Rock Climbing --- 6/10/2008 - 6/13/2008 --- Gunks

Beth and I had planned to go to the Adirondacks. I bought Jim and Jeremy's excellent new guide book, Adirondack Rock. We wanted to climb Wallface. We wanted to go back to Poko. We wanted to...

...not get caught in a massive thunderstorm. So we went to the Gunks instead. Drove down Tuesday night and hung out with Jess and Nick at the DEC.

Wednesday we started with a nice warmup on Horseman. Then we climbed the first pitch of Maria and set a toprope so we could climb Maria Direct and Maria Redirect. I had never done those variations, and they were both quite fun. We finished the remaining pitches of Maria and walked down. Then we swung leads on Beginner's Delight. Took a bit longer than expected because I had to lower down the first pitch to clean a cam. On the way down from Beginner's Delight, we left a toprope on the first pitch of Snooky's Return, and we both took a run up it before heading back to the DEC for the night.

I woke early on Thursday and went for a nature walk (Xvid codec required to see the video).

Yeah... so we started climbing Thursday by swinging leads on Three Pines. Took a little detour on The Dangler. Much better than my first attempt -- found many more places beyond the initial pocket to get solid heel hooks. After rappelling Three Pines, we climbed Three Doves. From there we did the top pitch of Annie Oh. Then we did both pitches of Arrow, but in reverse order since we used the Arrow bolts to descend. I like the idea of climbing to the top of the cliff, then quickly doing a bunch of classic pitches on toprope. Fun, efficient, and safe! But only practical during the week when there are no crowds.

Heading down the stairmaster back to the car, we found Mike. Or rather, we found his wallet. I thought Mike was making a joke at Guy's expense since Guy had dropped his wallet in the woods the previous weekend (amazingly, I happened to find the wallet before Guy even noticed it was missing) but Mike came up with this plan on his own. We went to camp slime for our final night and played a rousing game of three player rummy. Mike won.

Awake at the crack of 9am we walked down from slime to the Nears. Started the day on Birdland. I got to lower off the first anchor to retrieve a webolette which had fallen and was stuck in a tree. That meant I got to climb either Slapping the Salmon or Birdbrain for the first time. Not really sure which climb I was doing... whatever is directly below the Birdland bolts. Anyhow it was really hard, and I only made it up because of an amazing birthday party belay from Beth. That left me about as hot and tired as I had ever been climbing the second pitch of Birdland (direct, of course, the only way to do the second pitch), but I know the climb well so it went reasonably easily. Then we swung leads on Gelsa. Beth got to meet a HUGE black snake hanging out in a crack on the first pitch. It was still there when I followed. Definitely the biggest snake I have ever seen on a climb. We saw tons of snakes this trip, including the snake that crawled into Beth's backpack while she was belaying me on Maria. This is the time of year for snakes. It was also peak time for the Mountain Laurel which was blooming everywhere.

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