A few more Photos from Pete's Camera

These are all photos from Silver Lake. The climbs at Potter Mountain to be exact. Enjoy!


Me on the first pitch of the Brazillian
Oh what fun! The blind no. 5 Camalot placement is always fun.

It takes great gear. See?

It's getting harder...

Phew, got it.

Come on up Rich! Notice the neatly trimmed pine above me?
Tom leading Stop Making Sense. You can see the first pitch of the Brazillian in the background.
My new Tusk rope with my old Tusker Beer shirt. They are both yellow.
Shangri-la in all its glory. If you look, you can see several climbers on a second pitch on the right-hand side.
A bunch of SLU kids getting together for dinner after a sick day of climbing. Uh-huh.

Photos from Smiling the Hard Way

Me pulling the 5.10bR section.
Setting up for the crux. I got beta from Devin that I wouldn't need any more gear after that horizontal. So I left everything there for him! Notice the CCK crack to the left to me. And the Vulture in the background...he knows what's about to happen.
Half way through the crux....ahhhh

Slipping...ah! Gotta get that rope out from under my leg!
And the rest is history. I didn't get my leg out from under the rope, and I took a nice big fall. I was definitely smiling the hard way after that. What a great route.

(Thanks Pete for snapping the photos.)

A Return to the Gunks

I decided to do my American Mountain Guide's Association (AMGA) Single Pitch Instructor (SPI) course. Taking the SPI course enables one to professionally guide clients at the single pitch level. Plus, it will also teach me some things about rescuing that I don't know, but that Rich and Matt do both know.

So I came up a day early. Wouldn't you?

The weather yesterday was awesome. Probably like 60 degrees, sunny (but not oppressive), and the rock here is still beautiful. We went straight to Smiling the Hard Way which is right next to CCK. It goes at 5.11c, with a 10b/c R before the crux. Definitely a very committing lead up beautifully clean sparkling white rock.

I handled the lower roof crux no problem, only hesitating for a moment. After you get past that section there is a wonderful little horizontal with a great rest. I plugged in three cams for a little 'nest of courage,' and rested for a while, sussing out the next moves. As far as I could see, there were no holds to speak of (I later confirmed this), so I figured it must be a feet thing. I did the old hand-foot-match, stood up using tiny dime edge crimps, and was now totally committed, with the gear at my feet.

And then Devin told me I was too far left. I was in the nevernever world of 'oh shit!' Other than once decent left hand, there wasn't really anything to hold on to. I tried smearing and laybacking, desperately trying to reach the horizontal that was juuuuust out of reach. And then the smear started to un-smear...slid...POP. I was off.

Luckily, when you fall, things slow down a bit. I had time to think several thoughts. First I thought, "Oh great, this is gonna be big." Then I thought, "Oh great, the rope is behind my leg." And then, "I'm turning upside down. It's cool to be parallel to the ground." And finally, "Here comes the cliff, better put my hands out."

All that in a fraction of a second. I ended up being completely upside down thanks to that rope-behind-the-leg thing. Luckily I didn't smack my dome on the rock. A few minor scrapes, and a little soreness in the fingers from catching myself, but other than that, unscathed.

We spent the rest of the day doing some more relaxed climbing. Devin tried to lead back up and fininsh the route after that, but took several falls. Then I went back up and bailed on CCK, which I'm not ashamed of in the slightest. After that we climbed Falled on Account of Strain and did some bouldering. I finished on the Buddha which I'm glad to see I can still do.

And now it's raining again (damnit) but the SPI course runs regardless. Should be ok methinks.

(pictures to come tonight from Smiling...)

The other day at Potter...

...Matt and I went up to try Leroy Brown again. Well, I was trying it again -- Matt was trying it for the first time. And like most of this season, it was raining a little. And it had been wet the night before. But, we went out anyway.

It just so happens that because there is a little roof that hangs over the crack for at least the first 60 feet, that first 60 feet stays dry (for the most part). So we set to projecting the route.

Matt got on first as I had been there before. Fresh perspective and all. The first 15 feet are, technically speaking, the hardest. Matt worked out the gear placements and some of the beta, but could seem to get around the first little bulge. After he came down, I went up to give it a try. After some tomfoolery, sassy highsteps, and double horizontal hand/fist jamming, the crux was unlocked.

After the crux, which is a traverse crux, the angle of the line changes. No longer a traverse, but a 45 degree overhung hand-to-finger crack. I guess I should be fare and say that it's really only a 45 degree overhang if you lay it back. If you jam, it's only slightly overhung. That said, there are times that you have to lay it back.

We made it another 20 feet or so up the crack, but the rain started to come down harder, and the crack started to seep a little more. At this point the hold were definitely wet, which is really too bad because we were starting to make some serious progress on the thing.

It will definitely go down soon. I just hope it doesn't happen while I'm away. Maybe it will be a next-summer-send.

The climbing season approaches its end...

It's raining again. What else is new. This entire summer has done nothing but rain. I'm not complaining. I'm not upset about it. I mean, there has been lots of climbing to be had. At Silver Lake, I have first ascent credits on 14 pitches of climbing. Not to mention I'm climbing some of the harder routes that I've ever climbed before, so can't really hate that.

But it's raining. And I'm not climbing today. And, as it stands, today and tomorrow are the potentially some of the last days of rock climbing I'll have this year -- tonight I'm leaving for New Paltz to take my SPI course. After that, I'm heading to my parents house to meet up with my Dad for a 2 week elk hunt in Colorado. By the time I'm back from that, it will be late October. I hear it gets cold in the Daks that time of year...

...But don't worry. If anything happens at Silver Lake, Rich said he would do some posting here. I would ask both Matt and Rich to do the posting, but Matt is already one post behind. In fact, I'll do that post right now too.

Afternoon Delight

The weather was good today. That's a change.

And to celebrate, Rich and I went out to the Chapel Pond Slab (some 800 feet tall granite boulder). We did two highballs there. The first was Empress 5.5, 835 feet and the second was The Regular Route 5.5 765 feet. Making a total of 1610 feet of technical rock climbing in a day. By far the most I've ever done. And the climbing up part of it probably took a grand total of 30 minutes (the climbing down was the hardest part!)

We also learned the descents today. We decided to try both the northern gully and the southern. We went down the southern first -- which was sopping wet, technical and manky. That's why we decided to try both. We met a friend of Colin's at the top of the cliff (Bill) after the second lap, and he advised us on the northern decent, which was way better.

What an awesome piece of granite. Woo hoo!

After that we went to PJ's for some twofer's and had ourselves some celebration brew.

A new route...but first...

So, things have been happening again. I've gotten a little behind here, so let me talk about yesterday first and then I'll tell you about the new route.

First and foremost, we saw snow for the first time on Whiteface. The mountain is covered all the way to mid-station. Woah. The weather here has been spotty, but since it is also so localized, we have been able to climb pretty much every day.

Yesterday Rich, Colin and I went to Poko. Rich had never been before so we started with the Sting, the classic crack line just next to Gamesmanship. He crushed it, no problems. Colin followed to warm up for Karmic Kickback which we had done last week. He wanted to lead it, having sent the other 5.11b dihedral (God's Grace) just next to it. Karmic is awesome. So sustained...all the way to the top. He got up past the eighth bolt, just one bolt away from sending, and just barely came off. Definitely a great effort though.

After that, Colin had to leave, so Rich and I decided to get some mileage in and planned on simul-climbing The Snake 5.4, 380 feet. We simuled the first 280 feet (awesome) until I ran out of slings. I belayed at a tree ledge, and spotted a sweet looking line of bolts. It looked doable, so I went for it. Such a fun climb. It felt like Kentucky sport climbing. Steep rock, good holds for the most part, sustained, with a definite crux. Really great. It even had a series of moves that involved three separate underclings. 'Dats what I'm talkin' 'bout. Turns out, we climbed the third pitch of Pandemonium (5.10b). Highly recommended pitch.

As for the new route. The day before yesterday, the weather forecast was bad. Rich had some life errands to run, and Colin had the morning off, so we went for a quick session at Beaver Brook. I climbed the last route I hadn't done (Good to the Last Drop), which was excellent, and Colin climbed Save a Tree...

When I got back to the house, Rich was already back from the DMV/bank. "Let's go up to Potter and do Leroy," Rich said. "Done," I said. It was already 2:30 in the afternoon at that point, so we needed to hussle. Furthermore, we had hear that this route was haaard, so we brought all the aid gear. Rich hadn't aided anything before, and it had been a while since we did and FAing, so we were both super psyched to head up there.

Leroy Brown is a crack climb in the "Ghetto" of Potter Mountain Cliff. It follows a right slanting crack system that also forms a little roof. Sustained, no feet, steep, sometimes good jams, sometimes not -- and a hard crux low. We only did one 100 foot pitch, but there is definitely more above. The 100 feet that we did do was awesome!

Aiding is slow. And we didn't get started until late. We had planned on Rich aiding and cleaning, and then I would try to second it cleanly. First of all, the climbing was too hard for me to onsight (but it will definitely go soon), and by the time Rich had finished, it was dark. Like, I put my headlamp on while Rich was still climbing. So by the time I was climbing, I couldn't see much. It's gonna be sick.

The Bird Dogs

My Dad came up on Monday with the bird dogs in anticipation for their nine days of glory. Every year since the 1960s, starting with my grandfather, my family has gone on an annual hunt in Croghan, New York. Mostly a hunt for grouse and woodcock, but occasionally we find some turkeys, duck, pheasants, etc. Anyways, the dogs are getting a bit older now, and consequently they are out of shape. So, they same up here before there hunt, to run a bit.

To get ready for their arrival, I cooked all day on Monday. And boy did I have a blast doing it. I made two loafs of bread to start -- a banana nut bread and a spiced butternut squash bread with nuts and raisins in it. The squash bread was supposed to be a pumpkin bread, but apparently they had a bad crop of pumpkins this year, and there was no pumpkin puree anywhere! After the breads, a made a squash soup that was equally as yummy as the breads...yummmmm.

They got here around 4:30, so we took a quick walk out at Silver Lake so my Dad could see what it looked like (that was the intended hunting spot for the next day.) After that, we checked out the elk farm (I'm going on an elk hunt in Colorado in two weeks). I cooked up some speedies in the broiler for dinner, and we called it a night.

Tuesday was wet again. Even so, we were headed out to hunt anyway. But first, we fooled around with the fire place. We got it all set up to run (which we have been doing, since yesterday there was snow on the top of Whiteface).

We ended up going to Potter Mountain to hunt. It poured on us the entire time, but it was still pretty fun. Gabby even pointed a grouse, and I even got to shoot at it. Of course, I didn't hit it, but still very successful day. (According to my dad, a normal grouse hunter will shoot 1 in 10 they he flushes and a great one will shoot 1 in 5.)

That night, after drying out a bit, we went to the Brewery -- they just tapped their new IPA which was very delicious.

Overall a good trip. The dogs got worked, shot the gun, drank some beer. Good times.