor, way off to the left, without much trouble. "Mua ha! I have mad eye bolt finding powers!" Well I give her that, so far the record for finding the anchor stood at Megan: 3, Boer: 1. I seconded the fourth pitch, took the gear, lead the fifth pitch, and found the eye bolt this time without trouble, with a little beta from Megan. Megan: 3, Boer: 2.

Megan followed the fifth pitch, we exchanged gear, and she set off on the sixth pitch. She moved steadily up, just when I thought "she's been climbing for a while", and the piles of ropes on my tether to the anchor was getting pretty short, I saw her headlamp shining down at me from what appeared to be a big ledge. The headlamp disappeared again, and soon she called down, "Off belay!", "did you find the eye bolt?" "Nope!" Ahhh, her eye bolt finding power was waning.

I followed her pitch, judging by the distance she had climbed, I think she missed the eye bolt by half a pitch. But I did not find the other eye bolt either. I made it up to what I would call the sixth and half pitch, and took the lead for the next pitch. After a false start of about 30 feet and finding myself off route, I downclimbed and traversed right. According to the guidebook, the last pitch was the crux and runout pitch, but I didn't think it was too bad. The gear was certainly a bit sparse, but after sling a huge plate with a double sling, I climbed about 20-30 feet up and was suddenly at the summit. I had expected one more pitch of climbing, I guess I climbed a pitch and a half as well.

The rap bolts were set back too far from the summit, so I slung a big block with the ropes, and brought Megan up to the top. Looking out to Boulder, and Denver in the distance from the top of the Third Flatiron was really cool. Russell the Moose freesoloed to the summit after us, he posed for a summit shot with Boulder in the background, and then all three of us started the third rappels back to the ground.

Russell the Moose bags another peak

It was well passed midnight by now, we were tired, and Megan was getting a little cold. So we were extra careful, tying stopper knots at the rope ends, and double checking everything. Safely back on the ground, we started the long descent back to the car. This was when I was really glad that we scouted out the trail during the day, there were a couple points in the scramble we could have easily gotten lost in the dark. But nothing bad happened, we got back to the parking lot at 2 am, totally exhausted, but really happy at the same time for having done such a unique climb.

Another night spent sleeping in the van at the Walmart parking lot. Total cost of lodging so far: $0.

Area: Third Flatiron, Boulder, Colorado
Route: Standard East Face, 5.4R, 8 pitches
Start from parking lot: 7:20 pm
Hike in: 40 min
Start from route: 8:00 pm
Summit: 12:30 am (4.5 hours)
Descent: 60 min
Hike out: 40 min
Return to parking lot: 2:20 am

Hiking and climbing in Colorado - Day 1 of 8

2005-09-17T12:28:00.000-04:00

Megan and I left DC for Denver, Colorado around noon eastern time. Our airline Northwest had just declared bankruptcy a few days ago, so I was a bit worried. But my worries turned out to be unwarranted, it was business as usual at the Northwest counter in the Regan National Airport.

Two uneventful flights later, with a stopover in Milwaukee airport (probably the most boring airport in the world), we were in Denver. This was my first trip to Colorado. As our small airplane approached Denver International Airport from the east, I was surprised to see how flat eastern Colorado was, and how empty it was. I had expected Denver to be a huge metropolitan area like the large cities on the east coast. The real Denver was quite different than I had imagined.

Making our way to the car rental agency, we had another surprise. I had reserved an compact-class car for our week long stay in Colorado, but what we got was a Chrysler Town & Country van! This would make road-tripping around Colorado so much nicer than in a Dodge Neon. Megan and I folded down all the back seats, and marveled at how much space we had. We could even sleep in the van! Which was what we did when we couldn't find a good place to camp.

Our home away from home for the next week.

Photo: Megan Dunn

My original, somewhat ambitious plan, was to climb the Standard East Face Route (5.4R, 8 pitches) on the Third Flatiron tonight by the full moon. By the time we picked up some groceries (dinner) from the Wild Oats in Boulder and made our way to the Flatirons, I realized just how late it was, and how tired we were. But the moon was very bright though, and the weather was really nice, not a cloud in sight. I toyed with the idea of push on tonight and do the climb, and I discussed this with Megan. At the end, good sense won, we decided to scout out the approach and descent tomorrow during the day, and then climb it at night.

The Flatirons under the stars

Photo: Megan Dunn

For tonight, we drove to a 24-hour Walmart and slept in the very spacious van.

Megan and Russell the Moose in our mobile tent

Camping in Shenandoah NP - Sep 10-11

2005-09-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

Megan and I had planned to go backpacking at Mt. Rogers last weekend, but I found out that my new supervisor did not like me taking unpaid leave (during my annual performance review, so I had to work some extra hours on Friday to make up time for our upcoming trip to Colorado. The plan to go backpacking was ruined, we decided to just relax with a camping trip to Shenandoah National Park. We hiked to Hawks Bill so Russell the Peak Bagging Moose can bag the tallest peak in Shanendoah NP; we also hiked Dark Hallow Falls, saw a couple tiny little snakes, a chipmunk, a black bear cub, and a couple deer that were trying to ambush us on the road.

Next weekend, Colorado!

Backpacking in Dolly Sods - Sep 3-5

2005-09-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

Two good things happened this weekend.

We were finally able to pick up Megan's camera from the Seneca Climbing School (she dropped it at Seneca in July).
The weather was gorgeous. Possibly to make up for the miserable excuse of a weekend we spent at the New.

Since it was the Labor Day weekend, we figure it would be crowded everywhere: the New, Seneca, Gunks, Coopers. So Megan and I went on a relaxed backpacking trip in Dolly Sods. We left Saturday morning at a very leisurely hour, dropped by the Seneca Climbing School to pick up Megan's camera, and counted 30(!) climbers on the west face of Seneca via a pair of binoculars. And that was not counting the unknown number of climbers in the trees below, waiting to get on the easier routes. We were glad that we decided to go backpacking.

We met up with Jason, Mindy (Jason's wife), their friend Patrick, Oliver (Jason and Mindy's dog), and Shakespeare (Patrick's dog) at the Seneca Climbing School, and we caravanned to the parking lot for Blackbird Knob Trail. After a short hike in, we decided to set up a basecamp on a little island in Upper Red Creek.

The weather this weekend was the best I've seen when visiting Dolly Sods. It was sunny but cool, the humidity was pretty low, and at night the sky was absolutely clear. I was finally able to leave the fly off my tent for once, without the fear of rain. We had a camp fire on both nights, then sat and watched the stars in the sky. The milky way was visible, we saw lots of airplanes, some satellites, and a few meteors.

Megan and I haven't gone backpacking since the last time we were in Dolly Sods in June, it was nice to come out here again and sleep far away from cars and roads, where the only noise at night is the trickling of water from the creek.

I've made fire!

Photo: Megan Dunn

Washed out weekend at NRG/Summersville - Aug 26-28

2005-08-28T12:32:00.000-04:00

The weather forecasters have failed me once again. I'm beginning to loose faith in weather forecasting, it seem more like voodoo magic than science these days. I know there's always some uncertainties and errors to forecasting, but it's getting ridiculous. Here was the progression of weekend weather forecast as seen last week:

Wednesday - weekend is looking good, only 30% chance of rain, high in the low 80s. Looks like great climbing weather!
Thursday - oh the forecast changed. Now there's a 50% chance of rain. We can still go DWS if it rains.
Friday - Ok, now there's a 70% chance of rain over the weekend. Hey what do you know, it's raining now.

For my 3-day weekend, Megan and I went down to the New hoping to do some climbing. But half way into the drive on Friday it started raining, and it didn't stop until Saturday evening. My tent was newly waterproofed, and we had a tarp set up over the pinic table, so at least we had some dry areas to sit under and cook. And the temperature was mild enough that I wasn't sticky hot at night. However, it was a long drive just for two nights of car camping in the rain.

By Sunday morning everything was still soaked and slimy. We generally try to make the best out of any condition, but we hiked out to one of the climbing areas, took one look at the rock, and turned around and hiked back. Nothing looked like it was pleasant to climb on. I'm getting so sick of the east coast weather.

Deepwater soloing at Summersville - day 2 of 2

2005-08-21T14:36:00.000-04:00

The thunderstorm last night was even heavier than the night before. Megan and I woke up to a grey sky and a camp full of dispirited people. Everything was wet, especially the gear that were left out in the open. No one was going climbing, everyone was talking about bailing early and go home. I tried to convince people that there were overhangs that would stay dry even in a downpour, but everyone seemed eager to get back to a climate-controlled manmade structure with walls that would keep all the wetness, the humidity, and nature outside where it belongs. The only exception was people in Alyce's car, they weren't heading home just yet, but they were going hiking. So Val, Megan, and I went back to Summersville again.

Initially I wanted to check out Rat's Hole, which is a land accessible area that Megan and I have not explored yet. Yesterday on the boat I saw what I thought was the Rat's Hole area, and the climb there seemed very cool. We also saw quite a few people there, with no boats (that's why I assumed it was Rat's Hole). However, trying to follow the directions given in the guidebook, we ended up on two seperate private roads with "no trespassing" sign posted. Finally we give up on finding Rat's Hole, and went back to Pirate's Cove.

Pirates Cove

By now the sky has cleared up, the sun came out, and the weather was absolutely beautiful. The temperature was not too high, there was a cool breeze, and the humidity was noticeably lower. All the people that went back to DC early really missed out on a great day, probably spent the beautiful morning trying to avoid getting killed by bad truck drivers on I-81.

A beautiful, sunny day

The normally busy Summersville Lake parking lot was quite empty when we pulled in, and Pirate's Cove, normally jam packed with boats and boaters was unusually quiet as well. We talked Val into jumping off from the waterfall, I tried to climb the massive overhang under the waterfall without much success (it is hard!), and we sat around enjoy the sun and the cool water for a while, until we had to start our long drive back to DC as well.

Val attempting the massive overhang

We didn't get a chance to go moonlight DWS, but it was still a good weekend with some really good climbing.

A video clip of Megan jumping from the waterfall. (4.24MB MPEG movie)
A video clip of me jumping from the waterfall. (1.36MB MPEG movie)

Deepwater soloing at Summersville - day 1 of 2

2005-08-20T10:50:00.000-04:00

Megan and I have been planning to go back to Summersville since our last DWS (deepwater soloing) trip. Last Friday was a full moon, so despite being a 2-day weekend, we picked last weekend to return, for a chance to go DWS under the full moon. However, the weather did not cooperate. Even though the sky was clear and the full moon was bright on the way to Summersville, getting my hopes up, a thunderstorm rolled in as we got near Summersville. It destroyed any chance of playing in the water that night, and forced Megan and I to set up camp in the rainy darkness. Val decided to sleep in her road-trip van instead of setting up a tent.

Next morning we woke up to a camp full of people. Most of us were going DWS, but a few weren't able to secure a spot on the boat, so they were going either bouldering or sport climbing. Those of us who were going DWS drove to Summersville Lake and got our rental pontoon boat in the water. I navigated all the way out to where we stopped explore last time for our first climb. We then slowly drove toward Long Point, stopping at few spots along the way to play.

A really nice arete problem

Photo: Megan Dunn

Another fun problem with some funky moves

Photo: Megan Dunn

Unfortunately, right about the time we made it to Long Point, we started to hear thunder rambling in the distance. We got everyone out of the water (reluctantly) and hurried back to the boat launch. We weren't sure how long the thunderstorm would last, but I think more than a few people were tired and hungry, the consensus seemed to be call it a day and take the boat back. As we were taking the boat out of the water, we saw a sheet of rain coming toward us from the far side of the parking lot, it was quite a sight. Everyone ran for cover, and we were all glad that we decided to call it a day... well, for at least 5 minutes anyway. That was how long the rain lasted. The dark ominous cloud moved pass us quickly, and the sky cleared up again. But by now most people have already packed up and left, some went back to camp, some went shopping at the gear shop. After trying unsuccessfully to convince Alyce and her carpool buddies that they should come with us instead of going hiking, Megan and I headed over to Pirates Cove to jump off the waterfall and play on some bolted 5.11s (but with shallow landing). We also watched a few guys and a gal repeatedly climbing much higher on those 5.11s than I was comfortable with the landing. But at least none of them got hurt.

We came back to camp around 5:30 pm, to Terence cooking a big pot of stew, and Ocean trying to set up a slackline by the picnic pavilion. I had planned to eat dinner in town, so Megan and I waited for a few others to return and go to Pints and Pies together. But in the process of waiting, we got talked into staying and eat the group meal. We did, and there was enough food to totally stuff Megan and I. Since we only brought snack food, no dinner items to share, I peeled some mangos I brought and shared it with everyone.

Megan and I wanted to try for a full moon DWS again tonight, but we couldn't find a ride to the lake. Val was sleeping in her van again, and no one else seemed interested in the idea of going to the lake after dark. The sky seemed pretty clear, but we kept seeing lightning in the far distance (no thunder was heard). After waiting till 10 o'clock, the moon was still not high enough for illumination. We decided to go to sleep first, and see how it would be in a few hours. I woke up later in the night to thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Thus my hope of going moonlight DWS was totally spoiled by the weather.

For more photos from this weekend's DWS, visit Megan's gallery.

A video clip of Alyce doing a flip while jumping. You have to turn your head 90-degrees to watch this video. (2.37MB MPEG video)

Make a donation

2005-08-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

My friend Michael Wallis is running the Portland Marathon to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. His goal is to raise $2000, and he's up to $1441 to date. Please help him meet his goal by making a (tax deductible) donation! Follow the link below to his page to donate.

Michael's Team in Training

Löwenböer?

2005-08-16T13:29:00.000-04:00

This post is brought to you by a momentary boredom in my otherwise pretty busy life.

Climbing around Morgantown

2005-08-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

Still pretty tired from the rafting trip the previous day, Tre', Megan, and I went to a local crag near Morgantown for some easy climbing. Tre' and Megan were both having sore fingers, so it was left to me to whine on a 5.7, hangdog a 5.8 (or was it a 5.10a?), and then siege a 5.11 on toprope.

5.8 or 5.10a? Either way, Mr. Clean was having trouble getting this clean

Photo: Megan Dunn

Whitewater Rafting on the Youghiogheny River

2005-08-13T14:17:00.000-04:00

In the morning we drove to Ohiopyle, PA from Morgantown, and after taking care of some logistics (mainly Tre's effort), we got on the Youghiogheny River in a raft. Tre' has some friends who are river guides, and he has been down this river many times before. So he was acting our guide for the trip. Megan has done whitewater kayaking and river guiding back in Australia. So I was the greenhorn in our three-person raft. However, the water was low, and even though there were class-III sections on the river, with Tre' steering, Megan and I paddling like crazy, we made it down the river in good time with no incidents at all.

Kayakers playing in the hole right after the "Dimple" Rapid - which was the hardest section we did today

Captain Tre' starring in a low budget version of "Starship Troopers"

Megan wishing she was in a kayak

Climbing at Coopers

2005-08-12T08:23:00.000-04:00

This was a 3-day weekend for me, so my friend Tre' (who hasn't taken any trips in a while due to knee injury) took Megan and I whitewater rafting on the Youghiogheny River in western Pennsylvania. But first, we stopped by Coopers Rock State Park near Morgantown, West Virginia, for some climbing.

Megan balancing on A Very Good Climb (5.9)

I'm jamming on Rock City Crack (5.7)

Photo: Megan Dunn

Tre' went to college in Morgantown, his friend Chris still lives there. So tonight we camped at Chris's parents' backyard. Chris cooked us deer steak and fried banana for dinner. Afterwards, we went to a tea place (Zenclay) for some drinks, then played pool to pass the night, and I managed to kick some major butt in pool with my mediocre skill.

Climbing at Seneca - day 2 of 2

2005-08-07T15:42:00.000-04:00

Waking up Sunday morning at a leisurely hour (8:30 am), the rain has stopped, but it was humid and wet. We talked about our plan over breakfast. I wasn't sure how wet the rock will be, but I figure we can start on the first pitch of Skyline Traverse (5.3), which was east facing and should dry out first if the sun was out. At this point, the sky was overcast, and it seemed like a good idea to climb an east facing route. If the condition was good, we then can continue on Kauffman-Cardon (5.4, 2 pitches) to Broadway Ledge, then scramble to Gunsight Notch and climb Gunsight to South Peak Direct (5.4). It sounded like a good plan, so we left the tent in the campground to dry, drove to the Visitor Center parking lot, and started the hike.

No one was on the first pitch of Skyline Traverse, which was unusual. Since my plan was to climb up the South Peak and rappel on the west side, we had to bring everything with us, which means both Jason and Megan had to climb with backpacks on. The sun had come out by now, and it was getting hot. The rock was surprisingly dry considering how much it poured yesterday, so I racked up to lead the first pitch.

However someone was at the anchor for the first pitch of Skyline Traverse, and it sounded like a party of three. They must came up either Candy Corner (5.5) or Lower Skyline Direct (5.4). It was ok, the ledge below the anchor was huge, I slung a big boulder as my anchor, and belayed Jason and Megan up.

Jason on the first pitch of Skyline Traverse

Megan was not looking at full spirit, I wasn't sure if she was just tired, or maybe I was climbing too slow. But anyway, when she got to the belay, I just assumed that I will be leading for the rest of the day, since switching backpack and gear between us was too much hassle and would cause more delays. Megan didn't object my decision to lead all the pitches (normally she would), she passed me the gear she cleaned (she managed to get out a stuck nut), and I set off to lead Kauffman-Cardon.

This route was recommended to me, but I've never had the chance to climb it. Route finding seemed to be a little tricky, this route traverse across a few harder and more runout routes, it would be easy to end up on something I wasn't expecting. I took my time looking for the easiest path, traversing around an arete, a few tricky moves (at Seneca, even the 5.4s have tricky moves) later, I was at the belay.

I brought Jason up, then Megan. While I was belaying Megan, Jason told me he felt the exposure when he climbed around the arete. I don't blame him, most people would be scared of the height on their first multipitch climb. Unfortunately the battery in my camera died at the first belay for Skyline Traverse, so I didn't get the cool picture of Jason coming around the arete.

The backpack Megan was wearing was giving her trouble, because it messed with her balance and required her to put more weight on her hands. Even the easy routes at Seneca can be quite steep. Her fingers have not fully recovered from her injury, so they were hurting a bit, making her a bit cranky. Of course I didn't know all this until later, then just I thought she didn't seem to be in good spirit, I thought she might be dehydrated or hungry (I know I was!). I was concerned, but I trust her to let me know if she wasn't feeling 100% well for climbing.

I racked up to lead the 2nd pitch of Kauffman-Cardon. I traversed around another arete right off the belay, and wasn't sure exactly where to go. I thought the pitch might keep traversing to the right, but it looked too easy, and seemed like it would cause tons of rope drag. Besides, I know at some point I need to go UP. The corner had lots of chalk on it, but the moves seemed pretty hard. I starred at the corner for a while, but finally decided not to give it a go. I climbed up the arete instead.

The arete and the face to the right of it was pretty easy, with big holds. But soon I discovered that the protection was sparse. With no abundant gear, the moves suddenly felt much harder. I kept my head in check, placed as much gear as I could find, breathed keep, pulled a few tricky moves, placed more gear that wasn't all that great, clipped a bolt that certainly was off route, then pulled the final runout to the Lower Broadway Ledge, breathing a big sign of relief when I got up there. Later on I found out it was Cardon's Rib (5.4 R) that I climbed instead of the second pitch of Kauffman-Cardon, it certainly deserved the R (for runout) rating.

I then belayed Jason and Megan up, they didn't think the pitch was too hard. Oh well, everything just felt harder on the sharp end. A look at the watch showed it was already 1 o'clock! I took forever to lead just 3 pitches. We had a quick lunch, coiled the rope, then traversed the length of Broadway Ledge and scrambled up to Gunsight Notch (5.0).

Both the Gunsight to South Peak (5.3) and Gunsight to South Peak Direct (5.4) were free. Since I've been wanting to do the direct version for a while (having done the regular version last year), I started on the direct route. On this route you are climbing right along the knife edge of the South Peak, it felt much more exposed than the non-direct version (which climbs a corner on the west side of the ridge). This is probably one of the most exposed 5.4 in the country. I did enjoy the exposure.

However the gear wasn't so great, at least not in the beginning. Shortly after leaving the belay, I was faced with placing some protection in a thin flake and pull on it to continue the climb. The flake was reasonably thick at the bottom, but near the top where it was mostly detached it was maybe the width of a finger. I did not believe it would hold bodyweight, but having no other choice, I placed a nut at the base of the flake, then gingerly stepped on the flake while trying to put as little weight as possible on it. Once I got above it I immediately placed another piece.

After the Loose Flake of Doom (Ok, ok, "the American Death Flake of Doom"), the rest of the pitch was much better with more solid holds and gear placement. There was a long sling over a big block, I wasn't sure if it was someone's emergency rappel anchor, so I left it along, opted to place some gear in the crack instead. I got to the belay, clipped one of the anchor bolts (saving the other one for Jason or Megan), slung a rock, and then sat myself in the Captain's Seat to bring Jason and Megan up. The Captain's Seat is the sitting belay on Gunsight to South Peak Direct, with a commanding view of the North Peak of Seneca and either side of the South Peak. It was a great spot for a belay.

After some confusion at the belay station, in which Megan decided to anchor in using an American Death Triangle much to my dismay, I set off to lead the last "pitch" with order from Megan to climb fast. So I placed a not so great green Alien to protect the initial move off the belay, pulled onto the summit ridge, and basically walked over to the true summit while dragging the rope with one hand.

Jason posing on the summit ridge

The summit ridge is about the size of a sidewalk, with a couple hundred feet of air on both sides. The guidebook describes the last 50 feet as "walk, crawl, or slither south to the true summit". I have yet to see slithering, but I have seen some crawling. Jason came up, and walked (for the most part) to the true summit. Megan came up as well and properly walked over to the true summit.

Jason looking at the summit register, I'm really sorry about the sunburn, dude!

We were the only party at the summit, but there was no time to sit and enjoy the view. We saw a thunderstorm moving toward us from the west, and heard thunder rumbling in the distance.

Time to go down as fast as we can! But not too fast. Falling down to the ground may seems fast at first, but the result generally is not really favorable. If it was Megan and I, we would just down scramble from the summit to the West Pole rappel tree. However, since this was Jason's first time on a multipitch route, I decided to set a "safe" example and had all three of us on belay scrambling down from the summit. I was the last one down from the summit, so I just continued on scrambling down to the rappel tree while still on belay. But Jason and Megan decided just to scramble down to where I was, unroped... so much for setting an example. Oh well.

Besides discovering that something had chewed on one of the rappel slings around the West Pole rappel station, we didn't have any other problems rappelling back down to the ground. We quickly made our way back to the car, then back to camp, where Megan and I broke some speed record taking down our tent and packing everything up. Another stop at the Seneca Climbing School to inquire about Megan's camera ("Ah, it's in someone's car. That person isn't here right now, but come back next week and we should have it."), and then we were in the car driving back to DC and introducing Jason to O'Dub.

Our timing was just right. Shortly after we got on our way, it absolutely poured. I've never seen it rain so hard at Seneca before.

Climbing at Seneca - day 1 of 2

2005-08-06T11:30:00.000-04:00

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.

Climbing at Seneca

2005-07-23T08:26:00.000-04:00

Megan and I climbed with John and Lily this weekend. I haven't climbed with John and Lily since last summer at Great Falls, it was good to see them again.

However, climbing wasn't great. Megan lost her digital camera on Thais (5.5), the guy before us cut himself and left lots of blood everywhere, we saw a huge block fell off Green Wall and barely missed a climber on Pleasant Overhang, and my elbow started hurting again. So we decided not to climb on Sunday and came back early.

Lily following on Ye Gods and Little Fishes (5.8)

Climbing the chimney pitch of Thais (5.5)

Megan cooling off in the swimming hole

Climbing adventures in BC - day 9 of 10, don't always believe the guidebook

2005-07-09T10:58:00.000-04:00

Today was our last day in British Columbia, we wanted to make the best of it. However, most of the rock around Squamish was still wet, the Chief was actually dripping. There were still many areas around Squamish we haven't checked out, but to find an area with great views, that dries fast, AND with a short approach... well, Upper Malamute fits the bill perfectly. Besides, there was still High Mountain Woody, the supposed classic must-do 5-star 5.8+ that we didn't get a chance to climb last time. So Upper Malamute it was.

We found the short cut this time, but I was still huffing and puffing by the time we got to the cliffs. Two buff guys (from Vancouver?) were toproping on two short 5.9 friction slabs (Curly and Larry) when we arrived, then one of the guys started leading Curly (or was it Larry?) after the toprope practice, all the while commenting how he didn't like slabs. Believe it or not dude, I totally understand where you were coming from. Megan, on the other hand, didn't understand at all, and roped up to onsight lead both 5.9s with ease. I think the guys felt a bit emasculated and left pretty quickly. Good, with no one to watch my pitiful performance following both 5.9s, I felt much at ease to whine and complain loudly to no one in particular.

Actually, after toproping for a while, I was discovering some technique to climbing friction slabs. So except one instance when I lost my balance and felt backwards (grabbing the rope with my excellent reflexes), I was feeling pretty good on the slabs.

After a short lunch break, we moved over to High Mountain Woody. This was the longest climb in Upper Malamute, you need a full 60m rope to climb it. It supposedly starts with a cruxy 5.9ish finger crack, then eases out a bit to 5.8 fist crack. The guidebook really raved about it. 5.8 was about the hardest I've ever led on trad, even though the grades at Squamish was a little softer than the east coast, I was still feeling a bit intimidated. I racked up, tied my double ropes together with an overhand knot, and rappelled down first to check out the route. It was looking ok, the crack didn't look too hard, and the rock was dry... I felt better, so I kept rappelling down. But about 20 feet from the ground, the fist crack turned into a slanting finger crack. It looked hard, but more importantly, it was seeping water. Hmmmm. After quite a bit of deliberation, I decided that I was going to climb this route, but I will bypass the wet and hard finger crack start on toprope.

I radioed my intentions up to Megan, and asked her to re-tie the double ropes with a double-fisherman's knot. After a bit of confusion, she understood what I had in mind, and did what I asked. Once she rappelled down, I tied into one end of the double rope, and she put me on belay. Of course I realized that with two 8.9mm double ropes tied together, the rope would stretch so much that if I did fall in the first 20 feet or so I would still fall back to the ground. So really, I shouldn't fall. But if I did, hopefully the rope stretch would prevent an injury.

I pulled the cruxy start, finding the moves a bit hard and awkward, I was glad that I didn't try to lead it. About 20 feet up and slightly to the right of the route, there was a very small stance, and that was where I stopped and built an anchor. I belayed Megan up to my stance, then we untied this, re-tied that, pulled this... and eventually got the double ropes down from the top anchor and tied into Megan and me properly. Ok, finally time to start leading... I started on the rest of the route, and quickly found the moves were as easy as I thought. The crack was bigger than fist at some parts, almost off-width-ish, requiring some really groveling to get up. It would take me forever to figure out a move, pull it with much awkwardness, find a stance, take a rest while placing some gear, then the cycle starts again. It took me a looooong time to lead this route. Even though there were stances for me to rest and place gear, I was not enjoying this route at all. Finally it eased off a bit near the top, but I still didn't find the route enjoyable. I got to the anchor, set up the belay, then brought Megan up. She had a much easier time than I did with the moves, but she too did not find the climb enjoyable. We thought this route was the most over-hyped route we climbed. The 4-star Stephanie's Tear layback was a much better climb.

Megan getting a no hands (almost no feet) rest on High Mountain Woody (5.8+)... I swear the route was much harder than it looks!

Checking my watch, wow, it was already 4 o'clock. I did take forever leading that. After all that groveling, I didn't feel like climbing anything else, and since we haven't yet made it to the top of the Chief, we decided to hike to the top.

We started late in the afternoon, but with the grueling pace Megan was setting (even after I handed her the backpack to carry), we made it to the top in an hour or so, passing many hikers along the way. Megan actually talked about climbing at Raven's Castle, which was right below the First Peak.

Megan, "There are bolted slabs. We just need to take our harnesses and some quickdraws, it will be a light pack."
Me, "Yes, quickdraws. And A ROPE!"
Megan, "Oh yeah, we will need that too..."

So I shot down the idea of climbing at Raven's Castle, because of the supposed "45-minute approach" (right... if you were running up the mountain with your packs on!) and the heavy gear we have to haul with us. In hindsight, Raven's Castle was definitely worth hiking in with all that gear, we should have climbed there instead of Upper Malamute. The view on the First Peak to Howe Sound and the town of Squamish below us was just incredible. Too late to change our minds now, Megan and I pretended to be tourists, taking many photos at the summit, eating snacks, and corrupting a chipmunk with Nutella.

View from the First Peak of the Chief

We made it back in time to drive to town before the grocery store closed, cooked our last dinner in BC at the pinic area (where Megan met two other Australians who were out here on a long climbing trip), got most of our gear organized, then we crashed in the tent.

Corrupting wildlife, one chipmunk at a time

Climbing adventures in BC - day 8 of 10, back to Squamish

2005-07-08T09:58:00.000-04:00

Today we woke up to the sound of rain. Yes, it was drizzling even in the desert of British Columbia. Another fine day for resting, I guess. We wanted to go back to Squamish, to the charming little logging town, even if it was still wet out there, the scenery more than make up for the bad weather. Leaving Todd's RV park, we decided to take the long scenic way back to Squamish, which would make a complete loop with the way we came to Penticton.

Megan in front of a snow covered mountain

The scenic way was definitely worth it, there were many snow covered peaks, glacier feed lakes, roadside creeks, big mountains. We made a quick stop in Whistler, but it was decidedly touristy and yuppish, so we quickly left. Back to the campground at the Chief.

Ahhhh, Squamish

Climbing adventures in BC - day 7 of 10, sport climbing at Skaha

2005-07-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Penticton is a much bigger city than Squamish, a tourist city. As such, we didn't like the feel of the city at all, so even after just staying here one night, we decided that we were going to pack up everything in the morning and leave Penticton after climbing at Skaha. The weather was hot, but at least the humidity was low, so climbing without melting was still possible for me. We got a late start in the morning, found a cliff at Skaha that was somewhat in the shade, and racked up to lead amid spray lords and gym bunnies. At least the gym bunnies knew they were gym bunnies and therefore eager to ask questions. The spray lords were just annoying.

We were in an area called Lower Red Tail, which has the highest concentration of easy sport climbs with the shortest approach. The routes here were mostly slabby to vertical, but with small crimpy holds, which were not great for Megan's fingers. The rock was hard and pretty smooth, reminded me a little of the rock at Great Falls. The rating felt really weird - like two 5.7s right next to each other weren't the same difficulty, and a 5.6 felt harder than a 5.7 right next to it. I guess it isn't a place I'd go back to BC specifically to visit.

We climbed a bunch of easy routes, but they all sort of blended together with one another. Mother Superior (5.7), Guilt Trip (5.7 - weird start), Second Balcony Jump (5.6), Black Friday (5.6), Freudian Slip (5.7), Sport Climbing is Neither (5.8), and Preface (5.9). I whined quite a bit trying to pull the crux on Preface, but somehow just didn't want to commit to the move pulling on two crimpers with no feet. I finally did it after standing there forever, but if I had so much trouble on a 5.9, I probably didn't want to get on anything harder. That was the end of climbing at Skaha for me.

Megan figuring out the crux on Preface (5.9)

Of course then there was the adventure of driving down a dirt road trying to find a campground that only existed on the map, back track for 15 minutes only to find the other campground was full, debating whether to go back to the dirt road and camp next to the car, and finally finding an mostly full RV park with a free tent site at 10 o'clock at night, and paying out of my nose for a little patch of grass in between big RVs. Next time, we locate a place to spend the night before going spending a day climbing. The trouble and stress at the end of the day was just not worth the sense of adventure.

Lake Skaha

Climbing adventures in BC - day 6 of 10, driving to Skaha

2005-07-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

After a wet and cold day having mini-epics, Megan and I decided we should go check out Skaha some 7 or 8 hours east of Squamish. After three days of climbing, we needed a rest day anyway. Most of the climbers at Squamish seemed to have the same idea, the camp ground was noticeably more empty today. So today's adventure consisted mostly having breakfast at Sunflower Cafe and long distance driving. It was still drizzly when we left Squamish, the Hope-Princeton Highway was a very scenic highway, especially in misty weather.

View from the Hope-Princeton Highway

But once we crossed the mountains into the rain shadow, it was dry and sunny weather. The almost desert-like view was much different from the wet evergreens at Squamish. We stopped at roadside farmer's market for fresh blueberries and cherries, and pulled into the Waterworld RV Park at Penticton around 6 o'clock in the evening. Thus ended an adventure filled day, moose sighting: zero.

Penticton the tourist town

Climbing adventures in BC - day 5 of 10, multipitch epicing

2005-07-05T13:17:00.000-04:00

During dinner in the previous night, Megan and I had discussed our option for today, a) go check out another area with single-pitch routes, or b) if Megan is feeling 100%, go tackle an easy multipitch route, which is my favorite type of climbing. After climbing at Shannon Falls, Megan felt that she was back at 100%, so multipitching it is!

Typical on a day of climbing an easy, classic multipitch route, we woke up very early, drove out of the campground shortly after the gate opened at 7 am, and was the second vehicle at the Apron's parking lot. There were two multipitch routes I wanted to do, Banana Peel (5.7, 8 pitches) and Diedre (5.8, 6 pitches). Normally I'd lean toward the easier of the two, but from looking at the guidebook, Banana Peel wonders a bit on the slab, while Diedre goes pretty much straight up with bolted belays. Since the weather is a big unknown, and Megan just recovered from being sick, we decided to do Diedre in favor of the easy retreat.

We racked up in the parking lot (at which point other cars began to show up as well), and started the approach. Soon we came to a point where the trail went left, and a scramble up a slab went up and right. Megan thought we should take the slab, I thought the slab cut back right too early. While I was trying to match guidebook description with what I see in front of me, a woman (Michelle?) wearing a harness and carrying a rope caught up to us from behind. I asked, "do you know which way is to Diedre?" "Yeah, I'm going to the same area, follow me, I'll take you there." Thanking her, we quickly followed her up the slab (Megan was right). After some pretty steep but easy scrambling, we arrived at a comfy ledge where Diedre starts. Michelle's partner was already there waiting for her, they racked up and started a runout slab to our right. I was a bit out of breathe from the approach, and hungry (haven't really eaten breakfast at this point), so I took a breather and had a cliff bar.

Just as I was getting ready to start on the first pitch, another team of two female climbers show up. We found out later that they were from Oregon. "Gotta move fast so I don't cause a traffic jam!" I thought as I set off on the slab. The first pitch started with about 30 feet of 5.4 friction slab with no protection at all, until you get to a birch tree on a small ledge. The climbing was easy, low angle enough that even though I'm not good on friction slabs, I still thought I could lead it. The moves didn't get any hard the higher I climbed, but it definitely got headier. A couple of feet from the birch tree now, I looked down and thought, "man, it's a loooooong way to fall!" I got a little scared, shaky, and breathing heavily. "I knew you were scared cuz I could hear you doing your weird breathing thhing", Megan later told me. But anyway, I had my fear under control long enough to grab the flake right below the birch tree, and pulled myself up to the ledge. "Friction climb is my nemesis!" I yelled down to Megan while I took out a double-length sling to tie around the tree.

Mommy, I'm scared!

Now the scary part is over, I was looking at section of 5.7 to the anchor. Choosing the easiest path possible, I made my way slowly toward the anchor. After spending 10 minutes trying to figure out a move that wasn't even very hard, I finally made it to the anchors.

I brought Megan up, and she decided to lead the 2nd pitch, which started with a unprotected 5.6 traverse on a slab. That was fine by me! By now the Oregon team behind us have started on the first pitch, and the woman leading it was making much faster progress than I was. The 2nd pitch was pretty short, so Megan was soon anchored in and brought me over the traverse. I figure since the other leader seemed to move faster than I was, we should let them pass us. That way when I'm shaking and crying on the 5.8 sections, at least I won't have an audience below.

So I yelled over to the leader of the Oregon that they may pass us, then Megan and I rested on the comfortable 2nd belay station and waited for the second of Oregon team finish climbing the first pitch. The sky was looking very cloudy today, and I occasionally hear rumbling in the distance. But it has been like this since we got here, the day before was the same weather, and we still climbed two very good routes.

The second of Oregon team got to the belay station, talked with her leader, and they decided to decline our offer to let them pass. Ok... well... it was a little unexpected, but I guess I will be in the front. Come to think of it, every time I've offered to let others pass me (three times so far), they have all decided not to. Anyway, so I racked up for the 3rd pitch, which was rated 5.8. The route was pretty similar to Great Arch (5.5) at Stone Mountain, NC. Learning from the Great Arch, instead of trying a strenuous layback on the corner crack the whole time (which was what I did on the Great Arch), I tried to smear more and just use the crack for balance and place gear. I found it not too difficult at all, and the crack ate up pro really well. Pretty soon I was at the 3rd belay station, and set up to bring Megan up. Megan climbed quickly (my first two passive pieces popped out which helped), except when she had to remove a nut that was tricky to clean. I didn't remember placing anything too hard to remove, but somehow this nut just didn't want to come out. With now two teams behind us, I almost told Megan to leave it, but she eventually got it out, and quickly came up to the anchor.

Megan cleaning the 3rd pitch, the team from Oregon waiting below

I racked up again to lead the 4th pitch, again rated 5.8. But it didn't feel very difficult, and I was again at the anchor without much trouble. Megan came up quickly, this time we didn't even have gear getting stuck.

Running it out on the 4th pitch

The next pitch was 5.7, so Megan decided to take the lead, which she did quickly and effortlessly. I started seconding, and decided to use only friction slab technique so I can get better at it. I was doing pretty well, only touching the crack to remove gear... until it started drizzling. But wait, "it's ok, it's only a drizzle, just like yesterday, right? It will stop soon and dry up quickly." Or so I thought. I got to the top of fifth pitch, the next pitch looked short, and the guidebook said it started out with easy 5.6 climbing to a tricky 5.8 exit. Well I've done the two 5.8 pitches, didn't find them very challenging, and we were just a short pitch away from the top. So I decided I should climb fast, get to the top before it got too wet. That was the worst decision I've ever made since I started climbing.

It was still just a small drizzle right now, but the rock was getting wet. What more was that the corner crack we've been following have sealed to a seam by now. I climbed up 10 feet, and was finally able to get a green alien in a pin scar. The 5.6 friction moves suddenly felt really hard when the rock was wet, and even though I was too far from the anchor, it felt as if it was impossible to reverse my moves back to the anchor. I still thought the rain would stop soon, and the rock would dry out, so I made another couple of shaky moves upward, and found another pin scar, which would only take another green alien. But I don't have another green alien! Looking up, I saw the route went on like this, with not much pro at all. I start to felt that I got myself in a jam. The rain was coming down harder now, I stood in one spot for a long time, couldn't back down, yet couldn't trust the friction moves to go up. There was another pin scar just barely out of my reach, if I could get to it, place another piece, then I maybe able to climb up to the low angle ramp that I see above the corner crack. But with only one green alien between me and the anchor, I was too scared to stretch too far and make the move to the next pin scar. I stood there for a while, cursing myself, and finally I kneeled down on one smear, reached my left hand below me, removed the green alien below, and replaced it in the pin scar at my chest level. Now with a slightly shorter fall if I were to peel, I felt slightly more confident in pulling the move. Balancing on a wet smear, pawing down with one hand, and maybe even touched the green alien's cable loop slightly, I was able to stretch and get my fingers into the next pin scar. I moved up to it, and promptly placed a yellow alien in it. Now having two pieces between me and the anchor, and with corner turning to the left and ease off in the angle, I made some increasingly easy moves, and got to a ramp before the crux exit. The ramp was big and low angle, there was even much dirt and pine needles collected in the corner. But the crack did not reappear, and there was no place for pro for 20 feet or so, until you get to the crux. About 5 feet below the crux was a slight bulge in the slab, with some dykes running through it. Normally this would be an easy move to pull over, but now the rock was totally wet, and the smooth crystal in the dyke seemed extra slippery. "F*CK!" I was really cursing myself now. I was 15 feet above my last pro, and looking at a pretty hard, unprotected move before my next gear placement, and I was just too scared. I was scared that if slip and fall, I may stop on the low angle ramp, or I may slide all the way back to the anchor. It would a low force fall on low angle slab, not going to be dangerous, but it would probably take a layer of skin of my hands. And after making these 5.6 friction moves to get up here, I didn't think I could have reversed them. So I was effectively stuck there, at least by my own fear, not by difficulty of the climb. I radioed down to Megan, "there is a unprotected section that's wet, I think I'm just going to hang out here for a while." Then I looked at the move above me, tried to move up... nope... too slippery, move back down. Looking down, rope disappearing around the low angle corner 10 feet below me, with the yellow alien probably another 5 feet below that. Don't really want to downclimb that either. There was another team to my right, climbing the last 5.6 pitch of some 5.9 route. Their leader started the last pitch after I did, but he moved quickly and confidently, while commenting to his second, "man, sure is wet up here!" Soon he would be at the top of their route, and I was still stuck half way up my pitch, drowning myself in my own curses. I saw an easy way out. I didn't want to take it, I really want to get over my own fears and finish this lead. Yet if I took the easy way out, then I don't have to worry about anything. My time was running out, I had to make a decision before these guys get to the top and walk away. Finally, I admitted defeat and reluctantly I yellled over to their second, "Hello, could you do me a big favor? Would you lower me a rope when you get to the top?" "Sure! We'll do that once I get to the top. I don't blame ya, it's getting really wet."

I felt totally relieved, yet very deflated at the same time. Could I have finished the last pitch? Maybe, but I really shouldn't have started it in the first place. I really wanted to get to the top, instead of bailing on the last pitch, and made a bad judgement call. I should learn from this experience.

The other team (from Victoria, Vancouver Island) got to the top, set up a quick anchor using the trees, and lowered me a rope with a figure 8 knot on a bight. I clipped into the knot with two locking biners, and proceeded to toprope the last half of the last pitch. Even on a toprope, pulling over the slight bulge on the slab felt tricky. The crystals were indeed very slippery. The crux exit was tricky as well, my feet slipped a few times due to wet shoes, I think I may have weighed the rope (or at least, the guys from Victoria kept me on a very tight belay), jammed and chimneyed up the final exit. Thanking the guys from the other team, I put Megan on belay on one of our double ropes (we worked it out so she untied from one of the doubles and left it for the team from Oregon to TR on). Megan made it up to the anchor shortly, and I belayed the leader of the Oregon team on our other double rope. She had a little bit of trouble pulling the crux exit, to save time she placed a green alien to pull on in aiding her past the exit. She then belayed her second up on their single rope (I wasn't sure if they had another rope to retreat with).

When everyone safely on the Broadway Ledge, we coiled ropes and started the scramble down. By now it was really pouring, and my thought of the rain would stop was long gone. An easy scramble down along a big crack on a sunny day, made me stop and asked to be put on belay. Megan was more confident in making down so she sent me down first. I tied in to one of the doubles, and placed a few pieces of gear in the crack, which was pretty much a little stream running with water. I belayed Megan down, and we followed the normal trail downwards. We stopped to check if the Oregon team would catch up with us, but they apparently decided to rappel down the 3rd class variation from the "waterfall", so we never saw them again.

The team from Oregon setting up to rappel the downclimb, notice the waterfall in the crack

We followed the trail through the woods, and down into the boulder fields below the Apron, where we quickly lost the trail. At least the road was close by so we knew which direction to go. After some heavy bushwhacking, we got back on the road, and walked back to our rental car.

The Apron right after we got down to the road

Compare to the Apron when we started in the morning

The rest of the day was spent eating lunch at Corner Cafe, checking the weather in Skaha, eating dinner at a sushi restaurant, and soaking in hot tubs at the rec center.

Shannon Falls, the day before and the day after our epic on Diedre

Climbing adventures in BC - day 4 of 10, crack climbing on slab, sweeeet

2005-07-04T13:20:00.000-04:00

Megan is feeling even better today, yet still not 100% to go on any multi-pitch routes. Not a problem, we could check out another area that is scenic and has a classic must-do climb, Klahanie Crack (5.7) at Shannon Falls. A late start in the morning, breakfast at Sunflower Bakery, trying to figure out whether to park at Shannon Falls or the Chief campground (so Megan doesn't have to walk too much)... when we eventually took the long approach from the Chief campground to Shannon Falls, it was about noon. Just as we got to Local Boys Slab it started drizzling. It wasn't a big rain, just enough to wet the rock slightly. Oh well. We decided to wait around for a bit and see if the rock will dry out. Another team got there a little later, and they decided to wait as well. I saw them last night while cooking dinner at the campground, so I chatted with them a little bit. Turned out they were from England, traveled around Canada for a while to climb, and getting ready to go back to England soon.

Shannon Falls

The drizzle soon stopped, just like the first day we were in Squamish, and surprisingly the rock dried up quickly. I figured this must be the way the weather was here, this little assumption would cause me an epic later, but right now, the two British climbers racked up to climb Cardhu Crack (5.8) on the right side of the Local Boys Slab, so I racked up to climb Klahanie Crack (5.7), this beautiful looking hand crack that goes right up a slab. The guidebook said this is a must-do, and I agree. There were great hand jams one right after another on Klahanie Crack, it was excellent. The moves were all continuous and sustained at the same difficulty level. The only problem was that I was wearing my Evlov Kaos, which was pretty painful for toe jams. It was pretty painful to stop, stand on a toe jam, and place gear. When I finally got to the anchors, I was hurting pretty bad. But I still liked the route (just remember to bring suitable shoes next time when climbing cracks). Megan cleaned the gear, and enjoyed the route as well. It wasn't 35m long like the guidebook said though, we were climbing on 70m double ropes, and I was able to set up the rappel by doubling one of the ropes, and there were still plenty of rope left when I got back on the ground.

Beautiful jamming on Klahanie Crack (5.7)

The British team were done climbing Cardhu Crack as well, but they elected to just call it a day. I racked up and led Cardhu Crack. The first part was very easy, with multiple cracks and big no hand stances. The crack was hand sized, since I had great stance, I decided to made a stacked-placement with two medium nuts, which would not fit anywhere on the route on their own. Save the bigger gear for the harder part, eh? The only thing I didn't do was to clip the second nut to the first one somehow so it won't fall down when removed, but I was trying to conserve gear for the route above.

Stacked nuts, old school

The multiple cracks thined out into one hand crack, pulling over a small bulge (which was the crux), then hand and fist jams on a slab to the anchor. The moves were more varied than Klahanie Crack, my feet weren't hurting as bad since there were stances around, and there was a cruxy feeling section. I think I enjoyed leading Cardhu Crack even more than Klahanie Crack. Megan seconded and took a photo of my stacked nuts (I asked her to), then we rapped and called it a day. The only other route in the area I could lead was another 5.8, which share half of the route with Cardhu Crack. Two great routes in a day was good enough. We went back to camp and cooked vegie-burger for dinner.

Megan jamming on Cardhu Crack (5.8)

Climbing adventures in BC - day 3 of 10, I hate friction climbing

2005-07-03T13:21:00.000-04:00

After much rest, Megan seemed to feel better. Not 100% yet, but good enough that she wanted to climb something. And the weather also seemed to be better, at least it wasn't drizzling anymore, and sometimes you can see blue skies. So after breakfast in Squamish (Sunflower Bakery was unfortunately closed on Sundays, we settled for the cafe down the street), we decided to check out Upper Malamute - an area with great scenery and good concentrating of routes, according to the guidebook. There were two approaches: a short one and a long one. We somehow couldn't find the short approach even though it was right under our nose, and took the long approach. The view on the Upper Malamute was great, it sits right above Howe Sound, with unobstructed view to the water.

View from Upper Malamute

Megan instantly set her eyes on a 5.10a slab called Pacing the Cage.

Megan: "Oh that looks like fun. Can we climb this first?"

Me: *whines* "I'm not good at friction climbing. Can't we toprope something easier first? I can't lead that."

Megan: "Fine, I'll lead it then."

Me: "Fine, you lead it then."

So Megan set up to lead Pacing the Cage, and delicately smeared up the slab with non-existing holds. This kind of climbing is actually good for her because it doesn't hurt her injured finger tendons. She was soon as the anchor and asked whether I want to lead it or toprope it. "Ummmm... let me just toprope it first." I put on my shoes, moved up a few steps, and was stuck. The crux on this route came right at the beginning when you have to smear up a steep bowl in the slab. Even on a toprope, I couldn't do the moves. I tried going left, tried going right, but just never felt I had a secure foot placement. After stuck there for a long time muttering how much I hate friction climbing, I eventually pinched the bolt hanger between my fingers as a handhold to help my progress, and even then the moves were really hard. I made it to the second bolt and grabbed the draw (well I already pinched a bolt hanger, so why not?) to lean back and rest my burning calves. The rest of the climb eased out some, but the whole route left me totally deflated.

Shaking like a leaf on Pacing the Cage

Now it was my turn to pick something to lead. Forget about this friction slab business, I want something with some features so I can hold on to. I want something easy so I can get an ego boost. Looking through the guidebook, I picked a route called Jacob's Other Ladder (5.8). I mean, come on, it's a ladder, how hard can it be? So we rappelled down to the base of the route, and I racked up to lead it. Ten minutes later I was still on the ground. This was another climb in which the crux comes at the beginning. I was totally shut down by the beginning moves. Worst was the fact that the only pro I could get at the beginning was a green alien I could place from the ground, then there was no other pro (and you probably couldn't get a hand free to place any) until you pulled after the crux. Feeling even more deflated, I was ready to call it quits, when Megan suggested I try to use a tree stump to by pass the beginning crux moves. So I did, after a few hesitant tries, and the rest of the climb was way easier than the crux move. But it was quite runout. The ladder (a dyke) did not offer much oppertunity for gear, there were two face bolts on this route, after clipping the second bolt, there was no gear placement to be found (save for maybe a medium cam just a few feet above the seond bolt) until the anchor. The moves were easy, but after I clipped the anchor, I looked down to the second bolt... if I fall right at the anchor, I may very well end up back on the ground again. Runout, I tell you.

Runout on Jacob's Other Ladder (5.8). Megan was standing at the last pro before the anchor

Getting thoroughly beaten on two climbs, I didn't feel like trying anything harder. Megan lead another friction slab - Ya Gonna Do Something or Just Stand There and Bleed? (5.10a) which I didn't feel like toproping, seeing how even she had some difficulties on that climb. So it was my turn to lead again, I was eyeing this 5.8+ route called High Mountain Woody, which the guidebook gave a 5-star and raved about, "Must do classic!" However when we got there, another party was already on it, with their leader bringing up two or three people still below. Their leader recommended another route nearby - Stefanie's Tears, which was two pitches, 5.9 and 5.8. I decided to lead the second, 5.8 pitch. The pitch followed a short corner crack, more vertical than most climbs at Upper Malamute, and it was very good. The lower part had some big foot holds allowing good rests, but soon the corner became smooth, and it was a strenuous layback all the way to the top. I soon started to get pumped from the layback - probably because I was placing my feet too high and making it hard on myself. Placing gear became difficult for the pump factor, half way up the route I was feeling a bit shaky. But to my right was a short squeeze chimney, since I always try to find the path of least resistance, I stemmed out to the right, sidepulled on the chimney, got myself over to the right and wedged myself in the chimney to depump, much to Megan's dismay, "What are you doing?! You're definitely off route!" I say "pffft!" to that, if I can reach it on lead, then it is fair game.

De-pumping from the layback on Stefanie's Tears P2

After 5 minutes of de-pumping, I placed another piece in the crack while stemming from the squeeze chimney, and I was on my way again, made it to the top without TOO much excitement (the exit moves to the anchor was slightly harder than it appeared, took me a little off guard). I brought Megan up, she made short work of the layback, but agreed that it was a bit strenuous and hard to place gear. It was an excellent climb, I enjoyed it. So we ended the day on a high note, went back to the campground and cooked Udon noodles with pork for dinner.

Climbing adventures in BC - day 2 of 10, not a great start

2005-07-02T13:22:00.000-04:00

When the morning came, the first view of the Chief was very impressive. From the campground, you can almost see the First Peak of the Chief, which is 610 m (or 2001 feet) in elevation. Since the Chief is located right next to Howe Sound (which is connected directly to the Pacific Ocean - sea level), the First Peak of the Chief raises about 2000 feet above the campground. As a comparison, Seneca Rocks raises about 900 feet above the valley floor. So when standing under the Chief, it looks twice as tall as Seneca.

View of the Chief from campground in the morning fog

Since our bioclock was still on east coast time and we couldn't sleep past 9 o'clock, we got up, moved our tent to a better site (campsite #4), then headed into the town of Squamish to get some cash, groceries, and white gas. In the process of wondering down the street looking for an ATM, we found a great bakery (Sunflower Bakery) with excellent whole wheat raspberry scones. That was where we would come back often for breakfast. While buying provisions in Save On Food grocery store, Megan informed me that she wasn't feeling very well. She had a high temperature and was feeling weak and dizzy. That was not a good sign. My diagnosis? The previous day of much traveling, not much eating, and not enough rest has gotten to her. My prescription? Lots of rest, proper food, and vitamin C. So after getting some blueberries and other food, we went back to the camp and put Megan into her sleeping bag. I was hoping that if she got enough sleep, her body would be able to fight off whatever sickness was sneaking up on her. So while she napped in the tent, I went about setting up a slackline in camp, setting up a tarp, playing on the slackline... but generally I just lazed around camp and ate lots of food. Our first day in Squamish was not looking too good.

Slacklining in camp

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating either. It was drizzling a little bit, it wasn't a big rain, not even enough to wet my hair when I was sitting under the trees. But enough that we probably couldn't have climbed anyways.

So our first day in Squamish was a very low key day, full of resting, eating, and lazing about.

Climbing adventures in BC - day 1 of 10, in transit

2005-07-01T13:22:00.000-04:00

Getting up at a leisurely hour, leaving my truck at the Washington Metro station parking lot, riding the metro to Washington National Airport, two connection flights and roughly 11 hours later, Megan and I arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia. So our advanture begins...

The Canadian Customs officer was polite, but overly suspicious of Megan and I.
"How did you two meet, since one of you is Australian and the other is American?"
"We met while rock climbing."
"Oh, you're rock climbers?"
"Yes, we are going climbing at Squamish."
"Ahhh, so what kind of knife are you carrying?"
"Huh?"
"I mean you must carry a knife when you climb?"
"Ummmm, yeah, it's this small knife about this long." *Gesturing with hands*
"Does it have any sort of spring loaded mechanism?"
"... No."

Climbing gear and, apparently, dangerous knives

But we were finally let into Canada, and all is well. Picked up the rental car at Budget, the lady at the counter was very friendly and helpful. She even walked us out to the car in the parking lot, "Please be gentle with her, she's brand new." Our rental only had 42km on the odometer, hmmmm... not the smartest thing to give a brand new car to climbers.

As we drove through Vancouver, we came to a street with many Asian restaurants. Since we were hungry, we stopped and had a big dinner at a Chinese seafood restaurant, very good food, if a little pricy. After dinner we drove on, and promptly got stuck in traffic for a looooong time. The bottleneck? Some sort of police road block that was only allowing one lane of traffic to go by in a four lane highway. What the $@#@@!!

After the road block the traffic was light and smooth, but we still didn't get to the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park campground outside of Squamish until 11:30 pm, after they've closed the gate. Luckily the campground was very close to the gate, we walked in, found the first empty site, set up the tent while breaking all sorts of speed records, and crashed. It has been a long day. The Chief was not visible, just a dark shadow looming high above the campground against the night sky.

Bouldering at Hawks Nest

2005-06-26T10:04:00.000-04:00

First we were suppose to go sport climbing today. But then somehow we were talked into going bouldering. So bouldering we went, and after driving around in circles hiking down all the wrong trails, we finally ended up at Hawks Nest. Right in the hottest part of the day. I didn't boulder because I have to be careful with my elbow, so I took photos, but the light was too harsh for any good shots.

Mikl Law, who can out climb me in everything

Deepwater Soloing at Summersville

2005-06-25T08:42:00.000-04:00

More than twenty people, two pontoon boats, full day on the water climbing and cliff jumping. Good times.

Megan

"Whoa, it's getting a little high..."

Eric pulling a crazy heel hook

Backpacking in Dolly Sods - day 2&3 of 3

2005-06-19T09:07:00.000-04:00

Backpacking in Dolly Sods - day 1 of 3

2005-06-17T09:12:00.000-04:00

Megan's finger are hurting again, so this weekend we are taking a break from climbing and go backpacking in Dolly Sods, a rather unique area in the mid-Altantic states. The evergreens and the sub-alpine meadows makes it look like Canada instead of West Virginia.

Deepwater soloing at Summersville - day 3 of 3

2005-06-12T07:50:00.000-04:00

We checked out Pirate's Cove today, it is a longer hike than Whipperwill, but shorter than the "main" Summersville sport area. There is a waterfall about 30 feet tall that people were jumping off from, I would really like to try it... but it looks scary at the same time. It is safe, I mean, even little kids were doing it. The waterfall is on top of a big overhang, so the landing is as good as it gets. Maybe next time. I didn't take any photos, just swam around and enjoyed the water. I did pull off a flake of rotten rock when I was trying to boulder the overhang. Need to be more careful next time.

Deepwater soloing at Summersville - day 2 of 3

2005-06-11T08:48:00.000-04:00

Checked out Whipperwill today, short hike in, decent stuff to climb. I didn't bring a pair of shoes to trash so it was a bit hard to climb some of the stuff. Fun day in the water though!

Deepwater soloing at Summersville - day 1 of 3

2005-06-10T08:55:00.000-04:00

Megan and I went to NRG/Summersillve for the weekend with plans to do some sport and trad climbing. We drove down on Friday, arriving in the afternoon, and decided to head to Summersvile for a bit of sport climbing. However, it was so hot and humid, the water looked so inviting, we decided to go take a swim. But once we were in the water, there was no turning back. It was just so much fun to play on the boulders in the lake! We got out and half heartly tried to climb Jeff's Bunny Hop, but the rock was still wet from the rain, and we just didn't feel like climbing it. We ended up bailing and going back to camp. For the rest of the weekend we didn't pull out any of the climbing gear we hauled down there, and it was great!

Climbing at the Gunks, June 3-5

2005-06-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Megan's flatmate back in Australia Val arrived in DC on Friday. Ocean, Megan, and I picked her up, then drove all night to the Gunks. We slept for a few hours, then was rudely awaken by loud gear sorting in the parking lot. So we went and climbed some easy stuff. Ocean and Val went bouldering, while Megan and I went climbing. The next day we climbed half of one climb before it got too hot and we had to bail. All in all, I wasn't too impressed with the Gunks. It was crowded, hot, the rock wasn't the nicest I've seen, and it was supposed to be pretty expensive just to climb there.

Climbing at Red River Gorge, May 27-31

2005-05-31T09:10:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day weekend. I took two days off from work so now I have a 5-day weekend. Megan and I went to RRG for some climbing, and at the last minute we found out that the RRG Rendezvous was going on the same weekend, Miguel's was going to be packed! Oh well, we went anyway, and had a pretty good time. I flailed on some 5.7s to 5.9s, fell a bunch on a 5.10a, TR'ed a 5.10b, and climbed a few nice routes, it was a good trip.

Climbing at Old Rag, May 14-15

2005-05-15T14:28:00.000-04:00

Terence leading Vegemite (5.4)

Megan and the view

A Newt

The de-proach

Climbing at Seneca

2005-05-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

Went climbing at Seneca after Clare's b-day party on Saturday. But Megan and I ended up teaching Clare and Henry how to climb trad, and not climbing anything ourselves. It was too cold to climb anyway, windy and freeeeezing.

Going over Clare's placement

Climbing at Annapolis Rock

2005-04-24T15:45:00.000-04:00

It's the end of April, and it snowed today. What's wrong with this weather? I climbed at Annapolis Rock with Megan, Mikl Law, Ness, and Jen Linko. But it was so cold, Ness and Megan didn't climb (they both hurt their fingers), Linko toproped a 5.8 that Mikl set up for us. I toproped the 5.8, then belayed Mikl on Faint's Roof (5.10a), "the best route in Maryland" according to Mikl. And having hangdogged the route while clipping the gear Mikl already placed, I have to agree with him, it was a really fun, juggy route! Can't wait to get strong enough to come back one day and lead it.

Belaying Mikl

Hangdogging Faint's Roof (5.10a)

Climbing in Red Rocks - day 3 of 3

2005-04-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

Today was my last day in Red Rocks, my flight back to the east coast leaves the next morning at 8:04. Today's grand plan was to link Johnny Vegas (5.6R, 4 pitches) and Solar Slab (5.6, 7 pitches) together into one long day of 11-pitch 5.6 fun. Well, that WAS the plan anyways. Megan's injured finger was hurting a little, and my fingers were starting to get sore from crimping too much on plastic. Also, Megan's friend Ben (who's also from Australia) asked last night to join us on some multi-pitch trad adventure. So we had a new plan: to climb Johnny Vegas as a team of three, then climb as much of Solar Slab as we can with a turnaround time of 3 pm (Megan flies back to DC on the same night).

So the plan was made, and the plan was set in motion. Figuring Monday would be less busy than Sunday, we set the alarm for 6 am.

Megan and Ben were already awake when I got up, they were listening to Tammy's story of the rest of the posse's legendary exploits last night: selling a cooler full of beer on the Strip, then gambling away the earnings. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the three of us had to miss all that for climbing.

We packed up all our belongings into the rental car while failing miserably at trying to be quiet. A short breakfast at a gas station later ("Boer, do you want a bite of this strawberry pie pastry thingy?" "Uhh..." *looking at the unnaturally bright red filling* "No, but thanks."), then we were back in Red Rocks. The weather was looking to be as nice as yesterday, sunny with just a thin string of cloud in the far distance, but it was kind of windy. I was getting a bit chilly just standing in the Oak Creek parking lot, which contained only two other vehicles at 7 am.

The approach to the Solar Slab Wall was twice as long as Mescalito, and ten times as treacherous. I mean, good god, we had even crossed into... *eerie music* THE WILDERNESS. There was a sign in the ground and everything. It looked very official. The fact that the inside of the wilderness did not look any different than the outside of the wilderness, does not matter. We were in the wilderness, and there was a sign to prove it.

At one point when we were scrambling onto a low boulder, Ben lost his balance, tilted precariously backwards, with arms swinging in the air like a windmill, no doubt on the brink of death from falling over... two feet, to the ground. Megan saved the day by sacrificing herself and bravely pushing Ben back in balance. Actually I think she just wasn't paying attention to where she was going and bumped into Ben from behind, but Ben didn't have to know that. He is now forever indebted to Megan for saving his life.

Another miracle, and by miracle I mean a demonstration of my supernatural navigational skills, brought us to the base of Solar Slab Wall without any detours. There was already one party on the first pitch of Johnny Vegas, the leader was just placing his first piece. That was fine by me, as I was breathing a little hard, sweating heavily, and my thighs were burning a little - results of my job driving a computer desk all day. I needed a little time to rest. This was fine by Megan too, who promptly lay under the sun and took a nap. Megan wasn't feeling well, so she would be just seconding today. Ben may swap leads with me if he felt confident leading on gear, but he hadn't lead trad since last year, and wasn't totally trusting gear on sandstone.

The leader of the other team climbed very fast and efficient, soon both the leader and the second were out of our way (and we never caught up to them for the rest of the trip). Just as I was racking up for the first pitch of Johnny Vegas, another party of five showed up at the base of Solar Slab Wall, apparently intending to climb Johnny Vegas as well. I quickly started on Johnny Vegas, with Ben belaying and Megan napping. I wanted to make way for the other party as fast as I could... which was not very fast at all.

Right off the deck, Johnny Vegas felt steeper than Cat in the Hat. Later I found out that in some guidebooks Johnny Vegas is listed as a 5.7. The moves were still within my limits from a pure climbing ability perspective, but mentally I was more challenged on Johnny Vegas than Cat in the Hat. There were more than one spot on the first pitch that I was a little scared, combined with a little harder route finding and less opportunity for gear placement, it took me quite a while to lead the first pitch.

Early in the pitch there was a section of left leaning crack on a half-moon shaped depression, which made the crack just slightly overhanging. The handholds were juggy but not very close together, and the footholds were a bit small. I thought it was a bit tricky to climb, and stopping to place gear was quite strenuous. I climbed through the overhanging section, stopping near the top to fiddle in a piece, but I was starting to get a little pumped. Eventually I gave up the placement and just climbed up, stopping to place something at the first good stance I got. Whew!

Higher up the pitch, that left leaning crack I've been following disappeared, left me with what appeared to be a fairly easy face with no gear placement. I climbed a bit too far left, in order to place a piece of gear in a crack. Then I had to climb right again to get back on route, which added tons of rope drag.

Eventually I made it to the anchors, feeling just a bit less than terrified. I set up the belay and started to bring Megan and Ben up at the same time, each climbing on one of the double ropes we were using. The belay was a double-bolted small ledge 160 feet in the air, which was more exposed than any of the belay stations on Cat in the Hat. The view was great, but I was mostly thinking about the tricky lead on the first pitch, wondering if I was up to the challenge on the rest of the route.

Megan and Ben were making steady progress on the first pitch, but then I heard Ben yell something (we only had two FRS radios. Megan had one, I had the other), and his weight came onto the belay device. He then yelled something else again, which I thought was, "Slack!" Thinking that he may have fallen on a blank section of rock and need to get lowered a bit to get back on, I started the a bit complicated procedure to feed out slack with an autoblocking belay device. "Boer, aren't you going to take up some slack?" Megan radioed up after a few minutes. "I thought Ben needed slack." "No, we need you to TAKE UP slack." "Oh." Happy that I didn't have to go through the whole shenanigan of lowering with a B-52, I started taking in slack again.

Megan and Ben on Johnny Vegas

When they finally reached the anchor, I found out that a foothold and a handhold had broken off at the same time when Ben was climbing, so he fell. Not a big fall since he was on a toprope, but now Ben was all sketched about leading on such "dodgy" rock, he would not be taking the lead on the second pitch.

Their story didn't instill confidence in me either, but if I didn't lead the next pitch, our only option would be to bail. I contemplated our next move. The second pitch started with a vertical crack in a small corner, at least it looked well protected. I decided to lead on. The corner was easy to climb, and took large cams and hexes very well. When the corner ended, I move right along a ramp, then I was lost. The face in front of me was low angle and looked easy, but there were no apparent gear placement. Looking for the path of less resistance with the most opportunity for pro, I traversed right around a blunt arete, and saw a low angle crack with jugs everywhere. But the rope drag had me stopped dead in my tracks, this was definitely not the route.

After a bit of up climb, down climb, right climb, and finally, left climb, I eventually got back on route, which followed a vertical crack to my left that was hidden from view by all the features on the rock. The rope drag was very bad because I had slung a knob far to my right. Rope drag and getting off route were fast becoming the theme of my leads on Johnny Vegas. The last section to the 2nd pitch belay was a bit runout, but somehow it didn't feel nearly as terrifying as the first pitch, and I was soon at the anchor belaying up Megan and Ben. The five person group behind us had gotten tired of watching me shaking on 5.6 moves and getting lost all over the place, by this time two of them had gone off to a different area to do something else, and three of them were climbing as a team on Bealah's Book, a 5.9 route to the left of Johnny Vegas. These guys were tough, I wonder if they use cactus as hairbrushes.

Two pitches down, two more to go. After leading the second pitch, my confidence was back, and I didn't try too hard in talking Ben into leading pitch three. I flipped the rope from my anchoring sling to Ben's sling, and off I went. Moving quickly, and with great efficiency I got myself lost again. Well, I take that back, I didn't get "lost", exactly. I knew very well where I had to go. The third pitch was supposed to be the most challenging pitch, right off the anchor there was a big run out slab to the right of a single bolt, 20 or 30 feet from the belay. I could see the bolt, how to get there was what I had trouble with. Going straight up from the anchor and traversing right to the bolt was 5.9 friction climbing, not something I'd like to try on lead. Traversing right would make it a runout 5.4ish slab, but just how far right? Well, the only way to answer this question was... by using scientific experiment! My hypothesis was that, by traversing as far right as I could, and eventually getting stuck somewhere, I would be able to empirically measure the theoretical right edge of Johnny Vegas third pitch. Plotting the distance from the belay station against the coefficient of Elvis Leg, and I could get a graph of rope drag vs. the "#%@#!" factor.

Of course, for any given scientific experiment to produce relevant data, you have to repeat it more than once. So in the name of science, I climbed up the first 30 feet of the third pitch, then down; up, and down; up... a total of three times. In the end, I found out that the only way not to get totally stuck by rope drag was not to traverse around the blunt arete, and just go straight up at the arete. The moves were very easy, in fact they were easier than the airy traverse.

After passing the bolt, the route then went up and right of an impressive looking overhang (glad I didn't have to pull over that directly). I traversed slightly left again once I was above the overhang, then following up a shallow right leaning crack. I was happily plugging gear into the crack when I heard a voice from above. "Hey." I looked up, it was the leader from the three-person team who was climbing Bealah's Book. They had gone a pitch ahead of me while I was playing with my little science project. I replied, "hello." "You know you have an anchor to your left, right?" "Really? That's interesting. Bolted?" "Yes." I poked my head around a low face to my left, and there it was, a two bolt anchor, and I was above it. DOH!! "Thanks!" I said, and started down climbing. Again. Cleaning gears from the crack. Which I had placed. Just two minutes ago.

Another traverse on low angle rock while fighting tons of rope drag, and I was at the anchor for the third pitch, bringing Megan and Ben up. The last pitch of the route was short, and went at 5.0 according to Supertopo. Ben finally felt hardcore enough to lead something, so I passed the rack to him, and plunked down on the belay ledge, finally able to relax a bit and enjoy the view. Ben led up the last pitch of Johnny Vegas, placing as much gear as he could, according to him. But I don't know... the 6 feet runout between the first piece and the second piece looked awfully scary.

Ben was at the last belay in no time, and quickly set up the belay to bring us up. Megan and I climbed this pitch with bare feet, because somehow she talked me into believing this would be a smart and fun thing to do. I guess it was fun... for her... to watch me suffering. My super sensitive feet with my baby soft skin did not like direct contact with rough sandstones and pointy knobs very well. I was wincing and whining on every step I took, while Megan was dancing around me laughing at my expense.

We were finally at the top, enjoying the fantastic view out to Las Vegas. It felt great to have climbed so high, nothing else was higher than us (and by "nothing else", I mean "everything else"). My watch read 1:30 pm. We coiled the rope, taking a short break to demonstrate the proper technique in making a huge pile of tangles with a set of double ropes. Ben's last lead still did not give him enough confidence to lead on this "sandcastle", as he referred to the rock quality. This meant that I would have to lead by msyelf if we were to push on, but I was pretty mentally spent from leading most of Johnny Vegas, and having to climb up and down more than a few times. We decided to at least scramble up to the base of Solar Slab and take a look at it.

We scrambled some 3rd class terrain up this huge terrace, which was really cool to look at, with bands of rock running horizontally across. Solar Slab looked like an awesome route, but the first half of the first pitch was 5.4 runout slab, and after leading Johnny Vegas, I was not particularly interesting in doing more runouts. So we decided to start rapping down Solar Slab Gully, saving Solar Slab for the future when we are faster climbers in better shape.

Ben above Johnny Vegas

Rappelling Solar Slab Gully was a fine adventure in canyoneering (or canyoning as them Australians would call it) with more trees and less water. It was when we started the first rappel of Solar Slab Gully I saw the two-person team from earlier, they were rapping from what appeared to be the top of Solar Slab. Man, they were fast. But at least they weren't able to catch up with us on the rappel. Ah ha! We had awesome rappelling powers. Going down Solar Slab Gully was quite straight forward, save for a bit of excitement when Ben and I thought Megan was dropping our rope through one of the rap anchors. But everything worked out in the end, Megan was not crazy, nor was she entirely evil, and we were back on the ground by 4 pm.

Reversing the treacherous approach, hiking out of *eerie music* THE WILDERNESS, we got back to the car, drove to Powerhouse Gym for a quick shower and a change of clothes, then met up with the Last of the Vegas Posse - Terence, Tammy, and Ming - similar to the Last of the Mohicans but with a hint of Asian flavor. We all decided to go to the Belagio for *happy music* THE BUFFET, which was excellent, especially the desserts.

After *happy music* THE BUFFET, Megan left with the Last of the Vegas Posse to the airport for their red eye flight back to the east coast. Ben and I were the Last of the Last of the Vegas Posse, and we wandered around the sin city aimlessly looking for stuff to keep us awake, occupied, and yet still financially sound. We settled for the free light show on the Old Strip. Ben, being the energetic young buck that he is, was totally ready to paint the town red... or gold... or whatever color he was thinking of. I, being an aging old man that I am, was totally beat and getting increasingly sleepy, as I had missed my afternoon nap. Finally around midnight, I told Ben that I couldn't stay awake anymore.

Thus I ended my adventure in Vegas by sleeping on the backseat of my rental, on the parking lot of a 24-hour Walmart. I'm a jet setter, I know. Ladies, ladies, please. Get a hold of yourselves, there are plenty of me to go around.

Climbing in Red Rocks - day 2 of 3

2005-04-17T11:02:00.000-04:00

I woke up three minutes before 5 am, before my cellphone had the chance to go "beep beep beep!" Today Megan and I were to climb this easy classic trad route called Cat in the Hat, which is 6 pitches high and goes at 5.6. I got up from the living room floor of Terence's condo (feeling a bit stiff because I didn't bring a sleeping pad), cracked open the door to the room Megan was sharing with Tammy and five others (spread around the floor like a human body mine field), and whispered into the darkness, "Megan, it's time." She bounced out of the bed and was ready before I turned around. Man, that girl likes to climb!

We loaded up the rental car with our packs and a rack big enough to aid up the Nose in Yosemite, and took off for Red Rocks. We got to the gate with 5 minutes to spare before the opening of the park, and there were already eight cars lined up outside the gate.

The race is on! Lucky for us, only one of the eight cars ended up at the Pine Creek Canyon parking lot. But still, I was silently trying to get the gear out of the trunk as fast as possible while eyeing the other party in the parking lot with suspicion. Megan, being a nicer person than I am, simply asked them, "What are you guys climbing today?" "Dark Shadows. What about you?" "Cat in the Hat." Both parties visibly relaxed. I decorated myself like a climber's Christmas Tree, with every conceivable piece of climbing gear except for Big Bros (but only because I do not own any Big Bros... I'm sure if I do own them, they'd on my rack somewhere), and we started down the trail toward the easily recognizable formation called Mescalito, complete with sound effects as I stepped: clink, clunk, clink, clunk.

The approach, Mescalito in the background

I've been looking forward to climbing in Red Rocks for two months, constantly scouring the web for any related trip reports. Now a typical Red Rocks trip report goes something like this:

"We woke up at 5 am to beat the traffic on this easy classic route called 'Wheelchair Accessible' in U-B Lost Canyon. We were the first one in the park when the gate opened at 6 am, then we spent 3 hours on the approach getting hopelessly lost, bushwacking through cactus jungle and fighting off the Desert Stripe Squirrel of DEATH. We finally found the route at 9 am, and there were ten parties already in line before us. Six of the ten parties were three-person teams, three were four-person teams, and one was actually an elementary school field trip that also got lost. Some of the these teams were very experienced, fast moving climbers... but most were really off-duty traffic cops practicing building road blocks in a vertical fashion. After waiting for 2 hours and taking a nap, we got on the route, and spent 5 hours climbing the first half of the first pitch, because one of the climbers decided to give a slide show for the elementary school field trip at the next belay station. At 4 pm we finally decided to bail, leaving behind five cams since that was the only way we could build an anchor in soft sandstone we would trust our bodyweight on. We started the hike back, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost for another 3 hours in a totally different direction. It seemed that as the sun is setting, all the plants and rocks in the desert grow legs spontaneously and suddenly, walk around, and randomly relocate themselves. We got back to our car at precisely 8:01 pm, and there was already a ticket on our windshield for staying past the park closing. We were so disheartened we shaved our heads and became monks in a Tibetan monastery."

You know, your typical trip report with a slightly tragic ending. In all the TRs, everything seemed to go wrong after the protagonists got lost, so I was a bit wary of getting ourselves lost, checking the guidebook every two minutes. Our guidebook, being totally accurate and very user friendly like all guidebooks are, essentially said this about the approach: "Hike. Turn left. Scramble." With such detailed instruction, along with my superior sense of direction (just a week prior to this trip I was showing Megan how to find the North Star by searching the southern night sky and proclaiming the stars were too numerous to see the Big Dipper), we managed to get to the base of Cat in the Hat with minimum sightseeing.

I started my pre climb ritual: racking up, putting on sun block, change out of my approach shoes, go to the bathroom, eat a snack, take a nap... "Hurry up!" Megan had already flaked the rope and tied into the ends, with belay device in hand. Geez, that girl REALLY likes to climb. I started up on the first pitch of Cat in the Hat, which follows a left leaning crack on a broken face. The moves were easy, and there were plenty of gear placements. The rock was still a bit strange to me, juggy holds and big huecos everywhere, but all the knobs and flakes seemed a bit... fragile. So I stepped up gingerly.

Soon I was passing the belay ledge for the first pitch. After reading the guidebooks and talking to people who have done this route, it seemed logical to combine the first two pitches. Above the first pitch, the angle of the route lessened even more, and even though I put long slings on every piece of gear, I was starting to experience a lot of rope drag.

I got to a big ledge where I thought the P2 belay should be, but I didn't see any bolts. Hmmmm. I took the topo out from my pocket and tried to match up squiggle lines with rock features, and it seemed like the anchor should be just around the corner. I tried to walk around the big corner to my right, nothing. I tried to climb up a low angle crack/corner to the next ledge, the rope drag was pulling me back down. Hmmmm. Megan radioed up, "Boer, how's it going?" which was our unspoken code word for "what are you doing up there? Hurry up!" I radioed back, "It's going ok. I'm trying to find the anchor." I lifted a small rock nearby to see if the anchor was hiding under there. Nope. I was a bit disappointed. Finally, I decided to climb up to the next ledge, and if the anchor is not there, set up a gear belay. Fighting terrible rope drag, I hauled myself up onto the next ledge, and to my great relief saw the rumored three-bolt anchor to my right. But much time was wasted looking for it.

I set up a belay and brought up Megan, who dispatched the first two pitches with speed and ease because 1) she is a very good climber and 2) she had become very cold standing in the shade. We coiled the ropes, made a short 3rd class scramble up and right to the base of the next pitch, which was Megan's lead. It was a short pitch, Megan was at the next belay station in no time. I seconded up the third pitch, it was a good lead on Megan's part, there were some awkward moves. but the pitch itself was too short. I felt a little bad for Megan as I took the lead for the next pitch, which was suppose to be one of the two best pitches on the whole route.

And it was excellent. The pitch followed a crack up to a small roof, but you traverse left before the roof, and climb around it to a low angle gully. The belay was a big block with slings around it, I backed it up with a #5 Metolius cam in a crack, and brought Megan up. There was a shiny looking yellow DMM cam stuck in a crack just around the small roof, Megan wanted it very bad. She spent a while working it, wiggling it, probing it, singing to it, and finally had to leave it behind. I thought we could try to get it again on rap, but unfortunately we didn't get the chance.

Megan again ended up with a short and fairly uninteresting pitch: a short traverse down and to the right on some low angle rock. She climbed it quickly, brought me over to the belay, and to repay her for all the crappy pitches she had to lead, I gave her the lead on the last pitch, which along with the 4th pitch were the best pitches on the whole route. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that there was a bit of 5.6 slab runout near the top of this pitch, and since I'm super hardcore, of course I should let my partner take the crux pitch.

Megan on P6 of Cat in the Hat

Even with suicidal sparrows that were dive bombing Megan, she calmly led the last pitch, which was a near vertical face with a crack running down the center that ate up pro like me in a buffet. She then fought some rope drag on the runout bit, getting to the anchor with ease. I seconded and cleaned, enjoying her excellent lead with the safety of a toprope, and we were soon both at the top. The view was great, we were only half way up the Mescalito formation, but it already felt pretty high. We sat at the top for a while, enjoying the sun and the view, but remembering the horror stories of stuck rope and epic rappelling we've been hearing, we soon decided to start our descent.

It was a bit windy that day, so I tried a trick I knew but never used: I coiled the rope in two slings attached to my harness, and rapped with the rope hanging below me to prevent wind-blown snags. But we soon abandoned this practice because 1) it really wasn't THAT windy, and 2) the rope was kinky and like to get themselves into a tangling mess.

We rapped the 5.10b arete variation to prevent rope snag, and we were back at the P4 belay when we met the only other party on the route the entire day. It was our lucky day, we should have played the slot machine that night or something. I chatted with the leader of the other party as Megan rapped down to the tree anchor on pitch 3. The other party was a two-person team from British Columbia. They just got in to Red Rocks that same day and decided to run up an easy multi-pitch route.

Megan rappelling the 5.10b variation

We rapped from the tree anchor (while Megan commenting all the time how dodgy it was), down scrambled the big ledge between P2 and P3, and then two more rappels we were back on the ground. We stopped at every single rap station to lessen the chance of our rope getting stuck, and apparently it worked. My watch read 2:30 pm, we still had a lot of time before it gets dark. Our options were: 1) to go climb as much of Dark Shadow (5.8, 4 pitches) as we can; or 2) to soak our sore muscles in a creek nearby and lounge lazily under the sun. Being hardcore climbers, of course we had to pick option 2)... the water in the creek was icy cold, it would be good for Megan's injured finger... yeah... that's it. So we sat on warm boulders near Pine Creek, watched the other party climbing Cat in the Hat, said "hi" to passing hikers, and basically just relaxed and enjoyed the good weather.

Two hours later, we hiked back to the car, congratulated ourselves on a good day of non-epic climbing, and went back to the condo to meet up with other hardcore climbers (who climbed till much later than us) for all-you-can-eat buffet.

I had a huge plate piled high with assorted sushi. Life was good.

Cooling off in the stream

Climbing in Red Rocks - day 1 of 3

2005-04-16T11:03:00.000-04:00

"Ding ding ding!" That was the sound that greeted me when I got off the airplane. I scanned the terminal, and there it was, rolls and rolls of slot machine lined up right in the middle of the hall. This was how I know I was indeed in Vegas.

One and half hour later, I was standing right next to my rental car at Red Rocks, with a trunk full of shiny metal things, looking at the massive amount of rock in front of me and remembering that Megan had both of my Red Rocks guidebooks. Hmmm... finding the Panty Wall, where I was suppose to meet up with the rest of the gang, would be a challenge. I grabbed my shoes, my harness, and my camera. My plan was to wander around aimlessly, ask random strangers for directions, and if I failed to find anyone, I'd boulder around for a bit and have a good time. But luck was on my side, just as I was walking down the trail, I met the early departers Jason, Gil, and Oscar. They pointed me to the right direction, and soon after I was united with the rest of the Vegas posse.

Unfortunately, the Vegas posse was leaving to go slacklining. Nooooooooo!!! James, Reed, and Doug took pity on me and decided to stay and climb some more. We moved to the Magic Bus, where we found three other parties already there, some leading, some toproping, all have ropes up here and there and everywhere. After a bit of diplomacy, James roped up to lead what he thought was Blonde Dwarf, 5.10 (but after checking my guidebook when I got home, I believe the route we did was actually the 5.9 Electric Koolaid to the left of Blonde Dwarf). James made short work of Electric Koolaid, and Doug and Reed decided to climb it on toprope.

I wanted to stay on lead as much as I could, so I roped up for Ken Queasy (5.8). The first bolt is a bit high off the deck, so James placed a green Camalot as my first piece. After clipping the first bolt, the moves became fairly easy, I was able to claim an onsight.

Now Doug was leading Neon Sunset (5.8), so I decided to lead Electric Koolaid. The first bolt was a bit high also, but the moves getting there were easy enough so it wasn't too bad. Since Doug and Reed left the draws up there, I had an easier time climbing it. The last bolt on this route was a bit tricky to clip, the handholds were not huge like all the previous bolts... until one climbs just a bit higher and found this huge jug for the left hand. I made it to the anchor without too much trouble.

Doug finished leading Neon Sunset now and getting ready to take off, the sun was low on the horizon, but I decided to do a quick lead on Neon Sunset. It was a nice route, pretty closely bolted, fairly easy for its grade. I rap off Neon Sunset just as the last ray of the sun left the Magic Bus, a fitting route to end the day.

Climbing at Franklin

2005-03-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

I had grand dreams for the weekend: I was going to onsight a few 5.13s under a clear blue sky at Franklin on Saturday, then on Sunday in the cool spring breeze, with the help of visiting Australian rock star Megan Dunn, I would put up a few bold first ascents at Seneca in the "5.11" range - which of course would be 5.12s everywhere else.

Then I woke up on Friday. Well, at least it was a good dream, while it lasted. And then weather was cold and dreary on Friday. And I have a whole bunch of junk I need to move to my new (and very old at the same time) place. And I was tired from all the packing and the moving of boxes. And I was feeling stressed because I didn't think I could finish the move before my vacate date.

Friday evening came and I've only managed to move half of my stuff. So I had to call Megan and apologize to her, for we would not be putting up any bold FAs at Seneca on Sunday. She would have to settle for one day of bolt clipping at Franklin, and watching me doing the Elvis dance on a 5.8.

I dare to say I rocked the move even better than Elvis himself.

After moving boxes into the wee hour of the night, and getting a little sketched seeing the neighborhood teenagers (I assumed that they lived in the neighborhood) standing around the street corner doing... apparently, nothing... which was even more suspicious. I crashed on the floor of my old apartment (because my bed has already been moved) and woke up 4 hours later, ready for a sunny and warm day at Franklin. Oh one can always hope.

Getting to Vegas's house after an 1.5-hour drive and a slight detour (in which I got hopelessly lost), I met up with everyone else, who had spent the night at Vegas's place: Megan, Henry, Gil, and of course the world famous Vegas himself. We dragged Megan out of her slumber so early, she was forced to climb in her pajamas (with cute Snoopy prints) for the rest of the day. Rumors of wild parties the previous night were in the air, but none was willing to speak. What happens in Vegas's house, stays in in Vegas's house. After a very good breakfast (thanks Vegas!), we set off to Franklin, totally ignoring the fact that we had to use the windshield wipers on the drive there.

It was still quite misty when we got to Franklin (without any detours thanks to Henry), but the rock looked dry. We went to Impact Zone... because that's where all the easy routes are. Vegas set to lead First Aid (5.7 - his first outdoor lead) with Henry belaying, And I belayed Megan, who eagerly jumped on Castaway (5.8)... almost too eagerly, I didn't even have my harness on and she was already clipping the anchors. After I lowered Megan from Castaway, Henry and Vegas were swapping places with Henry leading First Aid. Since the easiest route in the entire gorge was sadly taken, I had no choice but to get on Castaway. It was more awkward and pumpier than I remembered... having already climbed this on TR on my first trip to Franklin last May. It was about the third bolt when I remembered I was supposed to entertain Megan with my Elvis impersonation, so I went at it with vigor. I got to the anchors without hanging or falling (boy that would've been embarrassing!), clipped myself in with a PAS (a daisychain-like contraption), and promptly dropped the rope... so I can take some non-butt shots of Gil leading, and also to show him how to clean the anchor. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Gil led the route without showing any signs that he liked Elvis. Pity. I went through how to clean the anchor with him, but he seemed to know most of it already. Megan lowed Gil, I rapped after him, but before I even touched down on the ground Megan was already eager to get on something else. I waited around a little longer, watching Vegas doing another nice lead on Castaway, then we moved to Belly of the Whale (5.7). The condition of this route was strangely similar to the last time I climbed it (Jon Moen led it and I TR'ed it). Bottom 2/3 of the route was nice and dry, but the top 1/3 was a waterfall. Megan asked, "So who wants to be the draw monkey?" We all looked at her expectantly (I with a mouthful of clif bars). She pretended to sigh and look unhappy, but she didn't do a very good job. So Megan had the pleasure of warming up the hand holds for the rest of us, while Gil belayed. She had to do a tricky little hand sequence to get the crux move, using a non-existing crimper for her left hand. But she did it without much trouble, and soon was swimming to the anchors for her second onsight of the day. I redpointed the route after Megan, bypassing the little crimper she used at the crux for a better jug higher up - since I remember the route from the last time I TR'ed it. Vegas went up after me, he had a little trouble committing to the crux, but he got it after figuring out where the jug was (NOT everything with chalk on it is a jug).

Megan was eager to get on something else (a bit warmer) again, so we made our way to Jumpstart (5.8). At this point Megan decided climbing with me will never give her a good aerobic workout, so she proceeded to drop her down jacket on the trail. The down jacket was stuffed in its own sack, which was round and bouncy, so it rolled ALL THE WAY down to the road, and Megan scrambled after it. Meanwhile, being the perfect gentleman that I am, I fiddled with my backpack to look busy.

Vegas soon joined me, upon learning about Megan's down jacket misfortune, he scrambled downhill after her to give her a hand. Realizing his gentlemanly gesture could potentially cause me my climbing partner for Red Rocks, I hesitantly scrambled after him, carefully keeping myself above him so 1) I didn't have to walk as far as he did; 2) if I were to slip and fall, at least I take someone with me. Luckily Vegas came to his senses that there was nothing much we could do to help, so he stopped shortly after we started the down scramble. Megan retrieved her down jacket from the road, taking a short break to chat with a fisherman, "No, I'm not crazy. Yes, there are cliffs up there." and fought the long uphill battle to get back on the trail. She looked a little rosy faced and breathing heavily when she got back, no doubt because she was so excited to go climb Jumpstart.

We finally made it to Jumpstart safely, even the down jacket. Vegas roped up for his onsight, taking the cave start with enthusiasm. After a bit of confusion, in which he tried every move known to man except a figure-4 to get on a big jug, he led the rest of the route without much trouble. Megan flashed the route after Vegas, carefully skipping the bit of confusion that stumbled Vegas in the beginning.

Since I've already led Jumpstart on my last trip, I decided to save my strength for a... ummmm... harder route. So we moved to where Shipwreck was, just when Henry and Gil were heading over to climb Jumpstart. So we left them to fend for themselves yet again, sorry guys! But my mind was preoccupied with my next route... since it was my term to lead, and there was no getting around it. I wanted to do Shipwreck, but it is listed as a 5.9+ in the guidebook, and I've had some surprises with the pluses, especially at Great Falls and Carderock. So I'm always a bit wary of anything with a plus sign next to it. To the left of Shipwreck there was a 5.9 called Wasp that I have not heard of (turn out there was a good reason why I've never heard of it), no plus, no minus, just plain 5.9. I decided to give this route a try.

The first bolt was low enough, maybe 10 feet off the ground. But it was on a face, and the face looked pretty hard. To make things easier on my spotter, I climbed a big crack to the left of the bolt, which essentially extended all the way to the anchors. One or two 5.7 moves, maybe even 5.6, and the first bolt was reached. From there I traversed out to the face, then a mantle, and I was on a big ledge with a low angle scramble up to the second bolt... that was about 15 feet above the first. A bit runout for comfort, but at least the moves were easy. I clipped the second bolt, looked up for the third bolt, and a little voice in my head screamed "nooooooooo!!" The third bolt, or from where I was standing, what appeared to be the third bolt, was at least 20 feet higher than where I was. It was situated on a slightly bulging face, definitely not an easy scramble to get there. I thought about bailing, but bailing after essentially two 5.6 moves and then a stretch of 4th class scrambling would not help my hardman image. I mean, how would I ever get sponsorship and free redbulls for life if I don't at least TRY to lead some 5th class climbing. So I pretended to try, but in fact I was just going to climb up two more moves then call it a day and go eat fried bananas. Sadly two moves later I discovered the real third bolt located on a low angle face, hidden from view from below. I pretended to be pleasantly surprised by it, yet secretly I was cursing my luck: now I have no excuse but to finish leading the thing.

Somewhere between the second and the fourth bolt, the route got seriously chossy. There were at least two big white X's marking where you shouldn't pull, but what was left unmarked shouldn't be trusted either, until you beat the crap out of it with the palm of your hand first. The route also went from low angle to a bit past vertical at this point, so I stepped up gingerly, trying not to pull the whole route off on top of myself and my belayer, and getting pumped at the same time. At one point, I think it was the fourth bolt, I was making a long reach to my right to clip it, and suddenly feeling myself barn dooring. I quickly grab the rock with my right hand and caught myself. "Whew!"

I think the crux of the route, besides not pull off any loose rock, was the move to the anchors. I clipped the 5th bolt, made an attempt to pull up to the anchor by hauling myself high on a jug, lock off my right hand, then reaching up with my left hand and pawing for a good hand hold... basically, not using any good technique. There was no jug for my left hand, at least not anything I could use in my present body position. So I downclimbed back to the last good ledge, then traversed left and stuffed myself inside the crack I mentioned earlier. By jamming my body in there, I was able to get a good no hand rest. I looked down at Megan and Vegas pleadingly, hoping they'd take pity on me and say "I'll lead it for you!", I even had the puppy eyes ready. But they were both looking at the ground, pretending not to notice me. Nowhere to go but up, I took a deep breath, came out from the comfort of my hiding place in the crack, worked my feet up on the arete, and used a sidepull/layback move using a good hold for my right hand, and stepped up to the jug where my hands were a second ago. My left hand was still frantically pawing for a good jug, failing to find anything I could call a jug, I stuffed myself into the crack yet again. Megan and Vegas must be getting bored, they were awefully quiet down there. After a bit of depumping (I seem to need depumping after every move), I nervously left the comfort of the crack, got my left hand on a fairly good hold on the lip, and tried to clip the anchor. I got one quickdraw in one of the anchors... feeling my left forearm burning... "clipping!"... pull up slack to clip... too short... bite the rope, pull up some more slack... left hand can't hold on much longer... why am I having trouble pinch clipping... why is my left palm so sweaty... of course all this happened only in a few seconds, but I decided that I will not able to clip the rope, so instead of risking a long fall, I dropped the slack and quickly went back to my "happy place" in the crack, tail tucked between my legs. After another depump session, during which I think I heard some snoring from down below, I figured out that I could stem my left leg, and make a long reach right and barely get the quickdraw on the bolt. This time I was successful. Thank god.

I'll skip the mini epic I had trying to fix the draws so the gates on the rope can be opposed. I got lower to the ground, and promptly told Megan and Vegas, "Oh it wasn't too bad." Haha, suckers!! Megan went after me, with Vegas belaying. She disliked the choss factor as much as I did, and after using the same no hand rest I used at the 5th bolt, she decided just to go straight up the crack, using a bit of chimney technique here and there. And she said she doesn't like chimneys. Right. Vegas went up last, getting to the anchor without major epics. Henry and Gil showed up after finishing Jumpstart, but neither of them showed any interest in climbing Wasp. That was too bad, it really was... a... nice... oh who am I kidding. No wonder why no one ever mentions it. So Vegas cleaned the anchor and got lowered.

It was getting late by now, we only had time for one more route. Somehow, Henry and I talked our fearless leader Vegas into leading the super classic Blood, Sweat, and Chalk (5.9+). Racking up all the quickdraws he brought on this trip, the fearless leader sets out into the unknown. The first half of the route was slightly overhanging but juggy, Vegas made short work of it. A short rest on a small ledge half way up, and Vegas was ready to tackle the second half of the route. The holds are rounder and less juggy here, and it was still a bit overhanging, so there were no good rest stances. Vegas clipped the last bolt, and was baffled by the last moves to the anchor. I TR'ed this route last year, and I didn't even do it clean then. I remember the last moves pulling the small overhang were not obvious at all, and I think many people get tricked into going left or going right. I tried both ways, finally just power through the middle to the anchor. Vegas tried going right, but he seemed to have trouble getting a good hand hold, after climbing up and down once or twice, he decided to commit to the move, but still was not able to pull it. "Falling!!" I caught him on a small pendulum fall, but he was ok. He hauled himself back to the last spot, rested for a bit, then fired through the middle of the overhang to the anchor. This time he made it, although later he said he barely had enough strength left to push open the wiregate on his quickdraw. It was a great lead, his first time leading outdoors, and it was the sixth route route he led that day. Vegas was our hero.

It was getting dark now, Megan was too cold to enjoy anymore climbing, I decided I will not be able to lead Blood, Sweat, Chalk in better style than the way I led Wasp, so Henry and Gil toproped on Blood, Sweat, and Chalk, then we packed up everything up and started the long drive back to DC. In Harrisburg, Henry saw this little Vietnamese place before I-81, next to the $1 sushi place. I wanted $1 sushi, but everyone else thought it sounded kind of sketchy, so we decided to give the Vietnamese place a try. It turned out to be a REALLY GOOD place, the noodles were excellent, and the fried banana was really good as well. I think it will become our favorite place to stop for dinner after a hard day at Franklin. Vegas brought back a menu from them so he can give everyone better directions.

It was a good day of climbing. The weather was not the best, but the rock was dry... for the most part. Thanks to Vegas for driving and letting us crash at his place. Thanks to Megan for being the draw money. Thanks to Henry for letting me use his brand new hot pink rope. Thanks to Gil for putting up with us. We got on some good climbs, I remembered how much of a chicken I am on lead, Megan learned that "Canyoning" is "Canyoneering" in the US, Vegas became my hero, Henry was wondering why Gandalf was smoking his pipe while Pipin was laying in bed in "Return of the King", and Gil was just Gil. Now that you've all bored to tears, I will release part 2 of this TR called "The Long Drive Home" when you're less groggy.