Stitch it Up

Went to The Gunks with Scott this weekend.

The weather was sketchy at best with a forecast calling for showers overnight and thunderstorms in the afternoon.

We decided to make a go of it and went anyway leaving Friday night to stay in Newbourgh, then climbing Saturday to be home for bedtime Saturday night.

Sure enough it rained Friday night, so finding the parking lot nearly completely empty Saturday morning was not much of a surprise.

Yeah we had the whole place to ourselves at 8 am, but everything was soaking wet.

We started on Rhododendron, which is a 5.6 in the dry. Completely wet it felt more like a 5.9. Luckily Scott had led it many times before, and was able to pull through though the difficulty was above what he’d typically lead in trad climbing.

For me it was my first crack climb – and it was wet, but I didn’t fall and was able to climb and clean gear as I’d expected.

Chalk was pretty much useless. It just made mud in your chalk bag every time you put your sopping wet hand in there. The best course of action was to wipe your hand on the decreasingly available dry spots on your shirt and move on.

And move on we did – right over to Horseman a nice 5.5 vertical climb with a traverse out and around a very large overhanging block.

It was still wet, but people started to sprinkle in around us, which boosted our confidence somewhat. Upon reaching the belay station, Scott decided we’d make it a multi-pitch ascent and belayed me up to get anchored in and then belay him up and over the top. By this time the sun started poking through the clouds and the rock above the trees actually began to dry out.

With the potential of dry rock above the trees on multi-pitch routes, we scooted over to The Near Trapps to climb Gelsa.

The first pitch was squirrely at best. It went up only a little before it began a long traverse left before it went up again over slopey hard to reach holds and up to the nice corner that made for a comfortable mid-climb belay. From the belay it went straight up to the top and unfortunately through some running water down the face. Having started like we did, the wet wasn’t much of a problem and the pitch was actually the best of the day.

Just at the end of the first pitch Scott had a nice challenge for me. On his way up while placing gear, he got one of his cams stuck. If I got the cam out, he’d buy me a case of beer.

Mmmmmm. Beer!

It was certainly stuck, but luckily one side was wiggling. Hanging completely from the belay, I was able to wiggle and work it enough to get it out. Yay! Scott got his nice $60 cam back and I got a case of beer.

We finished Gelsa around 1pm. By this point we were really starting to feel the fact that we’d skipped breakfast (our favorite spot had closed) and didn’t really have anything for lunch. Fooling ourselves into thinking drinking all of our water and eating the last of our candy bars was enough to continue, we headed back to The Uberfall in search of easier single pitch stuff to finish out our day.

We settled on Boston, which turned out to be our demise. No falls, but lots of struggle and near exhaustion. With ascent complete and a successful rappel, we packed it up for the day and headed home.

– b