10.9.2011 Good Luck Mountain

I came back to Good Luck Mountain for 2 days with Cam to take advantage of some nice weather, and finally, dry rock.  It was nice to be on a familiar approach that was not as marshy as last time.  We scrambled a bit further than we had before and reached a very nice ledge that would be suitable for our overnight stay.

We started off by unloading all of our gear and racking up for the first climb of the day.  It was a relief to get the heavy packs off of our backs and to set down the trekking poles.

 Here is cam getting the rope ready for the climb.

This route was overhead of our belay and sleeping ledge, so we decided to look it up in the Adirondack Rock book.  House of Cards, 5.13a, maybe next time.

 This is the actual route that we started off with.

Cam takes the lead and sends it, but I am unable to follow.  By the time he was up and ready to belay me it was already getting dark.  I could make the first couple moves, but could not make it past the bulge below Cam's feet in the photo above.

After Cam rapped down to clear the gear we set up our hammocks by headlamp.

Here I am waiting for water to boil so we can make some noodles for dinner.

A better view of the final hammock setup.  We used hexes and slings to secure the hammocks to the rock and trees on the other side.  Small chocks were set and attached to long slings to clip to while sleeping in our harnesses.

Here is House of Cards at night looking up from the hammocks.

Final picture of the night getting ready to rest up for a full day of climbing tomorrow.  It was a bit cold at night, dropping below freezing without much insulation from the hammock fabric, but it warmed up quickly in the morning.  After eating some deli meat for breakfast and making hot chocolate, we organized all of our gear and set out to climb.

It is a lot tougher to take good climbing shots with only 2 people on a trip, but we tried to tie off to get some pictures of the trip.

 Here is the view from the top of Cleveland (5.8 G, 150').

 Cam at the top...

 ...and then me.

There was a neat crack that we wanted to investigate, but after Cam abseiled in it ended up being nothing interesting, so we left the area.

We spotted another good route from the top, so we set up an anchor and toproped the route.  I rappelled down first to climb as Cam belayed me from above. Bon Chance (5.8, 100')

This is me on the same route, just more zoomed.

Cam on the same route.

This was one of my favorite trips.  Sleeping in the hammocks made me understand why big wall climbers like working on a route for weeks or months at a time, returning to their portaledges every day.  I would like to come back to climb here and explore more routes, but I also want to explore more climbs in the Adirondacks.