 
Saturday 4th Ouch. Oh my aching back. I woke up today feeling just the tiniest twinges of discomfort, the result of spending the day before playing on rock. A good day it was too. Earlier in the week I had gone to the Primeclimb gym in Wallingford with some friends. James Rush was making a return from injury (neck) and Luciana Andrade (lovely little Lu from Brazilia) was there too. Also along were two new friends – Claudia Camerino (Italy) and Wolfgang Rubin (Germany), making their first visit to the gym. It was quite a night, very social, and I hardly climbed at all. I bumped into Kumudesh Sritharan (Sri Lanka), who I have gym climbed with before, and Gary (Amerikano) who once worked for Primeclimb but is now constructing a separate center in a neighbouring building. A few others I recognized and also talked with. I think I managed maybe only three or four climbs in the whole night. Anyway, it was there that I hatched a plan for some outdoor fun on Saturday. James, who had a satisfactory evening pulling the plastic, was keen as mustard to slap some stone. Lu also wanted to come, she had never climbed outside before. Additionally there was Giovanna, an italian friend of Lu’s, who I was introduced to at the gym. She too would like to join us. Cathole Pass I said, near Meriden. Easy park, short hike, nice little cliff. On the day itself, however, it was a miserable morning. The night before had been a farewell celebration for a friend who was heading back to Mexico. Leila and I spent it with excellent companions at two different bars, all of us consuming far too much alcohol. So I was way hungover. On top of that we were rudely awakened at 7am by someone using one of those ridiculous gasoline-powered air-blower things. Some business had been hired by our next door neighbours to repair the cracks in their ashphalt driveway. So these jokers show up at the crack of dawn on a weekend and decide they first have to blow some dust away. Bastards. I ripped down there and told them to piss off (more or less), eventually getting them to agree to keep it quiet for an hour. We got forty minutes. Complete … utter … bastards. My morning was ruined and I had a headache that would kill any large land mammal that you could mention. To top it off I still had some errands to complete at work before any climbing could be considered. But that was rapidly dealt with and by 10.30 I was on the phone calling up both Lu and James to confirm our plans. They, and Giovanna, turned up just after 11 and soon we were all on our way to central Connecticut. The weather did not look great. It was hot, humid and heavily overcast. Rain, although sure to bring a welcome drop in temperature, would also cancel our fun. Or so I thought. Anyway, once there we parked at the pullout, hiked up to the cliff and sat down in the vicinity of a climb called Pink Elephant. As some of us ate a little lunch we discussed strategy, nearby a larger group were top-roping Pegasus and Golden Book. James wanted another crack at Elegant Monkey (or at least the Lost in the Outback version of it which Gary Sax and I set a month earlier). Last time he had been cheated out of it by burned up arms. I thought that I would like another go myself, having taken a fall near the top last time we were there. So, after James’ reconnaissance determined it to be free, we trooped off and set up camp on the scree directly beneath the Monkey. After a while I was suited up to lead it and James put me on belay. The girls, warned of falling rocks, positioned themselves warily to one side. So here I was again, back on the trail, but this time I knew where I was going for sure (same as before). I placed two poor pieces on the way (both nuts, one of which I had fortunately back up with a brand new wired hexentric, a birthday gift from James), and I rested once and hung on the rope for a few minutes. But I did not fall. Unfortunately, with about three-quarters of the climb done, it began to lightly rain. Cursing the elements (and regretting that I had brought three people out here to merely watch me climb) I finished the last overhanging section as efficiently as I could, getting over the top before things got too slick. I called back down to James and in a few moments we convinced ourselves that we should maybe bail. James suggested that I rap down to retrieve my gear placements and in the meantime he would walk around up top to clean the rap station once I was done. Fair enough, so down I went, the rain remained light but steady. At the bottom I wanted to know how the girls felt about ditching for the day. I told them that if it was just me I would probably keep climbing, having developed an all-weather ethos during my time climbing with Leon Islas. The girls, to my mild surprise, said the rain wouldn’t bother them as long as it didn’t make the rock too slippery to climb. Wow. Cool. “JAMES!” I bellowed myself hoarse trying to catch his attention 23 metres above us. In previous TRs I have alluded to the acoustic dead-zone which is Cathole Pass, nevertheless he did hear our calls. Poor James, he had just hiked up around there for nothing. He was a good sport about it though and turned back with no more than an equanimous shrug. A few minutes later the rain actually stopped too. While James made his way down again I thought that I should take some gear and go back up to improve the anchor. Feeling that enough time had been lost already I decided to circumvent the trail James had taken by soloing up a nearby climb to the right called Catwalk. Ok, so climbing unroped is not real safe but there were a few mitigating circumstances. Firstly and most importantly is the nature of this climb itself. The first time I climbed it (the first time I even laid eyes on it) it was so easy that I placed only one piece of pro. The exposure on this thing approaches nil. Whomever rated it (it’s rated at 5.2) was being pretty generous. Principally it is a corner crack so wide and so gently angled that it resembles nothing so much as a relatively steep gully. While I do not laugh in the face of death, I am prepared to grin cheekily at it from a safe distance. Enough. So back at the top I improved upon the anchor to the best of my abilities. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Lockers doubled and opposed. Mantras in any safe climbers lexicon, particularly those with friends relying on them for the safety of their very lives. This schooling I gained climbing with Leon (thanks mate). Once satisfied I rappelled back down to the base. Lu went first. Elegant Monkey is probably a tough ask for someone totally unfamiliar with real rock, but there you go, I am no gentleman. Being small she is on a very steep learning curve and has rapidly developed promising technique in under a half-dozen trips to the gym. The lessons she learned there have not been wasted and she picked her way up to the first ledge very smartly. While messing about under the handcrack (trying, as she always must, to find her own sequence of moves) she dislodged a couple of huge slices of stone. Well … ok … they were each the size of large dinner plates. But she was lucky that she wasn’t hit as they were heavy and sharp. Fortunately for the rope it also escaped damage. Her climb continued, with only the slightest assistance from the belayer at one stretchy move, and she eventually reached a point only six feet or so from the top. It was there, after repeated attempts to improve her elevation, that she asked to be lowered. It was great to see her smile. The first climb was done! James was next and he raced up the first section in half the time of his previous attempt. Moving strongly he dealt with the overhanging hand crack in summary fashion, clearly finding his feet with ease. Taking no rest and suffering no falls he pushed up to the final overhang (his previous barrier) and then moved smoothly through it. He even climbed above the anchor point to half-mantle over the top. Huge improvement. He was happy as Larry too. Giovanna, who had been waiting patiently for hours, finally had her chance. She has not climbed on real rock for over four years, so she was looking forward to this as much as anyone. Despite a little uncertainty at the handcrack she got through to the middle ledge and worked her way up towards the overhang. She reached the same place that Lu made and tried several times to go higher. Unfortunately, as Lu found, the overhang makes it difficult to regain the rockface after you let go to rest on the rope. After a long battle, spent trying to recapture a good grip, Giovanna also asked to be lowered. She was rightly pleased with her efforts and everybody was in a good mood. So I thought that we could each put in another climb. I walked the trail back up and around to the anchors to shift them over to Catwalk. I thought this, on top-rope, would offer enough variety of surfaces to satisfy any of us. We each top-rope climbed different variations. The girls experimented with chimneying techniques while James and I wandered out on various faces. It was all great fun, but at the end we were totally wasted. So home we went, a most excellent day.
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