Back at the viewing platform we reshouldered our stuff and John lead us down along the eastern face. The trail was pretty rudimentary and it was covered in leaves to boot, which made the going treacherous. So we slipped and slid along the base of the eastern wall until John reached a place under the gunsight (this is big notch between the north and south peaks of the formation). He started to lead it up really quickly. The plan was that he would take Eric and Arvind up with him and I would lead with Andrei on our own rope. John only got up a short way before deciding that we could do this first bit faster if we went unroped. I was carrying a backpack with a jacket and some water and also all of my gear, so I was a bit nervous about losing my balance while scrambling up there. Andrei agreed to belay me from above and that worked out just fine, even if the belay was merely psychological protection in the end anyway. When I reached the bottom of the first real climb John had already lead it up to the notch and Eric was halfway towards following them. Things were moving so fast that there was a little confusion about who was supposed to carry what. The three of them went up on this short pitch using only one rope; Eric tied in at the halfway point. So I hastily arranged for Arvind to trail their spare, as opposed to carrying it, which he didn’t seem too, keen on. Andrei and I traversed the first ledge unroped, passing a few groups who were climbing directly up to the peak, and set up for our climb right where it started going up to the notch.

We discussed the line a bit and I muddled through setting up a minimal belay anchor for him before setting off. It was a very easy and very short 5.3 pitch, maybe 50 feet only. The holds and foot placements were so good that I only placed one piece and that was at midway. At the top I found John and Eric and Arvind squeezed onto the surprisingly narrow saddle at the base of the notch. Arvind was anchored, but I think Eric was just sitting on a thin slab nearby. Sheer drop-offs were only a couple of feet in either direction. If I recall it correctly John set off for the last pitch just before Andrei joined us on the saddle.

The last line was a fantastic and frightening route. Although it was rated at only 5.3 it follows a steep ribbon of stone only 2 feet wide and then you’re supposed to traverse out across the western face, with hundreds of feet of emptiness beneath. This represented the severest exposure I could imagine. The south peak looked like a cutout viewed edge on. Seneca Rocks is basically just a crenellated pancake of stone standing on its end, so to look up at the south peak was to look at a thin slice of rock rising steeply and spectacularly above you.

John reveled in the climb, as easy as it was for him he was still clearly enjoying it immensely. Eric was making noises about not being clipped in, it was the first time I had even heard a peep of insecurity out of the boy. So I arranged for him to attach himself to my harness with lockers and a draw. Andrei got up with us and watched as John led it up this improbable looking route. Andrei was also in obvious enjoyment of the route and was practically laughing with glee at the height and exposure and John’s sheer fearlessness. Eric was also laughing and joking about the exposure too, totally unafraid of the proceedings.

However, Arvind and I, for different reasons, were getting totally gripped. Arvind I think was in the midst of a shocking realization. Here he was, a mild mannered computer scientist who enjoyed following world cricket and the occasional quiet vegetarian pizza, suddenly realizing just how fond of heights he wasn’t. His eyes were wide, he sat very still in a tight little pocket, and his focus was principally aimed at everything except … well … everything really. Massive drop offs to the left and right. Towers of stone ahead and behind. No way out. Poor bastard, I had a good idea how he was feeling. I’m not fond of heights myself.

I also was losing my confidence at a tremendous rate. I took one look at the route John was taking (not that there were any others to follow) and just couldn’t see myself leading it too. I kept rehashing over the previous day’s screw-ups on top of Candy Corner. It just wasn’t going to happen. However, we only had three ropes between five people. That was part of why I was expected to lead the route. I talked it over with Andrei and he agreed to simul-climb with me. He’s done it before with John a number of times and I had done it a few times myself. It’s pretty simple and we’ve used it on this weekend already. We would tie in a few feet apart at the end of our rope and let Eric trail it up.

John was finished, somewhere up on top and out of sight. It was Arvind’s turn to climb it. It was the most courageous thing I have seen in a long long time. He was obviously scared a great deal, and my own murmurings of disquiet couldn’t have helped him either. But he did it. It took time, but we never heard a squeak of protest out of him. Andrei and I encouraged him as best we could but Eric was no support at all.

“He’s gripped!” Eric shouted gleefully, “Totally gripped dude!”

We remonstrated the boy now and then, but there was no stopping young Peterson’s merciless lampooning of Arvind’s efforts. Arvind reserved comment and concentrated solely on not getting killed. It was a champion endeavor under the greatest possible pressure.

Eric went next; we tied our last rope into his harness to trail up after him. He was well aware of how I was feeling and decided to have a little fun with me too. He reached the traverse and, just before stepping out, called back in mock terror “Oh the exposure! The exposure!” Laughing all the while.

Andrei and I took one look at each other and then suddenly grabbed the rope Eric was trailing. Immobilized, the young terror looked back in real surprise.

“Cut the crap, Eric.” Andrei said.
“Yeah that’s enough out of you.” I chimed in.

Eric made some comment about the poor style of pulling on someone’s rope while they were trying to climb a difficult line, but he was pretty quiet after that. Good. We let him go.

Andrei and I broke down our anchor and waited for Eric to finish up and his dad to take up the slack. We discussed what we would do and generally talked about how spectacular things were and how great the weather was today. Just shooting the breeze really. Once we agreed on simul-climbing I had felt a great deal better and was beginning to enjoy myself once again. Andrei gave me his camera and I said that I would try to get some boffo pics of him at the very end of a rope and hundreds of feet in the air.

The climb was cool. Andrei was strong and I only had to worry about myself. We swapped gear-cleaning duties. The most difficult was the first one and Andrei handled it with minimal strain. We even hammered at a booty tri-cam, but it was definitely stuck fast, fix-pro category. Up top I practically crawled along the thin ridge, passed John and made my way to the slightly widened peak section where Arvind and Eric were waiting.

Arvind was sitting quietly still in the absolute center of the slab. Eric was pretty casual, although he wasn’t dangling his feet over the edge or anything like that. There were a couple of other groups up here with us too. Eric and I signed the summit register. The others had done that the day before. It was getting pretty crowded up there and John suggested that we get off and rap back down on the west face.

Andrei and Arvind both wanted to be on belay as they down-climbed from the peak, so I agreed to go last and do the honors. I asked that Andrei return the favor as I came down. The Peterson’s just down climbed unroped. When I got down there I decided to stash all my gear in my backpack.

To get to the rappel, different from the one that John had us use the previous day, we had to do another short, but serious downclimb. Good grief, John must be some sort of adrenaline junkie! We all got down safely. When I arrived last John and Eric had already gone, setting up the next rap further below. Andrei and Arvind and I sat on the ledge waiting for the John to get off the lines. We set Arvind up, it was tricky and scary but otherwise event-free and he made his way down.

While setting up for Arvind I noticed that I had done another incredibly thoughtless thing. When I put my gear into my bag, I put it ALL into the bag. Harness included. Jesus Christ-all-bloody-mighty! I gingerly pulled the bag off my back, set it on the ledge beside me and got the harness out. Carefully I crept back into it.

I guess that I must have been tired in the head when I packed the bag and just automatically took off the harness to put it in with everything else. This game is going to kill me pretty quick at this rate.

Anyway, I’d had enough climbing. I resolved to take Arvind, who was also jack of it all, for a beer back in the village … regardless of what these other nuts had in mind. So after we had all rapped down I suggested my plan to Arvind, who accepted immediately. The others were going to do one final climb. John wanted Eric to lead something hard, so they had set off for a climb called Triple-S. Arvind, Andrei and I caught up with them at the base of a different climb … Triple-S was too busy to bother with apparently. Andrei and I gave John all of the gear that we had collected from the last climb, and then Arvind and I walked the trail back down just after Eric began his lead. Andrei decided to participate in this last climb.

Arvind and I reached the car, dumped the spare ropes and gear and stuff that the others didn’t want, and then walked to the Parks Service Visitor Center to get something to drink. The Center has a fixed binocular telescope mounted outside and you can use it to spy on climbers making their way up the western face. So we decided to try and keep track of Eric’s progress with this.

I spotted Eric at the mid-point of his climb. He was moving confidently and expertly upwards; well to me he looks like he knows what he’s doing anyway. The climb is rated at 5.7 according to John, I didn’t catch its name. But it goes up to a big tree perched on a tiny ledge about one full rope-length (50-60 metres) up. Taking turns at the telescope Arvind and I watched as the lad was apparently stuck for a long while. So we went inside and sat down on some nice plush lounge chairs. From there we could look out the window and just make out a small green blob that marked Eric on the wall. We noticed that he had started a leftward traverse. From time to time we would wander outside to look through the telescope for a closer look, but we could actually see him just fine with the naked eye.

Arvind and I chatted amiably for a while, and we each wandered about the visitor center while we weren’t watching Eric … who was having something of a mini-epic … creeping up and across the cliffs.

Suddenly I noticed that the green blob was much lower than he had been. Shit! He’s fallen! We raced outside and shouldered aside a couple of rotund tourists who had been hogging the scope. Out of the way dammit! This is an emergency!

From what I can gather, having talked to Eric afterwards, he hadn’t fallen after all. Not seriously anyway. He had done the traverse because the upward route was significantly harder. John said it was 5.8 at least. After traversing and finding no easier line he had started down climbing to a ledge. I think Eric said that he did have a small fall, but he had protected himself well and it wasn’t anything major at all. Once down on the ledge he set himself up an anchor. This all took some time, Arvind and I didn’t have the patience to monopolize the scope, so once we satisfied ourselves that the boy was ok we stopped paying attention for a while.

The next time we got back on the scope we saw that Eric was still on his ledge, but John was at the top of the climb! Eric had belayed him up to the hard bit, and then John had lead (still on Eric’s belay) through the difficult 5.8 section to the belay tree. Not long afterwards we could see Andrei scaling the wall after him like some giant gecko. So what are they going to do with Eric?

The lad was lowered off to safety. The poor kid had endured an hour and a half on that ledge in the full sun, it was probably 80 F (26 C) or hotter, and we could see him constantly trying to shield his face from the glare. He was wearing jeans and a long sleeve pullover, so he was somewhat protected from sunburn.

We watched as Andrei unsuccessfully tried to pull Eric’s rope back up through Eric’s remaining pro. The little guy had neglected to fully untie the knot in the end. So it got properly stuck on the last piece. John had to lower Andrei down to clear the pieces and then to the base. John then walked along the ledge to a rap station that he must have known about and headed back down from there.

We all met in the car park and exchanged our versions of what happened and what we thought happened. Then we all crammed into the car and drove, and drove, and drove, and drove … for a very bloody long time … until we got back to New Haven.

Ack, next time John’s got to charter a plane. Most excellent weekend though, even if I never did find my lead head.