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core
Jul 22, 2007, 7:19 PM
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Registered: Jul 29, 2003
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Lately I've been trying harder and harder to avoid the crag crowds...this weekend brought us closer to that objective.
Despite the remnants of foul weather lingering in the air we remained optimistic about cliff conditions. Here the cliff lies shrouded in clouds and fog, all the way to the base of the wall:
We approached our primary object anyway, knowing that sky in Franconia Notch tries on nearly as many outfits in the morning as my girlfriend - oh I'm going to get it for that - all I'm trying to say is she (the sky) tends to settle on a nice outfit by the time she is ready to begin her day. As you can see from this picture, the sun is finally shining:
Our protagonists, the Red Brigade, prepare for flight
The first pitch of the route adjacent to ours hosts a nice hand crack. Since this seems like a better choice to the seemingly chossy start of our pitch, we choose the clean hand crack. Gabe leads the route, giggling the entire way, and sets us up below our next pitch. Here I am following, loving the morning breakfast crack:
The next bit of the route adds the first dash of spice to our morning. I start the second pitch with some exciting layback moves on wet rock, that get me set up for a nice pendulum.
Start of P2
P2 Pendulum
I continue climbing after the pendulum, linking the second pitch up with the sweet finger crack on the third pitch. Here Gabe cleans up the beautiful arching finger crack to meet up with me at our belay:
Now I get to hand the sharp end over to Gabe, starting my much needed break from wet leads. He should be comforted by the fact that he has such an attentive belayer, but it turns out that he prefers to have gear in the rock AND an attentive belayer, both of which he wasn't able to get for a little while once his pitch started.
Giving Gabe my utmost attention as he starts P4
The exposed start of the fourth pitch, provides further excitement but I know that Gabe found comfort when the impenetrable seam above his head opened up to a finger crack, then hands, then... He finishes the pitch and hoots with joy when he sees the next pitch.
Me cleaning P4
When I get up to the top of P4, I finally get the view that has gotten him so excited. Damn! Before my eyes rises a beautiful, multiple arched, offwidth crack. Gabe stares down below at the more protect-able cracks before he hangs most of the rack up on the anchor and turns around to face his goal for the day:
It's big by Northeast standards:
The pitch went smoothly as Gabe hiked it...err wiggled it...or something. He paused only briefly on this pitch, and I assume he was either trying to figure out when he can get some damn gear, or he was checking out the ominous cloud looming over his head:
With the end of his casual wiggle in sight, he demonstrates how secure a granite-Gabe sandwich can be:
He lingers at the end, hesitant to leave his runout offwidth crack and find gear.
Gabe pauses near the end of the crack
Upon exiting, he finds as much gear as he wants to place, and finishes the pitch. I follow, climbing my first genuine offwidth (Yellow Ridge at the Gunks doesn't count) and find it to be quite a bit more mellow than I expected. That is, once you figure out what to jam and how to relax; it's really not that bad.
For the few minutes we sat at the top of this pitch, the views were great and the sky was mostly clear. But we new that if we sat there for a few more minutes, it might not be the same story, so we prepared for our descent...
Great views looking South from the top of P5
With some time left in the afternoon, we decided it was in our best interest to run a lap on Reppy's Crack and check out slab route next to Reppy's.
After weeks of feeling anxious about the Northeast cliff crowds and the playground atmosphere of the local crags, we finally got what we were looking for: solitude on the cliff (on a weekend). The AM storms and running water on many of the routes seemed to have kept most of the other climbers at bay, but I didn't mind.
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cracklover
Jul 23, 2007, 1:38 PM
Post #2 of 12
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Registered: Nov 14, 2002
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Nice, thanks for writing this up!
GO
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cracklover
Jul 23, 2007, 3:13 PM
Post #4 of 12
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In reply to: He lingers at the end, hesitant to leave his runout offwidth crack and find gear.
Yeah, I liked that line, too! What can I say, I'm a little weird like that.
In reply to: Yet another kick-ass TR. They seem to be in abundance these days, and Gabe seems to be in quite a few of them.
So yeah, I get around a little. I can't help it, my girlfriend and partner was away all weekend, and a guy's gotta get his fix. So naturally I'm gonna go chase a little crack. Besides, I did use protection *most* of the time. Shh... don't anybody tell.
GO
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shakylegs
Jul 23, 2007, 4:29 PM
Post #5 of 12
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Registered: Aug 20, 2001
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Was this VMC? With the pendulum?
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cracklover
Jul 23, 2007, 4:36 PM
Post #6 of 12
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Same cliff, but it was Vertigo.
GO
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shakylegs
Jul 23, 2007, 4:43 PM
Post #7 of 12
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Registered: Aug 20, 2001
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Ah, thanks for the info.
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uasunflower
Jul 23, 2007, 5:16 PM
Post #8 of 12
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Registered: Aug 11, 2003
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nice run, guys! mmm, that offwidth is FUN!!!
pfff haven't done cracks in a while here...
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cracklover
Jul 23, 2007, 7:17 PM
Post #10 of 12
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dominic7 wrote: Had to laugh at this picture/caption. That looks soaking wet. We ran up W-G on Sunday and it was dry - how does Vertigo dry out?
Eh, his belay was fine. I didn't actually have any pro in yet, so didn't need much of a belay!
As for wetness, none of the cracks that were actually on the climb were seeping. Plenty of other cracks were draining water down onto our route, though. For example, in that shot, my first move off the belay was to mount the roof/left-facing corner there, grab a side-pull, and pull up onto the stance you see me at there. The side-pull was *inside* an inch deep puddle.
But that's okay. Made it more of an adventure!
GO
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core
Jul 23, 2007, 8:34 PM
Post #11 of 12
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Registered: Jul 29, 2003
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Yep. Dry jams and wet face moves. Good times.
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dominic7
Jul 23, 2007, 10:53 PM
Post #12 of 12
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Registered: Mar 7, 2005
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Preach it brother!
We saw some rockfall around 8am on Sunday morning coming down south of the W-G. Big boulders throwing up bigs puffs of smoke as they rolled down into the talus. Pretty impressive.
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