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