More Crazy in the Gunks

Well, after a goods nights sleep under the stars I was ready to take James and Meghan up Middle Earth. The one climb that I have yet to lead in its entirety, until today. It ended up being the first and only route we did that day. By far the longest I've taken to complete a three pitch route (five hours, whoa!). Anyway, I cruised up the first pitch with one rope trailing. When I finished the first pitch I set up my anchor and ATC guide to belay the two of them at the same time. James started up the route first with Meghan close behind.

It seems that James didn't learn his lesson the first time because once again his knees and legs took a beating, and he left some bloody rental shoes behind to prove it. After completing the first pitch, I set off for pitch number two, which was a 5.2 that I almost didn't place any gear. I did eventually clip into a tri-cam that was welded into a crack and slung one tree. That was it for 50 ft. James and Meghan didn't have any problems with it either. Now pitch three.... That was a little different story. It was a short pitch as well, except 15 feet up was a roof that you have to reach over and pull yourself through. By far the section the two of them struggled with the most. James made an attempt at the roof first with no luck. Meghan told him to take a break and regain some of your strength while I try it. She tried and conquered. So while James made another go at it Meghan was off exploring the top of the cliff. Taking pictures of inch worms and caterpillar nests and nature stuff.

In the words of an unknown climber, "if you don't drop a couple F bombs your not really climbing." Than all I have to say is James was the hardest climber at the crag that day, and everyone knew it.

Stir Crazy in The Gunks

So a couple of my co-workers wanted to try rock climbing...
Of course they really had no idea of what to expect. All I was expecting out of the day was for everyone to have a good time, enjoy the beautiful spring weather, and as always know one getting hurt. The forecast called for sunny sky's and a high in the 70's all day. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

I would expect nothing less of James than to roll out of bed and still be in his pajamas when we met at 9:00 at "Rock and Snow." Me on the other hand had been up since 6:30 and had already packed up our gear and food for the day, stopped by the "Muddy Cup" for a bagel and coffee and was waiting outside R&S for them to arrive. So next up was getting these guys some shoes and helmets. I knew that fitting them for shoes would be interesting... If you've ever worn climbing shoes you'd know that they fit extremely tight and aren't comfortable to wear for more than about 30 minutes or so. I opted for having their shoes on the looser side because I was not about to listen to them whine all day about how their feet hurt. As I would find out later, these two where not whiners and they were more determined than I thought.

And we're off!!!! I had a couple of routes in mind that would be good first time climbs. (Black Fly, Shit or go Blind) But being a busy day at the Gunks and close to the West trapps parking lot, they were already taken. So, "Boston" ended up being our first route of the day. A nice little 5.5 crack climb that I could set up by hiking up to the anchors and rappel down to where Meghan and James were putting their shoes on and attempting to figure out how to put the harnesses on.


Jim was stoked and took the leap to go first, without any knowledge of how to climb this 50 foot crack. Putting total trust in the system and me to make sure that he wouldn't be injured. OK, somethings I just can't prevent... Maybe wearing shorts wasn't the best choice. He scraped up his knees pretty good on the first, second, third, basically on every route his knees took a beating and he just kept pushing on.
I'm pretty sure that everyone has a fear of heights, at least in one form or another, and some people react differently than others. Of course, Meghans' reaction was one that I wasn't expecting. It seems she has an extreme fear of heights that I didn't know about until she completed the first route. The only reason I could tell were from the tears dripping down the side of the cliff. When she got to the top of the route she needed to let go of the rock and lean back, trusting that the rope would lower her safely to the ground. That took a little coursing, but between Jim and I we got her to let go.

Now in true trooper spirit the two of them were ready for our next route, Betty (5.2). Now I could go on and on about the details of every route we did but that would get pretty boring pretty quick. I just wanted to say that I was blessed with a great day of climbing with awesome weather and some new friends. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the day.