Wednesday 7^th.

John Peterson wants us dead. Cold fact.

In recent communications with John I told him that Leon and I were interested in doing "Thor's Hammer" up at East Peak in Meriden. I said that we had scoped it out last Sunday and backed off because we didn't have the gear to do it (see last week's trip report). John offered to loan us the necessary protection for the job, he gave us beta, and he said it was his favorite Connecticut classic. We were going to have a blast. He would hand the stuff over to us at Prime Climb. El coolio.

But when I saw the gear, I realized that John Peterson is an evil evil man.

Three pieces he did give us. One tube chock, one big bro' and an active camming unit. All of them looked like they were original test models from the dawn of technical climbing. The tube chock was pretty simple, looking like something sawn off a drainpipe and slung with some chord, it appeared to be the most reliable piece in the set. The big bro' was also a tube chock, but an aging spring mechanism made it's size somewhat adjustable. The active camming unit looked a bit like the very first technical friend that Ray Jardine knocked up back in 1973.

From this it seemed pretty clear that John wanted Leon and I out of the climbing scene altogether. Perhaps, I should have written a more glowing account of his guiding us up Minty at the Gunks back in December. We grinned and capered, hoping that he hadn't picked up the scent of terror radiating from our very pores. We groveled madly, thank you John, we said, thank you. Then we just ran for it.

Sunday 11^th

Wasn't sure I really wanted to get out of bed today. The weather guy said that today's predicted high was below freezing. But, like I've said before, our time was running short. Leon said that he was taking off for Seattle on March 22nd, and after that I would have to find a new climbing partner. So I crawled out from under the covers and rang him up, it was 9.30am.

Yep, he still wanted to climb. He still wanted to give "Thor's Hammer" (5.9) a shot. I gave him an hour or so to get ready.

One hour later I was hammering on his door and waking him up, again. Ten minutes after that we were in the car and he was dozing on and off. After jamming some coffee and half a bagel into his system at Dunkin Donuts we were on our way. Leon slowly came around, realized he wasn't dreaming and grimaced at the fact that my car had yet to evolve a functioning heater.

"It's cold man!" He said. Yep, I nodded, it's cold all right. I mentioned the weather forecast, windy and freezing conditions. Grimly we drove on.

On reaching Hubbard Park we got out of the car and immediately donned gloves, hats, hoods, jackets, everything. It was damn cold. The wind stung exposed skin and the cold reached with freezing fingers into every nook and cranny. Strapping on the gear we hiked up to the reservoir. There was lots of snow lying about, even though the previous few days had been relatively warm, most of it was from the 15 inches dumped on Connecticut last Monday. Our one consolation being that the sun was bright and the rock was likely to be comparatively warm.

After the hiking, the struggling up an extremely loose scree field and then the class four climbing up horrible choss to the base of "Thor's Hammer" we were pretty warmed up. At the base we were also protected from the wind and in full sun. Hey, it was really quite nice. Not cold at all! The sky was a brilliant blue, the lake and its little island below us looked picturesque, we felt glad to be here. Flaking out ropes and sorting gear the day suddenly felt very nice, and the climb promised to be a highly enjoyable adventure.

I begged for the lead, it had been a while since I was on the sharp end of a real climb, so I wanted this bad. As recommended by the dark overlord (JP) we were going to do this in two pitches. So I was planning on setting a hanging belay, somewhere near the first roof (which was just under halfway up). I grabbed all of our big gear, including the three aforementioned museum pieces, this added up to four big pieces (Leon owned a #10 Trango four cam) in total. OK, that's ok, we can still do this. Up I went.

The initial crack at the bottom was a mess of ice and trickling water. After nosing around for a while and deciding not to climb the craggy stuff on the right (no protection) or the wall on the left (few features, no protection), I splashed into the ice water crack and made my way up. It was good to find myself quickly in the zone, focused so intently on my immediate universe that there was no space for doubt or concern, and I moved fairly easily up over the wet crack and onto the sloping ledge above it. The next crack was a wide-ish hand-jammer in a left facing dihedral that led to the first roof. A friendly secondary crack in the left wall offered additional hand and foot placements. It wasn't easy for me, but I eventually reached the roof, there was still ice in the crack. After some stressing I managed to jam John's big cam into the crack.

I pretty much spent the remainder of my time here. I hung from that old cam for a while, on the end of a long sling, wondering what to do. The rest of the crack in the roof was a little smaller as it tracked left. It turned out that we had only one camming unit (a trango FCU) that was of medium size, the size required for this roof traverse. Eventually I got that in, clipped in the rope and hung from that too.

"Just under cling and oppose with your feet!" Leon yelled up at me. Uh, yeah hang on a bit mate, I thought. The rock face was very slippery. There were sporadic patches of ice in the main crack. There was a thin crack line about five feet below the big roof crack. I tried moving along that, searching in vain for pieces in my rack that were usable for placements in the roof. The tube chock and big bro that John gave us were too big here and were intended for use higher up anyway. The Trango #10 was waaay too big. Nothing, I had nothing left for this damn roof. No sweat, there's a smallish ledge across and up the face to my left. After many pendulum-falls I managed to get a grip on it. Gasping for breath, hanging on like a limpet (if I fell from here it would be a long swing into a wall far to the right), I eventually got some protection in.

I was done. No more leading for me today. I blew off Leon's suggestion to keep going. The next crack up to the second roof looked like really sustained layback territory to me … and that's a job for Leon. Besides, the sun had disappeared around the corner, the wind had changed direction, and it was suddenly very bloody cold again. So I set up a belay anchor where I was and Leon got ready to follow up.

As he pulled gear from the lower crack he mentioned that the water dribbling over it had frozen and he had to break the ice to retrieve it. Cool. He said that the main crack under the first roof was tricky and acknowledged that it was a decent lead. The roof was a real pain. Leon tried all the suggestions that he had shouted to me earlier and found that the necessary friction just wasn't there. In addition to that, it looked like the medium sized Trango may have suffered some damage. One of the camming lobes had flipped up, as if a cable had broken, and lost purchase as the device walked a bit in the crack. At the time it seemed a very scary thing to have happen. Admittedly I had backed up my hanging position under the roof with John's big cam, and was pretty safe, but it was nasty to think that a piece had failed mechanically under load. Hell, it wasn't even a big load either, I had taken a few swings … but no whippers. That seemed to shake us both up quite a bit. Additionally, Leon was unable to retrieve it, in fact he didn't even get to unclip his rope from it. He did the traverse while I slowly paid out slack through the gi-gi and made the anchor ledge (beneath which I was practically hanging). We got him clipped into the anchor and, shivering in the breeze, had a little chat.

Basically, the climb was pretty much over for us. We still didn't have enough of the right gear (more medium cams required) to feel adequately protected. Leon looked up at the next crack, saw that it looked like he would have to run it out to the second roof before being able to place anything. It was also very very cold. So we agreed to bail. It didn't take long and we had rapped down. We packed all the gear and marched left and up around to the top of the cliff. Quickly we located the top of "Thor's" and made some decisions about what had to be done. Eventually Leon rapped down to retrieve the gear and I stayed up top to clean the anchor, we would meet down near the reservoir.

Which we did. Damn it! We've been kicked two times out of the last three! Are we getting soft, or are we trying too hard? Leila says that we're nuts climbing in winter anyway.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. John Peterson's gear was bomber stuff. I even learned how to place a big bro' with one hand. Thanks John.