Snowy Climbing Day at Cannon

Destination - Moby Grape - the classic long moderate of the Northeast. 

The amount of snow we see gives us some pause - perhaps less than it should have. We decide to take two ropes and my bigger hexes in case we need to bail. Some knee deep post-holing on the way in. 

Climbed Reppy crack + pitch above in one long pitch. Some wetness. Some gobies. Haven't had gobies on 5.8 handcrack for a few years now. Sheets of water above. We rapped off. Almost went to Rumney. Ate some food and decided to go for Whitney-Gilman

Reppy's crack - 80 ft of splitter goodness

Traversed the base of the cliff - not too bad.

Footprints/Postholes from our traverse 

First two pitches had some wetness but were fun in the sun. For P3, we took the 5.8 hand crack variation, and went directly up the north facing side through the pipe section. This was seriously cold. The sun also went over the cliff by the time we finished P3. 

Belay on top of P2

Mike in the vicinity of the pipe move 

P4 and P5 were wetter and priority changed from having fun to getting to the top - pulling on pitons/whatever.

Getting into wet cold socks

Top out. See bail slings. Wear our wet shoes and socks. Can't find the walk-off. Now the bail slings all the way down the route make sense. Aided by Mike's woods-sense and (to a limited degree) smart phone GPS, we are back at the carriage road after a 2 hour bushwhack/snow whack involving a whole lot of knee deep (and quite a bit of crotch deep) post-holing.

Glad for certainty and solid ground.

Part of the way up WG, we start getting an unusual number of phone calls/text messages. Focused on getting to the top, we ignore them for a while. The ping-ping from text messages starts to pile up. We check and see Cindy's message about the bomb blasts in Boston and Ebru's saying that the family was in the clear. Disturbing news, but distant in our little pocket of wilderness. The worry for friends or the extent of the rent this would create in our world comes later.

Three Days in the Needles (Day-1)

5/25/2012 A small cam a little ways below my feet, the slowly thinning laser cut finger crack down to a seam, I need to make quick decision whether or not to grab that bunch of that bunch of penstemon flowers or take the ride.

How did I get here? Should I blame it on the altitude? Tiredness of the 3rd straight climbing day? Approach and deapproach of the previous two days? "Oh, I can climb 5.9" hubris?

On top of Dome Rock early in the morning. Silhouette of the Needles on upper left corner 

The flowers held - maybe due to the homage I paid them that dawn. Or more likely because they are tough, in addition to being pretty. I made a move or two and was able to grab something less ephermal and more substantial - that solid, rough, featured Needles rock.

5/22/2012 I wait over an hour for John and Alan to pick me up at Los Angeles airport - it is easy waiting at LAX - harmonizing people watching with trying to puzzle out the mysteries of long dead poets in a half understood language. We leave the airport in John's big-humungous-white-van rental. The city seems reluctant to let us go - it is well over an hour before the traffic thins and we can sense the hills as a vague darkness looming outside our personal light-tunnel on Interstate 5. The interstate gives way to a winding 2 lane road along the Kern river; our plans to drive most of the way to the Needles gives way to the need to find a place to sleep.

5/23/2012

Waking up at the side of the road after 3-4 hours of sleep

Coffee at shop run by the devout at Lake Isabella 

First glimpe of the Needles - Voodoo Dome on right, the Magician on left, other magical entities in between

Then begins the ninety minutes of off-trail slip sliding to get to the base of the climb (White Punks on Dope on Voodoo dome - 5-6 pitches, 5.8+, super-duper-classic http://www.mountainproject.com/v/white-punks-on-dope/105844453). The approach has a bit of a reputation, but we did not help ourselves by starting at the wrong spot, rather than at the obvious cairn on the tree stump. Every few minutes we would find signs of previous passage, we would follow "trails" (being very generous here) of this sort for a short while before needing to improvise around thickets, over boulders and steep scree. Eventually, we hit the base of the dome skirted left until we see the Needles (west side of the Warlock). A few more minutes and we are at the base of the beautiful dihedral handcrack that constitutes pitch-1.

John belaying me on P1. From good hands/fist, the crack thins out to not-much. 

Alan at the "not-much" end of P1

After a couple of delicate moves to get past the roof, Alan ran P2 and P3 together and is having fun belaying John up

P4 is a beauty. Left foot smears, right foot in thin crack in the corner, right shoulder scumming. Repeat with variations for 80+ feet.

Had a moment of panic when placing all my small cams and having difficulty getting a nut in. One more move and then the nuts were almost placing themselves. 

John at the   wide-crack layback section at the end of the P4.

"Happy and you know it" at the top of P4.

Setting up for the runout face of P5.

But first, getting a lone piece in for the runout corner. A small but good nut that kept Alan out of John's lap.

Steppin' out ...

Up ...

And away. Alan missed the 4th bolt and went straight up - the slippery way. John and I were holding our breath here.

The finger crack goodness of P6

Alan sinking his fingers in

At the top 

Yay - now how do we get off this thing. And get dinner at the Ponderosa

Pretty

Pretty (and tough  penstemon) 

 John, The Warlock

One rappel

Back at the van. And it is still daylight. Good thing too, since Alan was the only one together enough to be carrying his headlamp.

Between the last two pictures, was some initial decision making to find the trail. We managed to stay mostly on-trail - due to John's ability to sense the existence of the trail one drainage over - till we popped out 100 yards from the van at a clearing marked by cairn on top of a stump. I believe some trafficking with occult powers did occur.

Now for the mad rush to the Ponderosa for some hot food. It was almost an hour's drive - this included John powering through some "controlled-drift turns" on a very rutted forest service road in the big-humongous-white-van. The fact that we did not see a single car during this hour long drive should have tipped us off. Indeed, the Ponderosa was closed. PB&J it is.

Tomorrow Igor Unchained on the Witch.

Adirondacks with Paul and Saesha

Friday
Paul and Saesha drove through some doppler-red thunderstorms and got to Albany at 10.30pm. Saesha was fascinated by the floral wall-paper and Paul by the "love-nest" red carpet in my bedroom. The dogs Trango and Canyon were excited in anticipation of being outdoors.

Saturday
The forecast was for low temperatures and high winds. Somehow this added up to a decision to go to Noonmark. The 2 mile hike, turned into a 2mile hike with a 2300ft elevation gain - we were not prepared for this since, with my usual flair for planning and organization, I had a topo map for the wrong park of the Dacks. The hike up was a bit of a grunt with the usual "are we there yet" second guessing that happens in the absence of a map.

It was quite pleasant at the top, sunny and cool, when the wind was not blowing. Unfortunately the wind was blowing most of the time. Hard. Communication with 40 ft between climber and belayer - fuggetaboutit. It brought home the brilliance of our decision to climb on the summit of a peak exposed to wind and weather on a day when 20mi/hr gusts were forecast for the valley. Hindsight and all that.

But, the view of the slides on Dix and the rounded EKG of the Great Range were quite spectacular; and we did two good routes. Though most people would consider the hiking/climbing ratio skewed it was a good day in the woods. We climbed

1. Center Route (5.7 with Saesha doing the 5.8 start since I was reading the topo upside-sideways and told her that it was the 5.5 variation; a variation that didn't exist)
2. The most excellent Weissner Route (5.8) which had little bit of everything - chimmney, finger crack, handcrack, fist crack, offwidth.

Back at the valley floor, we found a place to camp (with some difficulty) and cooked dinner. It was an odd combination the hobo-esque and the upscale. Picture three people huddled around a stove in a small opening in the woods; varied ingredients are added to the pot and they eat straight out of the pot, swabbing the gravy clean off the bottom of the pot. Then picture that the pot is cooking lamb chops with bell peppers and there is some red wine being drunk with brie on crackers as hor-de-oeuvres.

Sunday
We decided to stick close to the road and decided to climb the El (5.8) Pitchoff Chimmney Cliff. We just couldn't figure out where the climb started till a couple who had done the route previously pointed it out to us. The second pitch is a 100ft traverse neccessary to avoid the humungous roofs below. So the directly (80ft) below my feet is the ground and directly opposite is the lovely Cascade Lake - a very photogenic pitch. The next pitch is a splitter of all sizes up through a couple of bulges - it felt hard.

The drive back went by quickly as Saesha and I had a raging argument about motivation and blame in US Foreign Policy. Atleast, I was raging, Saesha called it a discussion - maybe her Public Policy degree will make her a diplomat.

An interesting article about Adirondack life and culture

Moby Grape - A east coast classic - Cannon Cliff

Sunday August 5 2007

Caffienated, I start driving at 3am.

The MP3 player has Joni Mitchel singing "A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway"

The plan is to meet the Albany crew at Canon and climb Moby Grape (Mark and I) and Whitney Gilman (Andrew and Nick).

By the time we hit the trail at 6am, there are two parties ahead of us. So much for not climbing under another party at Canon.

Moby Grape has 3 fantastic pitches:

1. P1 "Reppy's Crack" - a splitter that would be more at home in Yosemite than the fabled cracks of Yosemite.
2. P3 "Triangular Roof pitch" - the roof move is quite a crank
   
3. P4 "Fickle Finger of Fate" - which we avoided by climbing a corner to its right.

Next couple of pitches are grassy and wander quite a bit - the crux is probably figuring where to go from the grassy ledge. Thankfully the party ahead of us (Bill and Doug) figured out where this pitch went. Then a interesting connect the dots rope-stretcher took us to the top. I think we did the route in ~ 7 pitches.

Here is the summit shot thanks to Bill Neacy


The descent could have been a bitch but we met up with some people who were very familiar with the walk off, which almost felt like it would become a fly-off.

In addition to the list of 3 good things about Moby Grape should be added

4. A swim in Profile Lake.
   

Moby Grape ~ 5.8 ~ 8 Pitches ~ 900ft. Route description from Chauvin Guides
Mark's description of the day

Recombeast - 3 classic pitches at Cathedral

Sunday 12 Aug 2007

A brilliant sunny day, almost too sunny and we were glad for shade and a dip in the Saco river before the day was done.

Nate Hribar and I were beaten to the start by 3 old-schoolers who graciously allowed us to go ahead.

P1 (guidebook P1+P2) definitely kicked me out of the "this is 5.5, I'll just cruise along" mode.

P2 was the god-awesome Beast Flake (belayed around the corner to get in the shade and to climb the next 2 pitches in 1).

P3 (combining the last 2 pitches in the guidebook) was the long classic dihedral to the top.

A dip in the river mellowed us to face the traffic (2hrs20min on the way in 3hrs30min on the way back) back to Boston with equanimity.

Recombeast ~ 5.9 ~ 3pitches ~ 400ft. Route Description from Chauvin Guides