My First Trip To The Gunks
I was able to tag along with some friends from the rock gym up to New Paltz, NY, for my first experience with traditional climbing.

Contrary to our initial plan, Kurt and I drove up on Saturday morning instead of Friday night. Jim and Patrick still went up on Friday to wake up early to work on Shockley's Ceiling. Kurt told me it would be easier to split into groups of two and that they wanted to attempt that climb together. Now I think the plans were altered because I wasn't looking forward to camping. If so, that was a nice gesture, but unneccessary.

We arrived around 10 AM, in time to see them working on the crux. It was about two and a half hours before they made it back down, so Kurt and I bouldered and got in a top rope climb another group was nice enough to offer us.

We split up, Kurt went with Jim to Tipsy Trees while Patrick and I went to Beginner's Delight. As it was my first trad climb, Patrick spent some time going over the various pieces of protection he would set that I would be removing as I followed him up. Unlike the sport climbing I'm used to where the routes are already bolted, the leader on a trad climb carries an assortment of nuts, cams, and other devices to stick in whatever nooks and crannies are available. The leader's load gets lighter as he climbs, the follower's grows.

The first pitch was really straight forward and a good place to practice. Patrick climbed up while I belayed from the ground. When he was secure, he belayed me from above as I followed his trail of gear. The second pitch was more interesting. After following a corner, the route takes a left turn for a 20-25 foot traverse. The climb was pretty easy, but there was a larger mental aspect than normal. In other words it was higher and scary. The gym wall is 35 feet. The climbs in Birdsboro aren't too much higher. This traverse was at least 100 feet off the ground. While there really was no risk of hitting the ground from that height, a fall could mean a big lateral swing into rocks. The woman in the second picture below is right around the point she needs to start traversing.

The last pitch was fun, it had a nice little roof climb before an easy jog to the top. Kurt and Jim were waiting up there and we took a group photo before rappelling down. This was my first rappel since Frank and I would zip down from the trees around their yard in junior high. At this point we were about 260 feet above our start, so I paid attention to the technique as Patrick explained it. Comfortingly, his lesson started with "almost all climbing injuries and deaths happen during the rappel..."

Multipitch trad climbs take a lot longer than sport. Admittedly we were going slow since I was learning, but a decent climb and rappel was taking about 3 or 4 hours. We decided to do another climb as a group and hoped we'd get down before it got dark. We didn't.

Patrick led us up Fingerlocks, a fun crack climb. After the crack I think we switched to Northern Pillar, but I am not positive. Kurt has a guidebook and he can post a correction in the comments. To save time we did it in two pitches. Patrick went for a really long first pitch, I think he said it was about 180 feet, and then we were able to short rope the last little pitch. The rappel station we finished at was free hanging and we moved to a more straightforward, three rappel descent. The group shot in this bunch was at the start of our rappel. By the third station it was too dark to see the bottom. Fortunately Kurt an Jim had headlights so we could hike back to the cars.

We met up with Kevin and Christen that night while we looked for a place to eat. Everything was closed, so we ended up in New Paltz and ate at the Gilded Otter Brewing Company. The food was pretty good and Kurt and I tried their beer sampler. I'm not a beer fan in the first place so only two were "passable" to me. Another one reminded me of Runts candy and turned out to have banana flavoring. The last one scared me, it had raspberries floating in it without any warning. I thought something had fallen in.

Back at the camp Kurt and I set up my new tent in the dark. He shared it with Patric while Jim and I took another tent that we managed to stuff Kurt's queen sized air mattress into. That was quite comfy, I only wish I had brought a sheet. My sleeping bag was too hot to stay in, but it was too chilly to lay on top. I ended up waking up during the night to switch between the two. At one point I thought I heard someone walking around our campsite. I didn't look, there was nothing of value outside the tents so I wasn't worried about theft. I woke up for a bathroom break after dawn to find a guy on the ground in a sleeping bag really close to our camp, so I guess that was who I heard. It rained during the night, I guess some people can sleep through anything. He was gone before our camp was fully awake (by about 8AM, later than we planned).

We split into two groups, Kurt and I went with Jim while Kevin and Christen went with Patrick. The routes were pretty well occupied by that time. We were a minute too late for Minty and ended up on Southern Pillar. The top of the second pitch was a little small for the three of us. I move off to the side and baked in the sun on a little ledge for about an hour. I initally clipped to a rusty piton, but I made sure Jim also hooked me up to the anchor he made since I didn't trust the piton. I think we were about 18 stories up at this point. Kurt belayed Jim on the last pitch while I flipped through his guide book. I ended up on a page with pictures of pitons that looked like the one I was clipped into in a section warning against their use them and describing how easy the pictured ones were pulled out. I had Kurt verify that I was still on Jim's anchor. The last pitch was short and easy, featuring a fun squeeze through a chimney.

Back at the bottom we met up with our other group heading up Beginner's Delight.

Rather than start another long climb we headed to an area where it was easy to set top ropes. We climbed a few routes there. We did an easy crack and a neat 5.7, the latter being the hardest thing I climbed that weekend. I wanted to get home with time to unpack and shower so Kurt and I left about 6 PM. We made it to the car just before the rain started. Unfortunately Patrick, Kevin, and Christen had just reached the top. They set up the hanging belay we skipped yesterday. Fortunately the rain was light and stopped so they made it down safely.