Matt following pitch 3 of Quadrophenia (5.7+)
Presented with a stellar forecast for Friday and Saturday and a crap forecast for Sunday, Matt and I did what any self-respecting climber would do, we blew off work and headed for the rock! Friday we headed down into Keene and went up to the Hurricane Crag. We hadn’t been there in about a year, so we were interested in looking around and seeing all was around up there. We did the standard 5-star must-do moderate Quadrophenia (5.7+). We linked Pitches 2 & 3 to avoid the uncomfortable belay stance under the pitch 3 roofs (highly recommended to do so). After looking around at some lines that ascend up in the area of the rappel line, we were struggling with motivation. It seems like a lot of the routes in the Hurricane Crag that are in our range (5.10a or easier) are either dirty and not highly recommended or have PG/R gear ratings and closer to our limit (5.9/5.8). There is however, a 4-star 5.10b with solid gear there called Forever Wild. The 10b crux is a fist crack in a pretty much dead vertical section of the wall. From what I had researched about it on Mountain Project, it was supposed to be a pretty sustained 10b though. Just one look at the climb and I could tell it was going to be pretty consistently hard.
We hemmed and hawed about what to do and finally I decided to sack up and attempt to lead it. I loaded up a double rack from fingers to fists (#3 Camalot is essentially fists for me) and set off. Unfortunately the 4-star climbing is marred by a 0-star start. You have to ascend a steep, vegetated dirt cone for about 30′ with no real protection to gain the start of the crack system. Once you’re in the crack, you’re presented with a dead vertical, tight off-finger crack (consistent #.5 C4 cam size) for about 20 feet. I’m not going to lie, this was fucking hard for me. I couldn’t get any finger locks/jams and it was too small to get finger stacks to work either. As well the left side of the crack stuck out from the right side so you had a weird edge on the crack, making it tempting to try and lie-back it, which was strenuous and made protecting the climb that much harder. I ended up aiding through this part to gain a consistent finger crack section tucked into the back of a shallow alcove. I must admit I also aided this as I wasn’t really excited to take a fall around the alcove. At the top of the alcove, you gain a horizontal that splits the finger crack from a dead-vertical to slightly over-hanging hands/tight hands crack above it which goes for about 10′ to gain another horizontal. I managed to free this section of the climb after some strenuous jamming & foot work. At the second horizontal it’s possible to step left and do a 5.9 finish variation. I highly do not recommend this variation. It involves little gear, a make-out session with a cedar tree (I have scratches all over my back and shoulder), and dirty, rotten lichen covered rock. After I brought Matt up, I had him lower me and I did a quick TR run on the entire climb. I made it to the crux (actually taking the right-ward traverse at the second horizontal to the 10b crux fist crack. I fell twice on TR at the crux trying to figure out the sequence. The sequence I found involves strenuous cupped hands/tight fists and a toe hook/jam and basically going horizontal to be able to finally jam my fists up high to pull up onto my feet. It’s wicked strenuous for 1 or 2 moves, but it works. I’m not sure if there is a better way on this or not, I’ll have to revisit it sometime. The good news is you get a bomber #3 cam placement right at the crux and it’s dead vertical with a clean fall below. I think knowing the gear down low would allow me to lieback the opening section and punch through that strenuous part, the rest of the climb I think would come together pretty well. We’ll see, a project for the fall time.
Matt leading the third pitch of Pete's Farewell (5.7)
After our “project” session (3 hours later), we headed out and did a quick run up Pete’s Farewell (5.7) at the Pitchoff Chimney Cliff in Cascade Pass. Matt got pitches 1 & 3 (the ones I got the last time we did it a few months ago) so I decided to do the climb in my approach shoes. I was pretty confident I could handle the second pitch in them. I managed, though it made a couple moves a little more interesting. After we got back down to the car we headed into town and grabbed some dinner and then headed to the Meadows to quickly setup our tent and get some shut-eye.
In the morning, we slept in and had a slow start to the day. The weather was pretty overcast and it was chilly in the morning, so that didn’t motivate me much to move fast, on top of the little sleep I managed to get. We decided on going to Poke-O to give Psychosis a shot. The guidebook notes Psychosis as one of the two most-feared 5.9s at Poke-O (a pretty bold statement). We had heard some guys talking it up a few weeks ago, and saying how they took a big whipper at the crux. I’m not going to lie, a bit of the appeal was to go and get on it to see how hard it really was, as these guys were a lot of talk and I was pretty confident I’m a much better climber than either of them. Well, I can say that it is a really hard f-ing pitch. The pitch is basically a 40-foot leaning lieback that is wicked strenuous to climb and protect. I managed to get within 5 feet of the end of the hard stuff and was just super pumped. I didn’t want to push it and miss and end up falling weird (falling while in a lieback always sketches me out that I’m going to catch my feet on a sling and flip). I decided to move a couple moves down and push off from the wall to make sure I took a nice clean fall. I took a short little 6 foot fall and shook out and climbed back to my last piece and chalked up and then fired the last remaining section. I’m kind of frustrated because I should have just pushed that last 5 feet because I’m pretty sure I could have made it, but I made the safer decision and at least I didn’t take a huge ride on the climb. Matt took the next pitch which was a pretty stout 5.7 with a pretty intimidating crux (strenuous undercling lieback on a slab). I got the next pitch which was a 5.8 traverse in the dyke rock. This was another intimidating pitch. The guide book says the crux is a traverse around a blunt arete into a shallow corner, but I don’t agree. I found the crux to be a thin face traverse before all that. You have minimal gear for it, and you’re not high above the slabs below and could pendulum down on to the slabs if you blew the moves (which are thin and committing, though you have pretty solid feet). The “crux” isn’t well protected either and involves some tricky sequency foot work in order to get through. I had to climb through it and then back to a rest stance a few times before I sussed it out and could commit to it. After that it was a traverse up onto a vegetated ledge; a straight-up jungle expedition through dense vegetation (at points I couldn’t see where I was putting my feet). I ended up blowing past the belay, but fortunately found a much nicer belay 15 feet to the right that unfortunately forced us to have our ropes in the firing line of menacingly loose blocks and flakes in the dyke rock.
Greg investigates the psychological traverse "crux" on the third pitch of Psychosis (5.9)
Matt commenced with the final pitch (5.6 PG) and expertly set up a few directionals to keep the ropes away from the loose shit and then proceeded to lead us to the top. Up until the second half of the 3rd pitch, we thought the climbing was really pretty good and couldn’t understand why the route was only 2-stars. The second half of the 3rd pitch and the 4th pitch are why. The fourth pitch is exceedingly dirty and the gear is kind of shitty around the crux, which is just kind of weird. It’s very easy, but just an awkward committing move with a bad fall potential. After that you ascend like 50 feet of “slab” which is apparently guide book code for grass, dirt, and dead tree branches. It really kind of sucked. After finishing the route we proceeded to continue to try to find the Discord rappel line, which we couldn’t find. We found a tree at the cliff’s edge with a seriously worn piece of cord and a single quicklink. We backed it up with another piece of cord and a rap ring and set off to find ourselves rappeling down over the Roof of All Evil (A3+). After a cluster fuck of a rappel situation, we managed to make it to the ground somewhat demoralized but still pleased with our getting on a new “obscure” route.
We talked with a local later in the day and he summed things up nicely with the response “That doesn’t get done much…” to our answer to his question “What did you guys just get down from?”. He confirmed our opinions that the crux pitch is really freaking hard and that the traverse pitch is pretty ballsy, and that the other sections are in fact, pretty damn dirty. It felt nice to have some validation as to why we felt so worked. We spent the rest of the day looking around, trying to get on climbs we wanted to do, but ended up walking back to the Discord area and getting on Group Therapy and then looking around the Luther Wall area before it started to rain and we decided to call it quits.
Overall, a good weekend. We got some new projects (Forever Wild, clean run up P1 of Psychosis, found some new climbs to add to our projects (Phase III, Son of a Mother, Discord, Slime Line, & more), and learned how to climb in the real world (aiding, protecting ropes and seconds in loose terrain, etc). We also stayed true to the three rules by coming back safe, as friends, and having had fun. You can’t ask for much more.