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.
