My Baby's Got Me Locked Up In Chains

(Unfortunately, that's just a metaphor.)

This weekend was seriously the best weather we've had all year. More like late summer than fall, (except at night when it was like 20 degrees.) Rob, Alissa, Forrest and I hit North Conway on Saturday and Sunday for some primo deluxe climbing. Maybe I'm just a big wuss, but I don't know that I see a reason to lead trad routes tougher than 5.5. Whatever, it's fun, and Rob let me lead the ace pitch on Slabs Direct, and because it was easy there was no need to freak out and realize the potential for death. Yay!

Sunday was another brilliant day. Forrest and I climbed a moderately fun and extremely run out route called Wedge. He ran out 70 meters of rope on the first pitch, and used 2 pieces of gear. I set 2 or so pieces on the second pitch before racing the rest of the way up a blank, but thankfully, low angle face. I managed to misread the route so that I was left with a slightly scary, but thankfully quick, traverse over to the anchor. Forrest lead pitch 3 which was 60 feet straight up to the anchor. There was NO PROTECTION AT ALL. Luckily, it was easy.

Pitch 4 was mine, and while we were collecting ourselves I managed to not talk myself out of leading yet another run out pitch, many many feet up to a bolt and then a traverse over to a gigantic ledge. I left all the gear with Forrest because there was no place to put it anyway, and the less weighed down I was, the better. I warned F. that I was going to climb FAST because I really wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He said he was ready, and I took the fuck off. About 10 feet into my mad dash up the side of the cliff, Forrest yells up, "Uh, sorry, hang on" and fiddled with the ropes a bit before being able to play out slack. I waited patiently, balanced on pretty much just air, and then took off to finish up. Reached the bolt with no problem, dashed up to a horizontal crack which THANK GOD had an ancient piton stuck in it. I greatfully clipped and and sidled over to the ledge.

The ledge thankfully was huge. There was a shaky looking tree with some old, sun-faded slings tied around it. I eyed them suspiciously, tentatively shook the tree a little bit and as it wobbled back and forth over the side of the ledge, I decided against using it as an anchor. I looked down at my gear loops; one lonely micro cam, a set of teeny stoppers and some tri-cams. Not exactly great anchor-building material. Actually, it was the least appropriate gear for the job. I glanced down, watched the sun glinting off the entire trad rack that Forrest had hanging from his harness and sighed.

Glancing around the ledge, I saw a horizontal crack system in the wall that had, thank you sweet jesus, an old piton hammered into the crack, (not as corroded as the one in the picture). I clipped myself into that and started trying to cobble my paltry gear into the wall to make some semblance of a safe anchor. I got a nice placement for the cam, but everything else was the complete wrong size. After some more fruitless fiddling, I gave up, slung my cordellette into the 2 pieces and belayed Forrest up. I hollered down that the anchor was probably fine but that to be on the safe side, I wouldn't fall on it. Luckily he made it up without incident.

Saturday night, we all camped out in the White Mountain Nationl Forest. We drove a while up a logging road and pulled out into a little clearing on the side of the road. As we were setting up our tents under the light of a full moon and Petzl headlamps, a large pack of coyotes erupted into deafening howls. It was amazing and reminded me just how much I missed that sound. The coyotes kept up their yip-yip-yapping as we snuggled into our sleeping bags and went to sleep.

"I'm going back to the country,
I can't pay the rent.

I ain't broke,
But, brother, I'm badly bent."