9.2.2012 Huckleberry Mountain

After a summer of zero climbing (but plenty of slacklining) in Washington, D.C., it was time to get back on some rock.  Cam, Charles and I decided to check out Huckleberry Mountain because there were plenty of easier routes in the guidebook that wouldn't be too challenging for the first trip of the season, but there were also lots of harder routes.

I had been to the Crane Mountain trailhead twice before with Cam, so we both had a good idea of how to get to the cliffs on Huckleberry.  After a two hour steep hike up towards the summit of Crane, following an ATV trail on private property and walking on abandoned roads from the old paint mines, we finally reached the cliff of interest.  We put our bags down at Hard Guy Wall and racked up before taking the short hike down to the Great Dihedral Area,

 

The first climb of the day was Aunt Polly (5.6 PG 275' ***).  Cam started off leading the first pitch and then I took the second.  This area is obviously not climbed very often, as the cracks had lots of vegetation that needed to be cleaned to place protection.

View of the dirty crack leading up to a slab section for P1

 

 

P2 started off at the end of the slab section of P1 and then went around the overhang via a right-facing corner.  Coming around the corner was the only sketchy (relatively) part of the climb, but there was plenty of good protection so no real worries.

After one 25m rappel and then down climbing the rest of the way, we went over to right and climbed Jealous Dogs (5.7 G 150').  The guidebook says that "the initial chimney is easier and better than it looks"; however, there was still plenty of groaning climbing through it.  Cam took the lead on the route.

Long legs make it tough to fit in the chimney.  Luckily, I didn't have that problem.

The guidebook shows that there is a lone pine tree to belay and rappel from, but that tree was broken.  Cam belayed me off of an anchor that he built and I lead out on a traverse to the middle of Aunt Polly and repeated the previous down climb from there.

To the left of Hard Guy Wall, we set off to climb I'd Rather be in Iowa (5.7+ G 60' ***), which is noted to be one of the few sport climbing routes of this grade in the Adirondacks.  It felt a bit sandbagged, but so did the rest of the climbs put up by Dave Furman ( FA July 1994).  The anchor at the end of the climb looked to be in rough condition, so Cam replaced one of the original carabiners and chain links with one of the extras from our rack.  Upon further inspection, it probably would have been fine to use the old carabiner, but better safe than sorry.

Unfortunately, we did not get any photos of the next route, Darmok (5.7+ G 100' ***).  We spotted this handcrack walking to some of the other routes and decided to come back to climb it.  There was a fixed anchor after the crack (25), which is the only clean part of the route, so I lead up to it and placed a backup hex before being lowered off of the anchor.  The anchor didn't blow out, which is what I was worried about because of the old and weathered nylon webbing that was around the tree.  Cam followed and then I lowered him off of the tree trunk.

The last route of the day was Barney Is the Antichrist (5.10c G 80' ****).  This was by no means an easy climb, as Hobey Walker (FA July 25, 1993) notes that there are "some real moves".  Cam took the lead and was able to climb between bolts, hang for a bit, climb some more, and repeat until around the fifth bolt, where he placed the old carabiner replaced on I'd Rather be in Iowa and left it as a bail biner.  I "followed" to retrieve the rest of the quickdraws and then called it a day.

After packing up we headed back down toward the mining road, then up the ATV trail and eventually back at the same trail that we took back to the parking lot last time we climbed at Crane Mountain.  Overall, it was a successful first trip of the season and I'm looking forward to heading back out in the coming weekends.

4.21.2012 Barton High Cliffs

Rain was in the forecast from 2am Saturday morning until the end of Sunday, so it didn't seem like ideal weather for an overnight climbing trip starting Friday night.  Cam and I decided to give it a go anyways, planning to aid climb if the weather was too bad.  Armed with all of our normal gear, a 60m static rope, 2 jumars, and a tent, we left Troy at 4:20pm and drove toward exit 25 on 87N.  We decided to drive past where we had to park and look for a general store to get some extra food to eat before we headed out to find a tent site.  This was a good move, we got a box of couscous and other snacks, including a bag of Doritos that we left in car for the ride back.  There are no trails or designated camping areas around the cliffs, so we had to navigate through the forest to end up at our final destination for the night.

I think we found the only section of flat and clean ground in the area, and it was just four feet away from a plentiful water source.  After setting up the tent and drinking some water from the stream, we decided to hike towards the cliffs to get a better view of what we would be climbing the next day.

This is what we saw.

Photosynth: Interactive Panorama

The viewpoint was only 20 minutes away from the tent.  Now it was getting dark, so we turned on headlamps and walked back to the tent to make dinner, organize gear, and get some sleep.  It was around 9pm when we laid down on the sleeping pads.  The plan was to wake up at 5am and get to the cliffs by 6am, but that ended up changing.  We were both awake at 3:45am and decided to make breakfast and head out early instead of going back to sleep.

Cam making the first moves on P1

The first route of the day was Final Frontier (5.8+ G 280').  The Adirondack Rock guidebook gave this route a 3 star rating.  Cam led the first two pitches, and I took the third.

 Instead of stepping right around the overhang on P2, we went directly under it and then up the arete.  This led to the face climbing, which was much longer than it looked from below.

View from the P2 belay

Approaching the roof on P2

Slapping rock under the roof to test which blocks are loose.  There was a pretty big selection of rock that had to be avoided so I didn't end up crushed at the belay.

Cam at the P3 belay

All geared up for P3

 After belaying Cam up P3, I lowered him to the ledge below that had an enormous tree stump and then rapped down off the tree I was anchored to.  The tree stump had a couple of old slings around it with two rap rings, but we added a new sling to it instead of trusting the old gear.  We also clipped a quickdraw to the new sling and the rope for safety if the rap rings were bad.  Hauling the static rope this entire time was well worth it when it came time for this rappel.  It was used as a tag line when we did a single line rappel on the dynamic rope.  The 70m dynamic rope barely reached the ground, so this was a pretty long drop.

Full shot of the rappel

Coming down the line

Free hanging for the last 30 meters

Scrambling across the boulder field to the next route

 The next route was The Excellent Adventure (5.9- G 200').  The guidebook shows that this is a 3 pitch climb, but we tied it together in 2.

Route Description

Right leaning crack

Cam starting up the crack, a little wet at first.

There was a fixed belay anchor up where Cam is the the shot above, but he opted to build a new one instead.  The old one consisted of an original Hexcentric and 2 micronuts, each with their own carabiner and toed to a master point with an old cordlette.  This made me believe that someone a long while ago had abandoned their gear, but not really sure.  There were a few other spots around the cliff where similar gear was left behind.  Cam belayed me up off of a red tricam backed up by two nuts.  Up here we switched belays to continue the climb.

P2/3 started off with a step down past the fixed gear and then a dirty traverse left to the prow.  From here it was easy climbing up to the belay/rappel station.  We were able to make it down to the ground with one rappel on the 70m rope.

Back on solid ground, we packed up our bags and hiked to the Sunset Arete Area, further left along the cliff.  The route that we first went to was Sunset Arete (5.7 PG 150').  The second pitch was supposed to be dirty, so not really worth the climb.  Instead, we only did the first pitch (70').  I decided to give it a try on lead, but backed down part way up the arete when it appeared that there was no protection for a while, and I didn't really feel like hitting the deck if I fell.  Cam ended up finding some interesting nut placements and built an anchor off of a tree.  We lowered on the other side of the arete to end the day with some carefree top roping.  The first route that Cam TR'd was Son of Cirrhosis (5.8+ G 60').  To the right of this route was a nice looking face with tiny positive edges and some smooth bulges that we messed around on for a little while.

The rain ended upholding off until we started to pack up our bags at the Sunset Arete Area.  There were periods of heavy rain on the hike back to the tent, but overall we got very lucky.  We made a couple more bags of Ramen when we got back and then packed up the tent in the rain.  The rain stopped on the hike back to my car, which took an hour, and then started again when we were on the road.  Overall, this was another great trip.  No injuries, abandoned gear, and plenty of food and water.