Long weekend climbing trip to New Hampshire, the 2nd one...

[dagibbs]

I decided that the August long weekend was a good excuse for a climbing trip. figure__it__out was off to a wedding this weekend (who schedules wedding during climbing season?), so I planned this trip with Phil, a Brit currently resident in Ottawa. We talked about choices: Kamouraska (Quebec), the Adirondacks, but decided on Rumney.

So, Friday we drive down to Rumney and find the D'Acres hippietastic farm where we'll be staying -- he's camping, and I'm dropping my bed roll in the yoga room. While I'm setting up, I'm greeted by a familiar voice, apparently Mara who I had met in March at El Potrero Chico had ended up at the same place this weekend. Always nice to run into someone I know.

Saturday we headed for the Parking Lot and Meadows walls -- we did 10 routes, mostly 5.7 and 5.8s, though we did pull in one 5.9 and one 5.10a. We both lead the easier ones, and Phil lead the two harder ones, and I followed them, hang-dogging a bit. By the end of the day, our fingers were feeling pretty abused by the sharp edges on the Schist at these walls, though we were really appreciating how solid the feet were.

Sunday, to give our fingers a bit of a break, we we decided to drive over to Whitehorse Ledge. We'd discussed various routes: Standard Route, Beginner's Route, Dike route, Sliding Board; but decided on Dike Route (II, 5.6, one star, 8 pitches). We both soloed up pitch 0, about 100' up to a sloping ledge where we roped up. The book says there's a single-pin belay at the right end of the ledge, where the dike starts up, but we weren't able to find it -- so belayed from a sinlg ring-bolt near the middle. This made pitch 1 closer to 5.3R across the slab than the 5.2 up the dike. I lead pitch 1 and 2 easily, with pitch 2 being a long (150') run up the dike with occasional protection. Pitch 3 is where the climbing started to get serious (5.6), but it went ok. For pitch 3 & 4, the route finding was less obvious than "follow the dike", but I think we got it mostly ok.

Pitch 4, I lead out what I thought was the route, got about 50' out, and couldn't figure out how to pull the move left over the overlap, so I down-climbed (and cleaned) back to the anchor. Pulled out the guide, tried to see if there might be an easier way -- but every other choice looked harder (5.8R up to 5.11+). So, I lead out again, failed to pull, and lowered back to the anchor to let Phil take a shot at it. (Phil is a stronger climber than me, but not nearly as experienced at Trad leading, nor quite as comfortable on slab, so I'd been doing the leading so far.) Part of the problem I ran into was a lot of moss on the slab, making the friction a lot worse. Phil found a way over the overlap, and up to the next anchor.

We were now looking at pitch 5 -- an 80' traverse to the right below a big roof. It looked like a friction traverse, but again, most of the slab we were going to need to traverse across had a lot of moss on it. Also, neither of us could spot many good/clean gear placements. There might have been some along the hinted at crack at the base of the roof -- but they would be dirty at best. If it had been clean rock with iffy placements, or mossy rock with good placements, I think we would have gone for it -- but it was neither, and neither of us wanted to lead it. Also, the guide said that at the next pitch, you could rappel off with double ropes (probably 2 50m ropes, given the age of the guide, but reading the pitch descriptions, some were in the 150' range), and we just had one 70m rope. I was pretty sure (due to an intermediate anchor from another climb) that we could rappel from where we were on our 70m, and that if we made the traverse and wanted to back off, we'd have to lead back again. So... we decided to bail at this point. (I did clean a bunch of tat at this point, too. There were two new rappel-ring anchors, plus a bunch of tat on some old bolts -- with nice new bolts, the tat wasn't needed.)

As we finished the first rap, it started to rain a bit, though it stopped quickly enough that it didn't even get the rock detectably wet. I re-inforced a rap anchor at the next stage with some cord. Two of the raps tooks us within about 1-2 meters of the end of the rope, but we did get down ok. Just as we were pulling the rope on the last rappel to the ground, it started to pour -- soaking the cliff. At that point, we were very glad we'd decided to back off, rather than trying to finish the upper (friction) slabs on soaking wet rock.

We drove back to Rumney, and did 3 more easyish (5.6-5.7) climbs before calling it a day.

Monday we packed up and headed for the 5.8 crag, where Mara and a friend (Schalk) were also climbing. I brought my trad rack, because the 5.8 Crack in the Woods (5.7) looked like a fun climb. We both did 6 different routes, both leading them all, and each ended up doing a 2nd climb on one thing, for 7 total climbs. Mara and Phil both borrowed my rack to climb the 5.8 Crack in the Woods, which is a really fun climb that takes gear very well.  (Rumney is, very much, a sport-climbing destination.  Trad climbing there is kind of wrong, but also kind of fun for being wrong.)

Comments

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Sounds fun, although some of the lingo gets beyond my familiarity: I don't know the trad climbing stuff much.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Hm... I can try to translate or explain any confusing bits, if you like.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Lingo bits I didn't quite get:

II, 5.6, one star (5.6 I know, the rest I don't)

overlap

single-pin belay

5.8R

I did clean a bunch of tat at this point, too. There were two new rappel-ring anchors, plus a bunch of tat on some old bolts -- with nice new bolts, the tat wasn't needed.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

II, 5.6, one star

Ok, you've got 5.6. One star: like a star rating for restaurants, most guide books have a quality rating for routes, generally 1-3 stars (good, great, classic), none (either not good, or not enough information/commentary to rate) and often a "don't bother". II - this is a seriousness grade, from I to VII. Normal "cragging" is grade I, and it generally not noted. Anything above I suggests some seriousness, you can't just trivially lower off, and should expect to be on the rock for a while.

Grade I: one to two hours of climbing.
Grade II: less than half a day.
Grade III: half a day climb.
Grade IV: full day climb.
Grade V: two day climb.
Grade VI: multi-day climb.[11]
Grade VII: a climb lasting a week or longer

Overlap: this is something that I've seen commonly on granite slabs (less than vertical climbs), though it may happen elsewhere. Ok... to visualize what one is like, take on of your hands and hold it in front of you, back facing you, thumb down, at an angle about 15-20 degrees less than vertical. Now put your other hand on top of and in front of the first hand, with the thumb about at the knuckle of your first finger. Now, picture both hands being big chunks of granite... the height difference might be 1/3m to a meter or two, or even more, depending on the scale of the wall. And, there's often a bit of a crack/edge along the base as there is with your one hand overlapping the other.

Single pin belay: "pin" is a synonym for "piton" -- a piece of iron (probably older than I am, now) hammered into a crack in the rock. Belay - a place for one climber to anchor in and belay the other climber up the rock. This is describing a place where there should be one piton hammered into the rock, which we could attach to for belaying the next section.

5.8R. You should be familiar, already, with the 5.8 bit. For climbs protected by gear (trad climbs), there is an (optional) extension of the rating system to describe how good the gear is. They are kind of based on movie ratings; G, PG, R, X. G means there is generally good gear, solid, frequent, and (relative to the difficulty of the climb) easy to place. PG -- pretty good. R - runout, gear is scarce, a fall could result in a long fall with likely injury. X - very dangerous little to no protection possible, falls will likely result in severe injury or death, either from hitting the ground or a ledge.

I did clean a bunch of tat at this point, too. There were two new rappel-ring anchors, plus a bunch of tat on some old bolts -- with nice new bolts, the tat wasn't needed.

Tat: probably shortened from "tattered" - old slings, cords or other bits of fabric that have been tied around stuff (often trees, sometimes knobs or pinnacles), usually faded from UV and other exposure.

Rappel ring anchors: there are various different bits of stuff that can be attached to a bolt you've drilled and set in the rock. For climbing, this is generally a "hanger", an ovalish piece of metal that you clip with a carabiner. But, hangers are a bit sharp edged, and it is hard to impossible to pull a rope through them (they're not intended for that). So, when people put bolts in that are intended for people to rappel downwards from, they'll often use a different set up that has aluminum, or often, steel rings about 3cm wide on them. The rope will run easily through the rings, so can be pulled down easily after a rappel. They are usually done in pairs for redundancy. The old bolts had been setup with hangers, so the tat was connecting a couple of rap rings to the bolts, but with the brand new bolts (which were bigger and stronger than the old ones), the old slings and stuff weren't needed. So, I cut them off and took them down with me -- basically cleaning up garbage on the cliff.

Clearer?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Quite a bit, yes; thanks!

It sounds like an overlap is where two layers of rock are at a steep slope, and the upper one has partially eroded away; is that about right?

The G/PG/R/X ratings are cute.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

They may not be even at a steep slope, but yes, the upper one has eroded away.