Gripped
v. tr. Slang
To be immobilized with fear. Man, that dude was really gripped up there.
[Late 20^th Century US-English]

An expedition to Seneca Rocks with Peterson & Son Adventure Tours.

For me the return to Seneca Rocks was a mission to try and find something I had lost there late last month. On my previous visit I had something taken from me which I now sorely missed and I wanted it back, bad.

Seneca Rocks is a place in West Virginia where a long geological fold composed of sedimentary Tuscarora quartzite-sandstone suddenly rises like a giant crest above the Monongahela forests. With two wafer-thin peaks, each reaching over a thousand feet above the valley floor, it attracts climbers of all abilities to a wealth of single and multi-pitch routes … most of which offer spectacular exposure.

In March I had come here with Leon, on the first leg of our cross-country journey to Seattle, and we spent one day climbing here under less than ideal conditions. On that day I had a frightening fall, during which my topmost piece of protection failed and I tumbled almost 20 feet before being arrested by a second anchor. In that precipitate moment a significant portion of my courage for lead climbing, my “lead-head”, vanished.

They say you must face down your fears to overcome them, and you must challenge them at their height. Yeah, ok, whatever.

John Peterson, an absolutely stark raving mad climber with a side-interest in computer science, has been somebody I have known and feared for less than a year. After leaving Leon in Seattle I have maintained my contact with rock and rope through this man, and I have accompanied him on a couple of outings in Connecticut already. A few weeks ago John told me that he was headed to Seneca Rocks and asked if I wanted to go. I said yes, then no, then maybe. John patiently told me in his kindly way that I would be a total loser if I didn’t go climbing with him at Seneca. How anyone could resist such a gently eloquent argument is beyond me.

Anyway, I thought it might be a good opportunity to exorcise my personal demons.

John said that his son Eric the Inscrutable would be going and so would two other dudes. We first went to pick up a fellow called Arvind, a very friendly guy of Indian extraction (he was originally from Madras) who has been on the Yale Computer Science faculty for the last few years. His climbing experience was fairly minimal, but he was keen to do something completely insane in order to counter-balance the hard-core academic shenanigans he had recently been struggling through. After Arvind we drove to Eric’s school in West Hamden. John ran inside and, very probably, just abducted his son from class on the spot. It’s highly likely that the school principal had called security, the cops and Eric’s mom, in that order, not ten seconds after we blasted out of the car park at high-speed en-route for the Merrit Parkway. Eric was fairly quiet and initially seemed to be on this trip against his will, pretty soon I found out that he was just a being normal kid … in the sense that kids are normally about as coherent as works of modern art, i.e. perverse, weird and in no humanly possible way fully interpretable. Our last pick up was Andrei, who would be waiting for us at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Andrei would turn out to be an affable live wire and as much a pleasure to meet as Arvind. But we’re picking him up from an airport? What?

Andrei is a student at Cambridge. I’m talking about the University in England, the one established in the 12^th or 13^th century on the Cam River north of London, not the city in Massachusetts which houses far younger upstarts (Harvard and MIT to name two). He’s not originally a Brit, he’s from Russia, or Moscow to be more precise. However, a decade or so in the UK has lent him an authentic pommie accent and robbed him of any colour that his formerly principal language may have imparted. He was visiting John and other friends at Yale for a week and had agreed readily to an immediate climbing trip with John on arrival.

John scanned the radio for traffic information and made on the fly adjustments to our route towards Newark. Traffic was heavy, but John’s kung fu was strong and we got to America’s second-worst international airport only an hour or so after Andrei was due to arrive. But Andrei had his own hassles with a screw-up pilot and uppity immigration drones so he was out on the pick-up curb pretty much only a few minutes before we sailed by. Astonishingly John and Andrei spotted each other among the madding crowd with immediate ease. Andrei crammed himself into the back seat with Arvind and Eric and we were on our way again.

The long drive (it took more than ten hours in total, there were a few traffic problems beyond New Jersey as well) was mitigated by good conversation and equally good humor, and great distances were passed largely unnoticed. We arrived at Seneca Shadows campground at something after 1 am Saturday morning. The tents went up and we all hit the sack.

That morning I woke in my tent at around 6 am. It was a little chilly, but not as bad as it had been in March. I went to the showers. Good grief, these showers were something else and I thought I had seen them all. I appreciate the mechanics of economics and the soundness of ecological responsibility, waste-not want-not, and yada yada yada. But these showers are bizarre. You push a button and water comes out of the showerhead for about thirty seconds. Push it again and you get another thirty seconds. The water is pretty hot, but at least it’s not scalding. This is all fair enough and it sounds like a system to dissuade people from just having very long showers and pissing off people waiting in line. Good idea really. But the sheer volume you get in that thirty-second deluge is equivalent to what you can extract from an average-sized Olympic swimming pool. The first time I hit that button I was nearly blasted out of the stall, and I was standing to one side too. So my question is this, what’s the bloody point?

The others eventually woke up, not a one of them was happy about the time, but I was keen to get on with it. We drove to Yokum’s Store and bought a few breakfast provisions and went to the car park under the cliffs to chow down. After coffee, orange juice, bagels and cereal we were all in a much pleasanter frame of mind. The weather was bloody marvelous. Brilliant blue skies and a welcome warming sun. John had hatched a plan and we all thought it was a good one. John would take Arvind under his wing to the west face and I would lead the other two up some easy stuff around the Ecstasy buttress on the south end.

I know not the details of what happened with John and Arvind. Suffice it to say, against all of Arvind’s expectations, they survived and reached (one way or another) the summit of the south peak. Arvind later would tell me that John was so fast in organizing and climbing that he really didn’t have time to get properly “gripped” (note: see definitions above for the meaning of this oft-used term) and thus actually enjoyed the experience quite a lot. At least, he thought he enjoyed it.

Before John took off with Arvind he spent a little while with me sorting out my own plan, to try and do Ecstasy. I asked about bolts. None. I asked about the end of the first pitch. That notch. That notch? Yes, that one. Leon will be pleased to know that he had (back in March, with me) lead the entire first pitch of Ecstasy after all, and his anchor was exactly where it was supposed to be. There are no rap rings off Ecstasy either; you’re supposed to walk off the top. John said ok, bye and then hurled off with Arvind.

Andrei belayed for me while Eric kept himself amused by combing the rocks for interesting animals and insects to capture. As I went up the pitch I was much comforted by the knowledge that comes with previous experience, after all I had seconded up this line for Leon, so I didn’t have much trouble at first. But pretty soon I was fighting a familiar feeling of dread. No confidence. Every time I stopped I had to force myself to continue, it was not the easy feeling of flowing up the stone that it should have been, that it had been. I would place a piece with great care, spending quite a long time on each one. John had remarked during the drive down the previous night that he thought people were over-trusting of camming devices and that they were less bomber than many assumed. I think I placed one #1 camalot during this lead; it would be the only one I used on lead for the whole weekend. Wired nuts were my first choice every time, passive and much easier to recognize unquestionably bomber placements. I had eight draws with me, which was a problem, because with Leon I had always borrowed four to six of his. So I had to force myself to run things out a bit. I also passed up that notch, too small for three people to comfortably sit in, plus it would have to be hanging and I wanted to be able to give Andrei and Eric comfort and obvious safety. So I aimed for the big ledge about thirty feet higher up. I got there feeling tremendous rope drag, I set up a three point belay anchor and looked down.

Below me Andrei had me on belay with about 1 meter of rope remaining, I had climbed up almost 50 metres!

“Off belay!”
“Belay off!”

I pulled up the rope. God the rope drag was horrendous! Another fellow had climbed up a line not far away and noticed my struggle. He offered to help, I thanked him but I said I could manage it. People here are so cool.

“On belay!”
“Climbing!”
“Climb on!”

Andrei, with a second rope trailing him, climbed up. He moved fast and sure, with a confidence that was making me think that perhaps he should try leading sometime. Having climbed with him for a weekend I think his skills and level-headedness make him eminently good leader material. The wind had picked up and was making things a little cold, but I had kept a layer of fleece on. Andrei reached my ledge and sat down as I tied him into the anchor with a clove hitch.

“Did Eric tie in at the other end?” I asked.
“I presume so.” Said Andrei.

Fair enough, Eric has been climbing since he could walk, perhaps sooner. So we assumed that he was clued in enough to be ready for us. I shouted down to him from above, but could hear no reply. I couldn’t even see him. So I pulled up the rope a bit, thought I felt him on the end, set up the gi-gi and shouted down.

“On belay!”
No reply.
“Eric!”
Nothing.

“He’s probably ready.” One of us said.
“Yeah, probably.”

So I started to pull up the rope. It came in fits and starts, just like you would expect with someone at the end moving in a discontinuous climbing fashion. But heck the kid was fast! Well, Eric’s been here before, and he had led something on these rocks at seven years of age no less.

So it was quite a surprise when the end of the rope appeared with no Eric attached. Just a big knot. So the little blighter hadn’t tied in after all!

This pretty much solved a dilemma I had been wrestling with. I had felt so uncomfortable on the lead that I really didn’t feel happy about continuing with Ecstasy, there were rap rings close to this ledge, the wind was strong, and now we had misplaced one of our own. Besides, the next two pitches were the hardest. I explained to Andrei how I was feeling and he agreed to the descent, although he was probably a little disappointed.

It took an interminable time for me to set up the rappel, but eventually we were both safely down. Eric was still at the base of Ecstasy and explained that he hadn’t tied in by the time Andrei had finished. When I had pulled up the rope a little it was yanked out of his reach and he missed it. Surprisingly Eric didn’t show any annoyance at his missing out on the pitch, so we agreed to drop the subject and decided to move on. The original plan was to finish Ecstasy and walk off towards the middle of the west face where we would meet John and Arvind. Instead we decided to go do something else that was short and quick and familiar to me. Candy Corner, my therapy route and rated at only 5.5.

So with Andrei belaying for me again I went up Candy Corner, again feeling very uncomfortable despite the relatively easy nature of the climb. No cams placed at all, just one nut after another, using up all but one of my slings getting to the top. I set a belay station and called down for them to follow. This time Andrei made sure that Eric wouldn’t miss out and sent him up next.

Of course Eric made short work of the climb, when he got up to the top he asked me why I didn’t use any of the old pins that were along the way. These are among the things his dad refers to as cheap insurance, you can’t rely on them but they’re easy to clip into with a draw and you still place your own pro as usual. If you do fall, they’re just something extra that might add to the catch.

“Your dad’s a much better judge of pins than I am.” I said, “So I tend to steer clear of them myself.” I forgot to add that I didn’t really have enough draws to feel comfortable as it was, and thus wouldn’t want to waste them on placements I had no way of properly evaluating.

Eric shrugged and nodded. “Look.” He pointed out a couple slowly making their way up the south pillar on the other side of Roy Gap road. Below us Andrei was tying in.

We could hear John calling out to us; he was walking up from beneath the Ecstasy buttress. Eric shouted and waved back to his dad. John and Arvind were done with their climbs and wanted to know how we did on Ecstasy. With lots of yelling and explaining, while Andrei was trying to concentrate on climbing, we managed to tell John what happened. So he said that after we were done with Candy Corner he would lead us up Ecstasy himself and show us how it was done. Too cool.

Andrei got up and said that it was a good climb, although he said that there was one move that was “definitely non-trivial”. He’s a good sport. We all rapped down, after I managed to organize things a little quicker than I did on Ecstasy and went off to find John and Arvind. One thing really bothered me about the setup for this rappel. I was trying to add extra security by using quick draws to attach the others to my harness while they transferred to the rap. But a couple of times the draws were linked to my gear loops (which are not strong enough) and not my belay loop. We spotted these lapses fairly quickly and sorted them out, but it left me feeling pretty stupid.

Arvind was reclining at the base of Ecstasy, lying back in the shade and out of the wind and no doubt contemplating his recent adventures with John on the south peak. John on the other hand had already completed his first pitch (I assume Arvind belayed for him, but you never know) and was up there on a hanging belay waiting for us to join him.

So I tied in and, trailing a rope, climbed up to his stance. Bloody hell hanging belays are awkward! John had his work cut out trying to make us both comfortable. There was only room for two at best and I wondered how exactly we were going to get four people up this line. He explained that he would now finish the climb and, after he was safely on top, I would belay Eric up here. Then I would finish, belayed by John, while Eric belayed Andrei up. Then Eric would follow me and then, finally, Andrei. Cool.

So I belayed for John as he went up and around to the right on the sheer upper face of the Ecstasy buttress, it was there we would find tremendous exposure high above the cave mouth below and it was there that the crux of the climb waited. After a while I could hear him, although only just, say he was safe. So I hauled on the line I had trailed up after me. Ugh. Rope drag. Lots of it too. I thought the line was stuck somewhere, but it was just drag. Took forever to haul up. Eric was growing impatient below.

Eventually Eric could start climbing and I took up the slack as best I could. But it was slow going and Eric had to pause a few times for me to catch up. Once he reached the belay I got him tied into the anchor. Eric had trailed a rope for Andrei and he said that he was suffering a bit from the rope drag too.

Now I was feeling a little messed up. The lapses atop Candy Corner were preying on my mind and this hanging belay high up on the wall was making me nervous. I kept scrutinizing John’s anchor placements. My thought processes seemed to move glacially slow, so it was hard to concentrate and do everything properly with any speed. I looked at John’s anchor again. He places things with an ease that sometimes looks positively cavalier, while I struggle with almost every piece when I’m on lead. It all looked perfect. But what do I know anyway?

So I kind of forgot that Eric was going to have the same difficulty that I had when it came to pulling up the slack between himself and Andrei. I satisfied myself that the lad was safe and as comfortable as he could be. Eric waved me off and I called up to John that I was ready. The wind was really making communication difficult.

I followed John’s line along the next pitch. He had placed pro more frequently here than on the first and easier pitch. The exposure was intense. I fully understand where the name for this climb came from. The phrase an ecstasy of terror being uppermost in my mind. As I got closer to John he would talk me through something if I seemed stuck. He silently watched me try the crux and only gave me beta after I slipped off it at a crucial point. That’s a pretty cool thing that John does, he seems to know if you need information or not. It’s also good because there’s an element of imparted confidence in the way that he does this. Not that you could get him to admit to participating in such a load of girly fluff.

I heaved myself up onto the top beside him. It was a great feeling to have finally, after three attempts, finished this classic route. The second pitch was a doozy too; I wonder how Leon and I would have managed if we had continued with our first try.

Down below Eric was having a bit of trouble. He wasn’t strong enough to haul against that rope drag. John had to shout all the way down to Arvind and Andrei, who relayed his questions to Eric. The third rope seemed stuck. So John decided to go down there and sort it out himself.

“Think you can lower me?” He asked.

I got myself comfortable and securely tied into the anchor, borrowed his Trango Jaws and down he went on the rope that he used to lead the climb. Lower him? Ha! All I did was pay out the slack, he never weighted the rope at all. He down climbed the whole second pitch of Ecstasy. I was anchored a little way back from the edge of the drop, which was bad because I really couldn’t hear anything. I managed to extend my anchor line a bit at a time and edged closer. Finally, in the distance, I heard John bellow at the top of his lungs “Up rope!”

Ok, ok, hold your horses. I started taking up slack. After some time Eric’s head popped up. Eric?

“Your not John.” I said. I guess Eric’s dad made sure that his first order of business was to get Eric out of there. Good thinking. He scrambled up and went to sit down in the shade behind me.

I put the other rope on belay, the one I had trailed up, presumably someone else (not Eric) was on the end of it now. Sure enough up came Andrei and then, a few feet behind and tied into the same rope, John. They had ditched the third rope, tossing it back down to Arvind below. So, one way or another we had all made it to the top. The walk off was pretty easy.

We went to Yokum’s to grab drinks and snacks and so I could try and call up Leila in Germany. I had promised to give her a ring. But the girl was partying hard in Hanover; she had gone to the Night of Nights celebrations and ended up not getting back to her place until four in the morning. So I missed her.

We hiked back up to the west face under the south peak. Eric had decided that enough was enough for the day and went on strike. So John took Arvind, Andrei and I up to a two-pitch climb that was supposed to be only 5.4. But it wasn’t. John admitted that he actually had to put his brain in gear for the first pitch as it felt trickier than it should have been. Later we worked out that he went up a different climb that was rated at 5.6. He advised Arvind that maybe he might want to skip this one. The relief on Arvind’s face was abundantly clear. Apparently John had bodily hauled the poor bugger up one pitch on their way to the summit that morning.

I went second and actually enjoyed this climb very much, it didn’t seem anywhere near as exposed as Ecstasy had and I was able to truly relax for the first time that day. There were other parties nearby, above and below, on different lines. While I sat on the ledge waiting for John to belay Andrei there was this older gent calmly moving about up there unsecured on the ledges, waiting for a partner or just nosing around. John’s like that too, give him any sort of ledge and he can just dance around like he’s on a sidewalk.

The next pitch was dead easy, rated at 5.3 or something. John put in a single piece on the way and that was just so Andrei and I would stop whimpering up at him. We followed and it was just a romp. From the top of this we would walk and scramble to the very summit of the south peak.

I wimped out on the last scramble to the very peak. I just couldn’t stomach doing that last bit unroped. We were now at about a thousand feet above the valley floor. Buzzards were sailing by beneath us in the late afternoon sun. John and Andrei took a bunch of photos of each other perched in perilous places, while I pondered my plight in relative safety. We walked back down to where we had climbed up and rapped down to Arvind, who was snoozing at the base.

That was it, no more climbing for the day. We went down to find Eric and stow our gear in the car. Back in the village Arvind, Andrei and I decided on pizza atop Harper’s at the Front Porch restaurant while John and Eric opted for Yokum’s burgers. I even managed to get a hold of some beer. Back at camp, exhausted, we all hit the sack pretty early. Tomorrow would be a shorter day as we planned to drive back to New Haven just after mid afternoon.