Sunday 19^th

What a day! The sun blazed down, the water from the previous day's downpour evaporated away, it was just perfect. Is it any wonder that I went climbing? No. No it isn't. Toru Kimura showed up on my doorstep first. It would be his very first day out there on real rock, so I imagined that he was looking forward to this very much. I showed him the Traprock guide that I had still not returned to John Peterson and we poured over the route descriptions and topos for the Main Cliff at Ragged mountain. As time wore on I grew a little impatient, I had already called Josephine to confirm that she was joining us, but I called her again to say that we were coming around to pick her up. It wasn't long before the three of us were racing up the I-91 in my little red subaru.

Originally, Mike Joyce had shot me an email saying that he was hitting Ragged sometime that weekend and suggested that we link up. At the gym I was talking about it to a fellow called Moritz Wirth and he said that he would also join us out there if the weather was good. We agreed to shoot for Sunday as Saturday looked like a complete washout (which it was). John Peterson said that he would be there too. Excellent.

"So who are meeting out there?" Josephine asked. I went through the list, Moritz, Mike and John. Although John would be late because he was spending the morning in a kayak somewhere north of here, we were to expect him around one o'clock. As we turned on to the I-691 towards Meriden I pointed out Castle Crag, and then we peered up through the leaves at Cathole Pass as we rocketed up route 71. We got to Sheldon Road (Southington) and saw that the uphill side of the road was pretty much full of parked cars. There was a space close to a driveway but, given the recent frustrations that the landowners have had with cars jamming their street, I thought that we should go and find a spot up on Moore Hill drive instead. It would add, what, maybe 45 seconds to our hike? Pshaw, 'tis nothing.

We spilled out of the car and started hauling our gear out of the boot (that's "trunk" for the yank-speakers) and distributing it around. Mike and Alexia pulled up in there truck and joined us for the hike. In about 10 or 15 minutes we reached the Main Cliff, found Moritz, and started moving along towards my target for the day.

Aeons ago, back in October, John Peterson had taken me on a whirlwind trip which included three seperate Connecticut mountains. On that rollercoaster ride I followed behind John's lead of ...

Vector 5.8 **
   FA - Fritz Weissner, Roger Whitney 1935
Easy corners behind the 12-foot high freestanding flake lead to a small overhang cut by a clean jamcrack with rounded edges. [p225, Traprock, Ken Nichols]

... and at the time he asked me if I thought I could lead it. I wasn't sure I could. But on this day I was definitely thinking about going for it. We all stood around at the base of Vector and hemmed and hawed a bit. Clearly most of the action today was going to be toprope and between us we had mucho gear (Moritz, Mike and I each brought two ropes) to set up a bunch of lines. However, I definitely needed to lead at least one thing. Vector was still looking pretty ... uh ... tough for a lead, so instead I went to the left a little and suited up to do ...

Juniper Wall 5.7 **
   FA - Fritz Weissner, Betty Woolsey, William House, 1934
From the top of the Slingshot block, climb up right to a long ledge and ascend the steep ramp to a second ledge. A long reach to a good bucket then gives access to a very stepp crack and a series of ledges and corners which rise up right to the top. [p225, ibid]

Ah Fritzy, so we meet again. Josephine put me on belay and I quickly scrambled up to the top of the afore-mentioned block. Before heading up and right to that long ledge I planted a bomber pink tri-cam in a horizontal crack. This climbing traverse brought me across a distinctly unprotectable face and by the time I reached the ledge Josephine was telling me that I was high enough for a grounding should I slip. Below the steep ramp, a little juniper tree grows out of the corner near the top of this, I cast about for something I could use for protection. Nope, nothing there. Looking up I could see it was only a single technical move and there would be ample opportunity to place something. So I sucked it up, said to myself ok, this must be the crux move and stepped up to hold a flake with my left hand. I madly scrabbled around my rack to find the appropriate nut, pretty quick I had it in place and then I put an alien in just above it. This gave me what I needed to get up to the tree, which I immediately slung.

Just after the little juniper there was a nice comfy ledge. Above this was an eight foot gap to a big horizontal crack (the "jug" mentioned in the guide) and then a short but vertical section split by an offwidth crack. Oooooh this looks hard My last pro was the tree a few feet below me. I found a crimper for my right hand and something smaller for the fingers on my left and hauled up, managing to pop my left hand up and into that horizontal jug. My right instantly joined it. For a moment I just hung there with my feet dangling uselessly below me.

"Unggnnnhhh" I said.

To the right there was a slippery cornery sort of uselessness and to the left the wall vanished around an arete. But just at the necessary spot on the arete there was a little postage-stamp-sized outcropping that I smeared my left foot against. This relieved the pressure on my arms just enough for me to free one of them, whip out a #1 camalot and slot it into the bottom of the crack just a little higher up. I would like to say I got the draw in place stylishly and with precision, but I cant, I was frothing at the mouth by the time I got the rope clipped in. With just enough energy to squeak down to Josephine "TAKE!" I let gravity assume control. Josephine did good. The cam held and rope-stretch took me back down to the ledge below.

Good grief. How the hell am I going to do this? I stared back up at the off-width and wondered what would enable me to go past that to what appeared to be a ledge above. Where do my feet go? On the left side it looked very much like my foot would have to go from the postage stamp to the horizontal jug, which is fine in the gym on top-rope, but I'm a bit nervous about it out here in the real world. On the right it looked like a smear-campaign would be the only way my other foot would stick there. Time passed as I tried to think it through.

   Bingley bingley boop ...

What the hey? My radio was making noises. After some experimental button-pressing I managed to find out what Josephine (who had the other one) wanted.

   "What are you pssshhh-ing?"

"Buh?" I asked.

   Beep. "What are you doing?"

I'm having a heart-attack woman. "I'm at a hard bit, it might take a while to figure out the sequence."

   Crrckle-Snup. "Ok."

In the end I would climb up and then back down a couple times, managing to get a big #13 wired nut at the bottom of the off-width. At least one other piece went in and came out as I worked towards setting the nut properly. Eventually I was ready to just run up to the top of the off-width and go for the ledge above it. I had worked out a sequence that would get me to the off-width and managed that fairly well. I reached up over it, expecting (or rather hoping for) a nice flat surface for my hands. But of what I could reach the edges were rounded, dusty and sloped down towards me. I found myself slipping off. Oh fu-

The big nut held, but Josephine wasn't able to catch me before my feet hit the lower ledge. For a millisecond I thought that my ankles were surely broken, they weren't. However, for a short while there was a sharp vibrating pain on the soles of my feet as they recovered from what was merely a hard slap. I was alive and unharmed, but I was also spooked pretty good.

I eventually worked out that just left around the arete there was a big crack and a good ledge, although it was fairly high. On my next trip up I was able to move around there and use these features to get my arms up around that ledge. My arms were plunged into the crack down behind the crappy dusty platform my fingers had failed to grasp on my earlier attempt. It wasn't very comfortable, but it gave my hands and forearms a much needed rest. Eventually I tired of this and looked for further pro before moving on. I got in an alien nearby and then hauled myself enough to stand up on the ledge. The rest of the climb isn't worth much of a mention, mostly easy blocks and corners and not a lot of them, protection was not very plentiful but it was enough. With my lead-head beaten and bruised I gasped my way to the top.

Off to my right Moritz and Mike where putting the final touches to the top-rope anchor they had set on Vector.

I looked around but was unable to find anything suitable for anchoring. The top of the cliff was just too broken up. Eventually I got on the radio to tell Josephine that I couldn't set up a decent top-rope anchor. She took me off belay and I stood on top wondering what to do about all the gear I had in route below. Eventually I strung together my cordalettes and long slings to a sturdy tree some distance from the edge and used this to fix the end of my rope. I got on the strand and rappelled down, taking out pieces. I had a hell of a time at the big nut which caught my earlier fall, and gave up on it after hammering away for a few minutes. Eventually I got down to the bottom. The others were playing on Vector and another climb further right which Moritz and Mike had set called ...

Side Entry 5.7 *
   FA (original route) - Sam Streibert, John Reppy, May 1963
Midway between Vector and the Wiessner Slab is a small rectangular block 16 feet above the ground. Climb straight up past this and a shake, questionably protected overlap to a balancy stance. Step left, move up to a narrow ledge, and then traverse back right to the final inside corner. The overlap can be avoided by climbing easier (5.6) and better protected rock to the left. the original route (5.6) ascended the left edge of the Wiessner Slab until it was possible to step left onto the main face to a diagonal line leading up to the final inside corner. [p226, ibid]

I grabbed my old 50 metre gold rope and hiked back up and around to try and sort something out for a top-rope anchor with that. After many minutes I had something satisfactory and rappelled down Juniper Wall one last time to have another shot at prying out that damn nut. No luck, it seemed stuck for good. By the time I got down I was pretty tired out. With the others I played around on top-rope and took some photographs.

Alexia (who had taken some of the earlier photographs) had gotten uncomfortably cold very early in the day, and wasn't feeling so great, so she had retreated back to the car to try and warm up. Toru was having a great first day on the rock. Moritz remarked to me that Toru was very calm and controlled, resisting the sudden grabs and desperate flailing normally associated with newbie climbers. It was good to see. Josephine was also having a fun time, enjoying routes up to four grades harder than the ones she tried last time she was here, although towards the end Josephine concentrated mainly on relaxing in the sun whenever opportunity offered. Mike and Moritz romped up each of the three climbs and had no difficulty whatsoever. It was a very nice day. At about 3pm we decided that we had all played on the three lines about as much as we wanted. Josephine was reminding me that she wanted to go back to New Haven pretty soon as she had many hours of lab-slaving to ahead of her tonight. Mike said (among other things) that he was going to rescue Alexia and head back to the ranch. So I suggested to Moritz, who had hinted he might like to do a mild lead, that maybe he would enjoy climbing ...

Ancient Way 5.4 **
   FA - Betty Woolsey, Roger Whitney, Donald Brown 1935
Always popular, this enjoyable climb follows the attractive right-facing corner rising above the gap between the Northern and Central Cave Slabs. [p220, ibid]

As we were packing up underneath Vector Alexia wandered along the trail and took her man by the waist. She said that the car was too hot and had come for a hike to cool down a bit. I snapped a couple of "couple" shots of her and Mike, the earlier ones I had done for them were not quite right and I was glad of the chance to improve on my portrature photography. We bid them fairwell and they retreated back to their conveyance home. The rest of us headed the opposite way towards the north end of the Main Cliff. On the way we helped out some people properly differentiate between Bombay and Main Street, they were using some newish guide and were impressed to see a copy of Ken Nichols' "Traprock". Of course "Traprock" was able to give them the beta that their own guides couldn't. I'll be interested to compare Dave Fasulo's new guide, it's due pretty soon, with the Nichols book

"Have you had it long?" One of them enquired of the book I was using. I confessed that I had it on involuntary loan from a friend.

"Are you going to give it back?" I was asked. Good question, it's under review.

We marched into the tunnel under the Southern Cave Slab and then climbed up over the Central cave slab to the base of Ancient Way. Moritz suited up and borrowed all my camalots, except the big ol' #4 cam (too heavy), for his lead. Being a descendant of german sport climbing he had a fistful of draws and a set of nuts which comprised his entire rack. He told me some tales of Bavarian hardmen protecting routes with knotted ropes and wedges of wood. These german climbers sure are a ballsy bunch. Soon he was on his way.

Well, he had no trouble and he enjoyed it very much. Because I had done it a few times before and Josephine (who would soon take a nap here) had also done it once, we left it to Toru to follow Moritz's lead. Just as Toru set off, John Peterson finally appeared.

I explained that time was pretty short and he said that if I could just belay one lead for him that would be enough. John was late because kayaking was just tooo cool and he spent some time negotiating on behalf of the RMF with Southington landowners about parking issues. Nevermind. Jay was there too. Jay wanted to know if I would write up a trip report about the climb his dad was setting up to lead. Jay also asked if he would be in the report. Jay ... you're in it. After establishing these things Jay admonished me to, when it was his time to climb, take note of important details, like speed, difficulty and his general hero-ness. Of course little mate, how could you doubt me? But let's describe John's route first ...

Cemetary Vault 5.7 **
   FA - John Reppy, Bert Arsego 1955
Above the start of the ledges leading to the recess are twin cracks which end at a stance below the giant overhang. From the stance work up the steep ramp until you emerge from beneath the overhang. A vertical crack then leads to the top. This exciting route can be somewhat intimidating, but it's easier than it looks. [p220, ibid]

This line sure looked scary, being hugely overhung and all. But John strode manfully up to the route and started up with hardly a sign of trepidation. He mentioned an important unprotected move, but did it so easily that I couldn't see what the problem might have been. Soon he was under the overhang and placing so much gear that I asked if he had enough. He back-cleaned as he went, so the answer was yes. It took a while and he stemmed widely (nobody else could stem like that, John is way tall) to keep his balance as he crept upward. Moritz and Toru wandered by after they had walked down from the top of and gaped as John looked to be doing something extremely difficult. I waited for the big guy to lose his grip and test both gear and belay. But he never did. After a while he was on top and setting an anchor. I cajoled Jay into his harness and his shoes. The boy was in no hurry so he took his time, constantly giving me editorial advice on the content of my (this) trip report. After a bit he was tied in to the middle of the rope and started on his way.

Jay made a good start, I'll give him that, but he slowed down pretty quick. The poor little guy soon found himself stuck between his own confidence and his dad's sneak-attack choice of climb. Like a minnow on a hawser line the next Chris Sharma wriggled and shook in an effort to get higher than twenty feet. Time dragged on. Toru and Moritz went to get Josephine and the rest of the gear and when they returned Jay was pretty much stuck in the same spot. Josephine was looking a little concerned. Neither she nor Toru knew the way back to the interstate from where we were parked. Moritz was parked 40 minutes away in the opposite direction so he couldn't help them out. So eventually, Moritz volunteered to take my place and I was able to take Josephine and Toru back to New Haven immediately.

So we said goodbye and hared off down the trail as fast as our loads would allow. Toru nearly killed himself by falling off a rock, but other than that we made it back to New Haven safely. Not a bad day's climbing.