(last fall, me leading Proctoscope. wearing the same damn t-shirt I wore Saturday. Same pants too, I think!)
(Rob on Erect Direction)
(Rob on the lower section of Proctoscope. Gotta love offwidth!)3
Proctoscope (5.9+)
Erect Direction (5.8) P1 only. Followed Rob
CCK Direct (5.9) P2
Nosedive (5.10) toprope
I may have said this before, but March is NOT a spring month. It is definitely still winter. As we say around my house: "Is your willy really chilly?" The answer on Sunday was a resounding YES! It was once again climbable (for the hardy), but colder than forecast: low 40s and mostly cloudy. These conditions are about as cold as I'm willing to climb in, and my willy was most definitely chilly!
Saturday was warmer, but Saturday was a cleaning/chores day at my house. I went up solo on Sunday (kicked out of the house by C who was tired of me moping!), and hooked up with my friend Ranger Rob and his friend Ben.
Bad things happened at the cliff on Saturday. When I heard, I almost bagged on climbing. (I am a superstitious climber) Someone took a nasty fall on Bloody Mary (5.6), hit the ground, and (from what I hear) broke his C2 vertebrae. Scary stuff. I guess they were giving him CPR on the way out. Also, someone dropped a #2 Camalot and clocked a guy I know over the head: 2 stitches; and I heard that someone slipped off Ape Call (5.8R) and fucked up their ankle. Bad mojo. But anyway...
So apparently at this point in the season, 5.9 feels exactly as hard and scary to me as 5.7. I suspected this might be the case...
We started out by me leading Proctoscope, a nice one-pitch 5.9+. Nice warm-up. (when guys climb together, we tend to do stupid things like lead 9+ off the couch). Actually I've done this particular climb about a skillion times (I think I've led the pitch at least a dozen times), and I kind of have it totally wired. Fun climbing though, and good for morale. And going into it, I definitely had NO idea how it was going to go. The old medecine still works. More or less.
Next, Rob led up the first (5.8, the easy pitch) pitch of Erect Direction. Which was fun, of course, and I took some pretty pictures.
Then, being as we were up on the GT (Grand Traverse Ledge: a more-or-less wide, grassy ledge about halfway up the cliff which traverses most of the length of the cliff band), and seeing as no-one else was on it, I led up CCK (Cascading Crystal Kaleidoscope) Direct. One of the most aesthetic climbs around, anywhere for my money. I hadn't done it in a couple of years. (For reasons I don't entirely understand, it scares the crap out of Christine. And there tends to be a line for it on weekends. Which is when I am allowed out.) Beautiful. Sorry, no pictures, I was busy climbing. But beautiful nonetheless. It was pleasurably terrifying, and I felt good moving over rock. Funny thing is, the scariest part for me was also technically the easiest. You have to move (ahem, layback) up a crack in a brilliant white face a couple hundred feet off the ground. The moves are easy, but intimidating. At least I was intimidated; I was intimidated as HELL. I sunk two ginormous nuts (Ben, the last guy up was unable to remove one of them, and sliced his hand pretty good trying) before trying the moves. Which went fine: the moves aren't hard, they're just scary as all fuck! What a fantastic climb. When I finally got up to the top (placing a #2 Camalot over my head at the last crux, suddenly turning a precarious dubious perch into a little toprope problem), I felt like King of the World.
Rob wanted to lead Nosedive, a very nice 5.10. Amazingly (maybe because it was getting seriously freezing!) there was no-one on it. He led it, in fine style. Ben tried very hard to get it on toprope, but couldn't make it up into the crux section. By the time it was my turn, my willy was definitely chilly. I lost my hands as soon as the touched the rock: it was like climbing as Captain Hook: just place that numb claw on a hold and pull! But that which does not kill me can only make me stronger, right? And at this point in the season (HA! Who am I kidding, I always want to climb more!), what I need is more mileage under my belt. So it was fun. If cold.
It was a good day of climbing. I feel bad for the fallen climber: his family and friends. If you're the praying type, spare a prayer for him. I'm not the praying sort, but I have the utmost respect for those who are. And you know what? It could just as easilly have been me. Godspeed.
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