TR(sort of) - Wishfull Thinking
climbi...@my-deja.com
camper van." I thought as I rolled out of my sleeping back and struggled
into my boots. It was still dark out, and cold, as my climbing partner,
Ian, and I dusted the snow off our tent, tossed it in the car and after
a quick meal of peanut butter and bagels hit the trail.
We'd driven down to the Adirondacks the night before and camped at a
secluded trailhead, intent on packing in as much climbing as we could
into the one day weekend that we had available. Our current objective
was an unknown climb on an unknown cliff that a skier friend of ours had
mentioned seeing the weekend before. After he had mentioned the words
'big', 'overhanging' and 'ice' in the same sentence we could barely
contain our enthusiasm and almost forgot to ask how to get there.
The hike in was about five miles, fortunately for us there wasn't much
snow, just the six inches that had fallen the night before. We crested
the final ridge, where we'd been told that we would see our destination,
just as the sun was coming up. There, on the other side of the valley,
we could see the cliff. It looked to be a couple of hundred feet high,
and steep. The sun was reflecting off ice pillars, and the whole thing
looked pretty intimidating, but we thought we'd hike over for a closer
look.
Unfortunately there were no trails going where we wanted to go, as I
always say, it's not a really good day unless there's lots of
bushwhacking. After about two hours of clawing our way through thickets
of pine, tip toeing across partially frozen streams and scrambling over
boulders we arrived at the base.
This hunk of granite looked a lot bigger from up close, it was around
150 feet high and little loose. The bottom half was slightly overhanging
with sections of crumbly rock interspersed with semi-solid looking
pillars of ice(none of which came close to the ground). Halfway up it
started to get steep for about forty feet, this part looked hard, the
rock was pretty blank and there were only a few ice blobs pasted on and
spread well apart. The top 35 feet didn't ease up too much either, it
was a degree or two past vertical and had only a thin layer of ice
coating it.
The route looked harder than anything either of us had led, but we'd
been climbing a lot and both were looking for a challenge. I got lucky,
won the game of 'paper rock scissors' and the sharp end for the climb.
Strapping on my crampons and racking up I couldn't shake the feeling of
uneasiness settling in my stomach. "Am I ready for this?" "Is this over
my head?" I tried to shrug off the questions of doubt and racked up.
A quick check with Ian to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything and I
started up. It was about twenty feet of hard dry-tooling to reach the
first pillar, which was about four feet in diameter. Camming the picks
in cracks and hooking small pockets I worked my way high enough to reach
out to the ice. It felt pretty solid and I delicately wormed to the top.
The first piece of pro was a solid ice screw in the top off the pillar,
to bad it wasn't a little higher, because the rest of the ice didn't
look nearly as secure. Another ten feet or so of dry-tooling brought me
to a small ledge where I copped a bit of a rest. I was starting to
settle into the groove, the knot in my stomach was gone and I was
feeling really solid. Just after the ledge there was a broken crack
system that I convinced a small nut into. It didn't look too happy in
there, and I just hoped it would stay until I could find something else.
As I approached the next pillar I could see that it was barely attached,
no screws in this one. A few taps with my hammer convince me that it
would hold bodyweight and I eased on to it. Gently bear-hugging the ice,
trying to ignore the reverberations that my passage was causing, I
quickly moved up off of it back onto the slightly more stable rock. Try
as I might I could not locate any more pro, all the cracks were flaring
and crumbly and nothing was the right size for my pitons. Fifteen feet
higher at the start of the overhang I could see what appeared to be a
long horizontal crack. With no way to reverse the moves I had just
pulled, and not willing to jump onto that last bad stopper, there was
only one option.
All these choices flickered through my mind and were gone, I was in the
zone, the moves were flowing naturally and my concentration was in high
gear. This feeling didn't leave me when I found out that the crack I had
been expecting turned out to be a ledge that wouldn't expect pro. There
was a small block above my head that decided to accept a #1 tcu in the
crack behind it. I wasn't kidding myself, it might hold a five or ten
footer, if I was lucky.
The next forty feet was the meat of the route, thin hooking with a few
shallow cracks and a couple of dollops of ice. I hesitated for a moment,
"Should I lower off?", but then the route became clear, I saw the moves.
Get my left axe on that edge there, torque my boot into this ledge,
right axe in the ice, cross through and jam my pick in that crack, then
up more, hooking, edging, milking the ice for all I could. Then suddenly
I was just below the lip, what now? I was in a small pocket with my
right tool, my feet scraping on tiny ledges, and the next hold was a
ledge just over the lip, about five feet away. Looking down I could see
the rope running thirty feet down to that manky cam, "Can't look down.
Stay focused and pull the move." Looking up there was a thin icicle
hanging over the lip, "That can't hold me!", but it has to. I reached
out as far as I could with my left tool, delicately chipping a small
hole in the ice. Gently I easy my weight onto it, back stepping with my
right foot on a thin smear of ice and hooking my left foot, trying to
take as much weight off the icicle as I can. Slowly stretching, my right
pick nears the half inch edge. Suddenly I hear a crack as the ice breaks
and my left tool comes off. Adrenaline surges through me as I envision
my body flying into the talus from over a hundred feet, then I realize
that my right tool is on the ledge. As the ice falls, my feet come off
and I fight to control the swing, I can feel my pick rocking on the edge
as I will it to stay put. It does, and with a pounding heart I get my
other tool up, heel hook, and get a solid placement in the upper ice
flow. My muscles are still pounding with adrenaline, and after putting
in a tied off screw I mince my way delicately to the top.
I sit down in the snow and a wave of calm euphoria washes over me. Ian
cruises up the climb on top-rope, managing to pull the move at the lip
without the icicle that I broke off. We pack up our gear and begin the
long bushwhack back to the car, leaving the cliff as it was for the next
climbers to discover. Next thing I know it's Monday morning, and I'm
sitting in front of my computer. Did all this really happen, or have I
just been sitting here daydreaming??
Erik E
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Before you buy.
Lon Harter
were climbing that pitch?