Sunday 1^st

Woke up feeling a little seedy from the previous evening's entertainment. We had been out partying until about 2.30 am. Climbing … today … urgh. I could remember having spoken with MacGregor about today's plans … I think I promised to call him sometime between 10 and 11 this morning. It's already 11. Crawl out of bed, ignore the surging floor and seething walls, and find the phone.

I call Leon first, and surprisingly he picks it up before the message kicks in. The bugger sounds peachy keen and ready to go. Not fair, not fair at all. He partied harder and longer than we did last night … by all rights he should be dead. I say we'll get ready, rouse the Scot and call back before we come around to pick him up. MacGregor answers his phone with profanity, but that's just his way of being friendly. Scarcely believing the sound of my own voice I tell him that we are definitely going climbing and he should ready himself. He askes for an hour. Fine by me.

Leila is tired, but still wants to go. So we breakfast, shower, and clean up. The gear is a mess, so I spend a little time sorting it out. Throw everything into the car and call MacGregor back and tell him we'll pick him up in 5 min. Call Leon to say the same. He had fallen asleep again, his earlier perkiness was just a brave front, but he will be ready before we arrive to get him. Better get the mad Scot first. So we're off and both boys are ready to go when we reach them. Everyone's feeling the pinch of last night's shenanigens, but no-one is ducking out of today's climbing.

Well it's not a lot of climbing. We're going back to the Sleeping Giant's chin to a very hard, but short crack which lies directly under our belay perch for last Wednesday's climbs on Rain Dance and Nightcrawler. The plan is to go over as much of the self-rescue stuff that Alain Comeau taught us the previous weekend in New Hampshire.

After stopping for coffee in Hamden we head for the Giant. There are a lot of military personell in the car park as we drive in. I ask the ranger dude what's going on and he mutters darkly about some sort of orienteering exercises that the army are doing in the park. We walk in along the now familiar white trail to the scree-field under the chin, pick the spot we want and struggle up to the base.

Leon and I have been to this particular crack before. It is the site of our very first efforts at placing protection with real intent. But the climb itself is so hard that we were practically aiding it, and not much of it either. Today we wanted to set up a top rope and use it for self-rescue excersizes (pretending that a lead climber had fallen and been injured above the belayer … have to work out how to escape the belay, maybe climb the rope on prussiks or kleimheists, and how to set up a hauling/lowering system).

To set up the top rope I lead climbed an easy looking left-facing dihedral crack combination just to the right of what Leon had dubbed "Hangover Crack". It wasn't much of a climb, and I didn't do it particularly well. Dislodging dust, dirt, sticks and small stones, one of them hitting my belayer (Leon) in the back as he tried to duck out of its way. I get up to the cliff tree we wanted to use as the anchor and it looks plenty sturdy, so I sling it twice and double up and oppose a couple of locking carabiners before threading the rope through it. I back-cleaned all of the protection I placed on the right and then pendulumed back to be lowered to the ground.

As I was coming down there was a heavy rockfall somewhere off to our left. Either a big piece had fallen off the cliff (as they sometimes do) or someone up top decided to trundle something heavy over the edge. Whatever it was it grabbed our attention really quick, and brought home another of the multitude of risks involved in this game. A natural fall is fair enough, but the alternative really knocks around your opinion of the average bloke.

Well, since we had a top rope we all wanted to try this bloody climb. The crack looked heinously difficult and moved to the left as it went up an otherwise smooth and featureless vertical face. Leon had a go, cursing his way two thirds up … trying to layback as it swung left of the line of the ropes … but not getting any further. Leila followed and got a little higher, also trying to layback.

MacGregor demurred when I asked him if he wanted a go. So I tried it. It was hard right from the start, I slipped off almost immediately and wondered if I could get anywhere near as high as the others did. Back on the rock, and having watched them climb before me I was able to move up quickly using their moves. Having watched them both fail their layback attempts I initially thought to try something else, but up there and straining to hang on as the crack snaked away to the left I started to layback anyway. Of course I peeled off. The top rope wasn't helping with the balance, pulling me a little right and away from the line of the crack, there were zero handholds away from the crack (which was now too small to get any fingers in), one tiny edge for the left foot, nothing for the right except the crack itself.

Looking up I could see where the crack flared out a bit near the top of the block, and there was another short crack in the top out further to the left. I figured that maybe I could reach these. I got them on the second go, a small dyno and then jamming my fingers into these two high cracks and hanging from them until I could bring my feet up a bit. Ouch. Lost a bit of skin on both my little fingers as they were mashed into the tightest spaces. But that was the crux, and the climbing after that wasn't nearly so desperate. I got to the ledge under the cliff tree and could feel my legs shaking a bit from the effort. One day we will have to try this on lead, that would make it a really exciting climb.

Anyway, I got back down and played victim for a while as Leon and Leila took turns escaping from the belay. I would climb up about 10 feet and then hang there while they, correctly, locked off the belay with a munter-mule knot, then set up another munter-mule on the anchor, release the first and escaped the belay. Flawless. They both did this individually and it was cool to see it all working properly. Leila then set up a combination hauling/lowering system as Alain had demonstrated for us. Lowering was fine, but hauling a top-roped climber seemed really difficult using a 2-1 system. It was decided that this would be best used by a leader rescuing an injured second, and that an injured leader would only be lowered or locked off. Which meant climbing the rope. I had a shot at this, starting from my hanging position and setting up two kleimheists (one for the harness and one for a foot), finding that although hard work this was eminently possible for us to do.

After this we decided that time was getting on and we should be leaving. So I climbed up (the easy dihedral route on the right) and then lead it up over the anchors to last Wednesday's belay stance … anchored there, lowered to the cliff tree and removed the slings and krabs before climbing back up again. From here I walked down by following a steep little gully we had used on Wednesday. Collected all the gear, picked up any rubbish, and struggled back down the scree slope to the trail.