Monday, September 23, 2013

Birthday, and The Bear

For my 34th birthday, I decided I wanted to go climbing.  My wife and I spent the night in Pennsylvania and were going to visit Mount Minsi at The Delaware Water Gap on our way back to Jersey and climb the Practice Face.  The Practice Face is a 40-50ft tall buttress of rock that can be easily accessed by a well-protected traverse across the “Cat Walk” to the large ledge up top.  My wife belayed me as I lead across the Cat Walk (placing two cams) and then I brought her out to the top of the ledge.  I built an anchor off of two trees on the very edge of the ledge, but just beneath was a smaller ledge and on the rock face was a bolt.  My plan was to lower myself to this smaller ledge, clip into the bolt, and then help my wife down to that ledge (while tied-in) where I would lower her off the anchor so she wouldn’t have to rappel.  But as soon as I stepped onto that ledge a large copperhead slithered just inches away from my ankles and buried itself into a crack.  I quickly climbed back up and decided we would not climb that section, for fear of the snake reemerging.  While breaking down the anchor I heard a loud rustle of branches and looked out over the Cat Walk area into the woods where I saw a Black Bear.  This was the first time my wife or I ever saw a bear in the wild.

The first thing I did was make our presence known to the bear by shouting (not screaming, or yelling).  Normally, bears will run away from humans when they see or hear them.  Oddly enough, all the bear did was look at me.  I continued to shout, but the bear didn’t seem interested and was more or less sniffing around the area.  This is where I got worried.  I felt we were somewhat protected on the ledge, but wasn’t one-hundred percent sure whether or not the bear was capable of climbing up the Cat Walk to reach us.  At the same time, descending would put us either right next to or downhill from the bear…so we were essentially stuck up there. 

After what seemed like an eternity, but were only a few minutes, the bear started off in the opposite direction and headed along the cliff.  My wife and I were relieved, and I began formatting how and where we would descend the ledge.  But, just as we started coiling the rope the bear returned, and this time he came much closer to us.  The bear didn’t exhibit any aggressive behavior, but the fact that he came back after all the noise we made had me very concerned.  All I could think of was protecting my wife, who wasn’t quite panicking but was obviously terrified.  I moved us down the opposite end of the ledge and threw the rope around a tree and set my wife up on rappel telling her not to go all the way to the ground.  From the face of the buttress, I could see around the corner where the bear would come from, if he was to come.  By this time, there was no sign or sound of the bear and I felt like we were in the clear.  I had my wife descend slowly, stopping every few feet, and I told her when she was about 15 feet from the ground that when she touched down to immediately unclip herself and head down the trail.  I told her not to run, but to walk quickly and keep looking back.  I was already set up to rappel, so I was never more than a few feet away from her.   

When we reached our car a few minutes later I called the Park Service and asked if they could send a Ranger to accompany me back up to the cliff so I could retrieve my climbing pack (it contained no food, so I was sure the bear would have left it alone).  My wife waited at the car, and the Ranger and I headed up finding no sign of the bear and my pack and its contents still intact.  The Ranger told me that the bear was foraging the acorns that had littered the forest floor.  The bear wasn’t exhibiting any aggressive behavior because he wasn’t interested in us, as much as he was the acorns (which kept him in the area).  He also asked if I saw any tags in the bear’s ears, and I didn’t.  He said the Park Service will tag aggressive bear’s ears; thankfully our bear wasn’t one of them because he told a story of a double-tagged bear’s aggressiveness with two fishermen a few weeks back where the bear had to be shot.  I asked the Ranger if the bear would have been able to climb the rock to the ledge we were on, and he said no.

I’m not sure I would have handled the situation any differently than I did.  My main concern was keeping my wife safe from the bear, as well as getting her down from the cliff safely.  As shook up as we both were, neither one of us feel like this will keep us from the woods, or from climbing.  I suppose this situation was a bit of an oddity in that the bear didn’t leave us.  The bear was busy eating, and since we were up on the ledge he might not have felt any threat where he would have to run or need to pursue us.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Autumn on Deck

It’s been over a month since I last went rock climbing.  As usual, it’s not for lack of interest as much as it has been for lack of time and/or scheduling conflicts with partners.  In May, I had written a post called “Road toThe Cross” about my venture into the world of CrossFit.  And along with my wife, we have devoted a lot of our free time to CrossFit and I decided to pursue it even further by attending a Level 1 Trainer Course the last weekend of August.  I successfully completed the course and passed the test, earning the title of Level 1 Trainer. 

But now that I’m past that, and autumn is approaching, I find myself longing to be outside at the crag climbing the cool rock in the pleasant temperatures.  And this past Sunday, getting a 7am start in 45 degree temps, Andrew and I did some strenuous top-roping at the local crag.  Andrew just came back from a Colorado climbing trip and had amazing stories of 2am starts, two hour approaches, and eight-pitch epics.  We quickly burned out are forearms and grips on slopers, pinches, and crimps and decided to use the time we had left to explore the lower cliff.  As mentioned before, the lower cliff at this crag is of lesser quality and with little features.  Most of the overhanging wall is blank, with the exception of a few thin splitter cracks and a knobby arĂȘte.  We did, however, come across this splitter which looks a bit friendlier. 
 
 
 
It stands just less than 30 feet, with the crack expanding to about fist-sized at its widest.  The crack also appears to be just deep enough to take gear, but it remains to be seen if this route is within our leading ability.  It definitely needs a cleaning, so we’re thinking about making this a late fall/early winter climbing project once everything dies out and dries up.