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Saturday 12th James and Lu marched up to my door at exactly 11am. Wow. I guess we're really going to go climbing today. Excellent. It was pretty cold and overcast, a grey old day, but at least it wasn't blowing or raining. Still, I was a little impressed that they were going to climb with me in January. Especially when one considered their origins. James (like me) is from Australia, a country so hot that it was (in that torrid hemisphere) aflame. Lu is Brazilian, completely Brazilian, which means passion, fire, heat, everything. So … one understands my awe, no? Yes. So we packed my rack and gear into the Dudette and drove off, stopping first at John Peterson's place to retrieve some more of my gear and borrow one of his ropes. While there we narrowly avoided being eaten by Eric's dog. Minutes later we were at Sleeping Giant and hiking the white trail up to the chin. We had agreed to do the classic, Wiessner's Rib (5.6).
Wiessner's Rib (5.6) There were a couple of reasons for this choice. First of all I have been on the route twice before, leading it once, so it was familiar to me. James had been with me the time I led it, helping me shepherd two french friends who were along for the ride, so he also knew what to expect. So we wouldn't be trying to onsight anything, not on a day like today. You want conditions to be at least somewhat comfortable when you strike into the unknown … sometimes you don't get this and that's alright, but it's still something you want … so we would leave the unknown for another time. Secondly, it was Lu's first time at Sleeping Giant and I thought that she might like to try it's foremost line. Climbing here began in the 1920's with the likes of Hassler Whitney (who was a noted alpinist) who climbed the chin with some frequency while he was a student at Yale. But it wasn't until the 1930's that the old master Fritz Wiessner came along and established the classic route we would be climbing today. It was also the place where I began learning to lead. The "Rib" really is a classic, but it's a forgotten one. Back in 1953 an incumbent president of the Princeton Mountaineering Club was accidently killed while climbing on the chin. Subsequent to the tragedy, park authorities effectively closed Sleeping Giant to climbing until 1979. By then the technical climbing revolution was already under full steam and the chin had missed it's developmental window. It's former popularity was never regained. James spotted the line first and proceded to move directissima up the talus slope. Lu and I opted for a more oblique, and perhaps gentler, approach which started further to the right. We rejoined at the base and discussed our starting options. Last time I had everyone scramble up to a starting ledge about 20 feet higher than the actual base. This time I felt that we should start climbing from the bottom, this matches more closely Fasulo's description of the route. We roped up, with Lu tied into the middle of the rope and James manning the belay. I started up a right-facing dihedral that would take me to the ledge. It was moderately easy, making me think just enough to be an interesting movement. I got to the ledge, moved left and began ascending another right-facing dihedral. This was more difficult than I remembered, and it took me a little while to work out the sequence. Eventually I got up to a comfortable stance. The next bit, which was a short but unprotected friction traverse to the right which finished with a mantle up onto a large ledge, daunted me for a while. I reached around and up looking for lines alternative to the traverse before I had the cojones to just commit and do it. If the hand holds were positive then it would have been no problem. But they weren't and my hands were getting chilled. I got up to the big ledge and remembered that this was the place that I had belayed Leon and Leila up to way back in August 2000 … when we did our own variation of the route, something we called "The Dude" at the time. I slung a big chock-stone with one of my long slings (these things were awfully tangled and I had to take them all off to sort them out and free one, the upshot of this was that I lay the rest them down on the ledge and promptly forgot about the lot). Stepping up to the next section, which was the real crux of the route, I considered the big layback. At about this time a troop of kids had spotted me from one of the trails coming down Mt Carmel. They began to scream and carry on for a very long time. It didn't bother me much. That sort of thing is like rain. I can ignore it and, eventually, it stops. I finished the layback (much grunting and some concern for slippery shoes) and then romped up and left along the lightning bolt crack, lifting myself onto the big ledge which marked the end of the pitch. As I set the belay anchor the noisemakers got bored watching me apparently doing not very much and wandered off. I belayed for Lu as she worked her way up the line. The first dihedral was no trouble, James snapped a great photo of her doing that one, but by the second dihedral her hands were becoming terribly cold. Her gloves were in her pack and out of reach, so she was suffering quite a bit when she moved into view just before the friction traverse. As it was a comfortable stance she pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and started rubbing them furiously together. After a while she was ready to move on. She didn't actually do the friction traverse. Instead she hand-jammed with her right and spider walked the fingers of her left hand straight up trying to reach a higher edge about two feet out of reach. With her right hand locked in place she brought her right foot up beside it, pivoted, balanced and eventually swung her left hand up high enough to reach that distance edge. Classy solution. Once Lu gained her feet on the ledge she noticed the long slings I left behind and picked them up for me. She did the layback crux really well too. It was a struggle, but she succeeded admirably with a technique she wasn't fond of at all. The last moves came smoothly, although her hands were desperately cold by now. Poor Lu, she was very uncomfortable. I had her clip into both an old pin and into my belay anchor. James came up next, he paused a bit at the second dihedral and would later tell me that it was more difficult than he remembered it too. Maybe we both did it wrong this time. James circumvented the friction traverse with his long reach, going straight up and then stepping across where I had used my hands. At the crux he laybacked like a champion and very soon was up beside us. With the three of us on the ledge I suggested that we have our picnic right there, at the halfway point along the route. If it had been warmer maybe James and Lu would have been more enthusiastic. But a cold breeze had lifted and they bargained me down to a quick cup of tea before getting on with the climbing. So we passed the thermos around and, for a few minutes, enjoyed the view out over Quinnipiac campus. Lu was enjoying the climb, but she was not in love with the cold. James was probably also cold, but he wasn't saying so. It was clear, however, that he too liked the climb. We got ourselves sorted for the next pitch and James again belayed for my lead. I stepped off the ledge to the right and out over the void. James wryly asked "How's the view, mate?" as my bum swung about 100 feet off the deck. I stepped up and up, the climb itself being less demanding than the lead. The crux of the second pitch came with the traverse back left towards the edge of the arete. This took some concentration and another moment of courage-building. My hands were cold and the holds didn't feel as positive or as certain as last time. Another commitment to a moment of trust and I was around there and moving up the last stages. I found the big loose block, bang on the arete, that most people put their foot on. Mindful that Lu didn't have a helmet I left it alone and devised an alternative sequence. Truthfully, however, there isn't a helmet in the world that could save someone from that particular lump of rock … I hope nobody's below when it finally takes a dive. At the top the wind was brisk but the sun was shining through a break in the clouds. Quickly using a tree for an anchor I set up the belay in record-time and pulled up the slack. After putting Lu on belay I called down that all was ready. Lu's hands just got colder and colder. She reached the place just before the leftward traverse and had to stand there for a long time, trying to rub some warmth back into them. The reach around was very long, way out of her grasp, and the footholds were also a long way away. She backed off once or twice, fingers searching where her eyes couldn't see. She was losing all feeling in her hands. Lu finally made her commitment to uncertainty and accepted the meagre holds, using them to carefully move up to better ones that were otherwise too far. She was doing a magnificent job. Climbing up to my belay she scrambled back from the cliff's edge and tried to find a place in the sun and out of the wind. James, patiently waiting below, was probably very cold. He had been sitting motionless for a long time exposed to the elements. Wisely he had kept his gloves on, protecting his hands, but for the rest of him there was no escape from the wind. I let him know that he was on belay and he set about removing the belay anchor I had set up on that ledge. It took a while. When he reached the leftward traverse crux he had a hell of a time trying to remove a wired nut I had placed just before it. Eventually we agreed that he could leave it for me to try and lever it out later. His movement around the traverse was nowhere near as fluid as when he flashed this route back in August 2001, but that was just an indication of how cold things were. Still he has rarely, if ever, weighted the rope. As he climbed up the last section he also avoided the loose block, finding an alternative method similar to my own. James quickly set up an ATC belay and lowered me back down to the stuck nut. After a bit of cursing I managed to hammer it out and James winched me back to the top. Given the conditions we had all done pretty well. James and Lu broke out some chocolate (Australian Cadbury's and Brazilian Lu, of course) and under fading sunbeams the sweet hot tea was finished off. We packed up and hiked back down, this time walking around the back side and past the old quarry in an attempt to soak up the last orange rays of a setting sun. It was a beautiful afternoon. Later we joined Leila and the Kamsteegs for a highly entertaining evening of fine wine, good food and grand conversation. Marvelous. [Historical notes adapted from "Traprock" by Ken Nichols, 1982]
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