Thursday 10^th.

Leon and I had both agreed earlier that if today was good weatherwise (we've been having a lot of rain lately) that we would try to finish work early and go climbing in the afternoon. Well it was a blazing hot day, it had rained early in the night but the sun was fast in drying everything up. So early to work and early to play, as some might say. We managed to skip school around 3.30pm and met at my place to organize our gear. We had been discussing this for nearly a week and were pretty sure exactly where we wanted to do our first real lead climb.

Lead climbing. What's that? I'm sure I've described it before. OK, I'll try again. The simplest/easiest/safest form of climbing is called top-roping. A rope extends from a belayer on the ground to the top of a cliff/wall where an anchor is placed and then back down to the climber. As the climber ascends the belayer takes up the resulting slack, feeding it through a belaying device which will lock the rope in the event of a fall by the climber. Really simple, I've been climbing like this for nearly 3 years. But it's not lead climbing.

Lead climbing is where the rope goes directly from the belayer to the climber and it is the climber's job to place anchor points as he ascends, threading the rope through each one. The idea being that in the event of a fall the climber will tumble past the highest piece of placed protection and the belayer will be able to arrest his downward progress when the rope snaps taut. The rope is a dynamic rope, not a static rope, which means that it has some stretch in it ... making fall-arrests a little bit more comfortable. However, lead falls are much larger than top-rope falls. Top-rope falls are typically no larger than 1-2 metres. But in a lead fall the distance depends on how far past your most recent anchor you have climbed. If you climb 4 metres past your anchor then you will fall 8 metres (plus 0.5-1 metre of stretch in the rope) ... so you have to be real careful how far past your anchor you climb before you place another one higher up.

There are two forms of lead climbing. Sport and traditional (called "trad" by the pundits). Sport climbing is very popular here. On some climbs the rockface is periodically bolted with metal fixtures (once pitons were used, now the technology is a bit different, lately ring bolts are popular) which allow fast and easy "clipping in" of anchors. This form of leading allows a climber to climb at the end of his abilities without really pushing the safety margins too much. On the other hand, traditional lead climbing involves the placement of wedges, hex-nuts, and camming devices in cracks, nooks and crannys that one may find during a climb ... using these in place of pitons and bolts. This is not as evidently safe as sport climbing ... so it is up to the climber to stay well within his/her abilities all the time ... you tend to lead climbs which are much easier than the ones you would top-rope.

OK, that's it ... climbing for conservatives ... as a similar saying goes "there are old trad-climbers and there are bold trad-climbers, but there are no old bold trad-climbers".

So ... back to the story ... where was I. Right. We geared up at my place, deciding to take my rope (it's newer) and as much of my anchor/protection as I could carry. With all of this gear we rode our bikes to Leon's place to pick up his stuff, some water, directions and topo-maps of the place we wanted to climb. The area we intended to go to is "Sleeping Giant National Park" about 10 minutes drive north-east of New Haven. So we checked out (for the umpteenth-time) all our gear and directions etc, etc, etc. Jumped in Leon's beat-up subaru, "the dude", and roared up Whitney Ave in a cloud of blue exhaust.

On arrival at Sleeping Giant (4 pm) we realized that we had left the topo-maps and cliff photographs at Leon's place. Doh! After some discussion we both realized that we had each been staring at these things long enough that we would probably be able to find (without a map) the "easy" climb we were interested in trying. So, shouldering our packs, ropes, gear, we trundled off into the forest following a walking trail we knew would bring us near the base of the cliff we wanted to climb. There were a bunch of people on the trail, mostly joggers and hikers getting their afternoon workouts.

Reaching the cliffs area we looked up at them and tried to locate wall-features, cliff-top trees and other recognizable bits that would orient us enough to find our chosen climb (called "Weisner's Rib" rated at 5.6 or "easy"). Thinking we had the right place we started to haul ourselves up the scree-slope, and about 50 metres of boulders later it was something like 4.30 pm and we were at the cliff-base proper. Much discussion and marching left and right indicated our doubts, the climb we were looking at looked very easy ... perhaps not even a real climb ... more like a difficult scramble. We weren't 100% sure it was the "Rib" either.

We flipped a coin and Leon won, he chose to lead the first pitch. We had 50 metres of rope and it looked like a 60-odd metre cliff ... two pitches minimum. So after organizing our gear and tying into the end of the rope up he went. I wont go into detail here. Suffice to say that he climbed up about 30 meters, placing hexes, wedges and cams in the rock as he went for protection. It was slow work and it must have been nerve-wracking for him, from the base it looks pretty easy, but I found out that it was another matter once you got up there. After what seemed like ages he called out that he was off belay and that it was my turn to follow him up. He had found a nice little ledge and set a couple of great anchor points, so up I went. Once at the top we reorganized a bit, took a bit of water (we had elected to climb with our packs, which makes things a little tricky but turned out to be ok) and I took over the lead for the last pitch. I climbed a line about 5 meters or so above Leon into a dead-end. I had placed one piece of protection that was 2 meters below me and I had reached a point where I didn't want to go higher in case I fell, but there were no obvious cracks or nooks I could employ for anchor placement. It was a tricky section too, small footholds but good handholds, it's amazing how fast I seemed to get tired. After some cursing, Leon kindly suggested a second line of ascent ... but I would have to down-climb from where I was ... ouch. I made it back easily, but never having had to down-climb before made me pretty nervous. Following Leon's advice, I traversed across from him about 8 meters and ascending some very cracky rock, it turned out to be a real doddle. On the way up I placed about 5 pieces of protection before I reached the top of the cliff. El coolio. I quickly set up a belay anchor, pulled up the remaining slack and told Leon he was ready to go. In a little while he had made it up and we stood at the top shaking hands and admiring the view. Looking back down the cliff it certainly seemed to be a real climb, not a mere scramble after all. It was past 7pm, it had taken us over 2 hours! Thirty minutes of hiking later we reached the car and headed home.

Our first lead climb was done. Back in New Haven we hit Dempsey's for a celebratory beer. If the weather holds were going to ragged mountain on the weekend. Oh yeah, it turns out we were nowhere near "Weisner's Rib" ... ah well, we can save that one for the next time we go to the Giant.