TR: Daks July 4th
Steven Cherry
July 4th weekend. Three days. New River Gorge, this is a no-brainer except
for two things: I had to take my wife and daughter to the airport early
Saturday morning, and the east coast heat wave makes the New pretty
unappealing. Plus Mike didn't even have ready cash to go to the Daks.
(Okay, that's three things.) Mike's never been to the Daks for climbing,
reason enough to go there. Besides, having discovered, earlier this year
in my trip to Yosemite, the hidden crack climber lurking within me, the
granite walls of the Daks (look ma! no glacier polish!) were calling me.
Saturday, noon. Beer Walls.
I walk over to Frosted Mug and Labatt-Ami to find a party of three who
turn out to be Stefan, and occasional partner, and Mark and Allie a couple
I know from the gym and outside. They're on Labatt-Ami but will be off
soon, this is a popular 5.7 and my chosen warm-up for Mike. By the time
we're done Stefan has led Frosted Mug (5.9) with a couple of hangs. The
intense heat and humidity are enough to justify the hangs, but I think
added to that is the way you really can't get a good look at your gear in
this dihedral crack. As incredibly strong as Stefan is, I often see him
hanging on, checking, and rechecking, and then worrying about gear for so
long that even he gets pumped out.
Mike was going to lead Frosted Mug but is so eager to climb that he
doesn't want to wait for someone to clean it, he follows. Mark then leads
it, Allie follows, and now Mike does lead it, with a couple of hangs. He
just hasn't climbed enough this year, plus this classic route looks likes
it's going to be all stemming but really it requires a different techique
at each and every move, first a stem, then both feet in the crack, then a
bit of layback, and so on. I clean it easily but it's my third time on the
route, I toproped it two years ago and then last year it was one of my
first clean 5.9 leads.
Mark and Allie leave to go meet friends in Lake Placid and we finish the
day by toproping the face between the first two routes, a climb with the
amazing name of "Flying and Drinking and Drinking and Driving." It's rated
5.10 small but very positive crimps with a lot of those "just stand up"
moves. Zero pump factor, but it would be an intense lead, with a major
runout at the top.
Sunday.
Somehow Stefan has not only joined us for the weekend but chosen our
destination for the day, Poke-O-Moonshine. I've never climbed the main
cliff and in Stefan's mind this makes a trip up Gamesmanship a necessity.
Mike seems to think he's going to lead the 140-foot crux (5.8) first
pitch, but when reminded that yesterday was all about him, he cheefully
gives me the lead. This pitch is just amamazing, fantastic hand jams
interrupted with small off-width sections, some of which have jams if you
reach back far enough. Steep enough to be harder, the route is 5.8 because
there's always good feet on the lip or out on the face. The crux is the
first 12 feet or so but a good nut placement makes it easy to commit.
Stefan vaguely recalls that the second pitch goes a full rope length or
maybe even a little more but it's easy, grungy, and 5.4ish, so a bit of
simulclimbing shouldn't be a problem. We promise Mike the nice third pitch
and he's off on the first of several Stefan sandbag-laden misrecollections
of the day. The pitch has some nice moves to it, including a few 5.7 or
so. Mike could go all the way to the ledge with the big tree, which would
probably require simulclimbing, but stops well short of that. I come up
third and with Stefan's grunge-beta in mind, say "I *liked* it." Stefan
replies, "Good, because now you get the grunge section!" I grab a few cams
and lead through to the ledge. The final pitch is a perfect splitter
crack, a second crack develops to the right. If you don't use the second
crack it's probably pretty hard, I wouldn't know because I learned in the
Valley how much fun twin cracks are. Using both it's maybe hard 5.7 and
very much like Bishops Terrace! Stefan had recalled the crack as being
easy and short, his second sandbag of poor Mike of the day.
Mike stopped before the final easy slabs, maybe he was afraid of running
out of rope with no anchor-ability. Stefan led through and brought me and
Mike up, all the while listening and watching some peragrines. Further
down the cliff is closed for them, and maybe this section should be too. I
was a little worried about the unroped walk across to the rap station and
stayed high to be able to run up into the woods should we get dive-bombed
(according to the guidebook this can happen!). They flew close but didn't
attack.
We got down before dusk, but not by too much. I can't pin down exactly how
we spent nine hours on a Grade III route except for a lot of little things
adding up (highway noise, first-time threesome, misremembered beta, 90
degree/90% heat/humidity, and so on). Oh, and doing a four-pitch climb,
that can be done in three, in five. All in all a great day anyway. Dinner
in Lake Placid at Nicole's, my favorite restaurant in the New York's north
country, preceded by catching most of the excellent Lake Placid July 4th
fireworks, made for a late but great finish. (Oh, and the scenery in the
restaurant! Enough beautiful women that it was like dining in the middle
of a Lands End catalog.) The rain held off until we were safely in our
tents, pretty amazing. I've been in Lake Placid four of the last five
July 4th's and actually seen fireworks maybe twice.
Monday. Huckleberry Mountain.
Mike had picked the first day and Stefan the second. I had wanted to get
back to Huckleberry since being there three years earlier. On that
occasion my then-partner and I had had lots of trouble finding the
bushwack trail with too few red markers, couldn't make heads or tails of
the descriptions in the book, and ended up climbing little but wanting to
come back. Getting absolutely no replies to a recent rec.climbing query
about the place only whetted my desire. We got a late start (again, but
hey, we're on vacation, and it was great talking to the Virginia guys
camped next to us, and also, how can you come to the Keene area for three
days without getting to the Bakery at least once?). We flawlessly followed
the guidebook descriptions all the way to the point where we were supposed
to leave the trail at a "prominent lone boulder." Right. How can there be
more than one candidate for a "lone boulder"?
Frustrated, we dropped our packs at biggest lonest boulder. On my prior
trip we had had to explore around; my partner eventually found the red
markers. Since we hadn't really found the One True Path that time, I
didn't have anything solid to recall. Finally we ate lunch and abandoned
the idea of actually climbing for the day. Our goal became a nice hiking
day and finding the cliff for "the next time," which was everyone's way of
telling me to not feel beat myself up too much for this debacle.
Stefan and I wanted to head straight up to where the cliff had to be, but
somehow Mike got on the sharp end of this little foray, and opted for
traversing easy contour lines. Stefan and I followed for a while, then got
frustrated. "Mike, at some point we're going to have to do a hard
bushwack, it might as well be here." He relented and Stefan headed up
basically from where he happened to be standing at the time. Within 30
seconds he hit a thin but obvious path! Within minutes we could identify
the routes it took me hours to not be sure of three years earlier (maybe
experience counts for something).
A beautiful short crack up to a pine tree, with some interesting climbing
above it, had our names all over it, with a rating that wasn't too scary
to any of us (5.9-). Darmok Indirect avoids the grunge-fest above the tree
by going right and then up through some tricky-looking face moves to
another short crack before curving out of sight. It was Stefan's turn to
lead. He muscled up the crack but got a couple of actual jams, exclaiming
"I think I'm started to get this crack thing!" on one.
The crux face moves start from a good stance but with gear below and way
to your left, and Stefan spent maybe 20 minutes trying to figure out the
move, first testing one foot hold, then a hand hold, then some new
combination of holds already tried. In the meantime Mike and I got
absolutely hounded by the most persistent and annoying deer flies I've
ever encountered. Finally he decided he didn't think he could send it, but
"one of you guys definitely will."
Right. By resume at least, Stefan was our rope gun. All I could think of
was John Long's descriptions of sieging hard routes with his friends at
Tahquitz. How do we hold such contradictory beliefs as to think
simultaneously that we don't have a chance if so-and-so doesn't get it,
and, hey, it can't be as hard as he's making it look...
Mike went up and placed a new piece of gear waaaay out to the right. We
were sure he was going to get hosed by rope drag but he put his cordalette
on it. Then he tried to make the move, and was promptly airborne. Stefan
was especially delighted to see how this new placement limited the
pendulum dramatically, and I could see by the way its biner lined up with
that of the previous placement that the rope drag wouldn't be so bad. We
were all for Mike trying again, but he was so happy to have gone for it
and taken his first leader fall of the year it became my turn.
I went up "just to check it out," secretly thinking that I would send it
of course, but at the move, I couldn't figure out where to put my feet to
avoid barn-dooring. I also didn't like the way I would flip upside down if
that long runner got behind me during a fall, as it almost surely would
given where my feet would be going. I had a new theory, coming across from
high on the right, but after placing gear I tested what would be my key
traversing flake-crimp by scrunching my fingers on it. It, and my theory,
crumbled in my hand and I lowered off.
Stefan was all for cleaning this thing and getting on the road at a
reasonable time, but I was positive he could get the job done with Mike's
fall-limiting placement. Sure enough he did. He found the second crack
difficult, I didn't, but hey, I wasn't on lead. What I would have found
scary as all get-out was the slab climbing at the finish, but he was
feeling strong and determined and didn't have any more trouble than a bit
of whining and two off-route bolts (the top of a neighboring 5.11)
couldn't solve.
On this, Stefan's second try, the deer flies apparently realized they had
only a limited time left to hound us, I could barely belay as they
attacked in such swarms that they actually collided with one another in
the air around me. I've never had flies try to bite my *hands*, it was all
I offered them though as I cowered under my rain shell in 90+ degree heat.
Stefan brought us up with an anchor that was awkwardly arranged but
allowed us to both sit and face outward to the beautiful valley below and
the forest across from us. The peace and quiet of being the only ones at
the entire cliff, far from highways, rangers, and tourists, is a secret
joy that every climber knows (far more effective than Prozac and with only
one side effect, a pressing need to repeat the dosage the following
weekend).
We got down before dusk and with the sunlight dimishing we bushwacked
directly down to the stream and then back up the hill to the trail in
one-tenth the time of our approach. With the key beta of where to leave
the trail now memorized, and also knowing that the insects made it insane
to come back before October, we swore to return and enjoy fall foliage at
this, one of many under-used Adirondack gems.
-steven-
--
<ste...@panix.com>
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer
must at once be, 'It is no use'....
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy
is, after all, the end of life. -- George Mallory
Karl Lew
Steven Cherry <ste...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:7m06bd$eot$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> Mini-TR: Adirondack weekend
Weehoo! Fun stuff. Looks like a broiler this weekend. Stay cool!
Thanks for the TR.
--Karl
Eric Angel
Glad to hear you made if back safe with a classic Daks experience. Next time
you get back do Overture on Washbowl its one of the best routes we did there.
Eric (one of those Virginia guys.)