We'll Just Keep Climbing Till It Sucks

The sound of rain woke me before my 5:40am alarm clock.  I stepped out the door just before 6am and saw it was coming down diagonally, pooling in my broken driveway.  Fifteen minutes later, I’m sitting in my truck in a Dunkin Doughnuts parking lot texting Doug Ferguson as the rainfall drums on my roof.  I’m beyond wondering if this is a good idea anymore, this must be a bad idea.  The forecast was calling for rain all week, and here it is.  It’s a day before Christmas Eve and at the North Pole, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is on standby to lead Santa’s sleigh through this unfortunately timed winter Nor’easter.  Doug told me there’s definitely ice in the Cats.  Stony Clove is looking particularly good right now for this early in the season, and with all this rain and warmth it’s not about to last much longer.  Doug, who’s been up since 4am and probably on his 3^rd cup of coffee, is telling me it’s hardly raining in New Paltz and he’s psyched to climb.  I’m looking forward to climbing, and don’t mind getting wet while doing it, but I don’t want to spend the day getting drenched.  Still, I’m wondering, the Cats are three hours away and surely the weather up there will be different then it is here…right?  Right?

The drive up does little to inspire confidence.  It goes from mist to hard rain, back and forth.  When I get to Doug’s house, it’s maybe in the upper 30’s and raining lightly.  He’s optimistic and I’m doing my best to keep up with his good spirit.  We drive together the next hour north, and it seems to be raining even harder as we get closer.  Off the exit and winding up towards Hunter Mountain I notice as we get higher up on the switchbacks that there’s snow on the ground, a lot of it and the road cuts around us do have ice.  When we reach Tannersville, there’s a surprisingly deep carpeting of white and the rain seems to have suddenly stopped.  We drive along the road that sits beneath Stony Clove, and we can see through the heavy fog rock walls with thick ice.  We park at Notch Lake, wait out a heavy but short downpour, and begin our approach in a light mist.  Both of us feel like the rain will turn on and off throughout the day.  And like Doug told me this morning over the phone, our game plan for the day is go and “just keep climbing till it sucks”.   

 

Looking up from the Lake.

Directly under the approach.



Somewhere along the base of The Entertainer/Ice Capades/Climax, we found an overhand for our packs and just big enough for us to find shelter under in case it started to rain heavy again. The top of Climax was blank rock, but Ice Capades (WI2) was in decent shape and Doug led up it.  After I followed, Doug took another lap and carefully, carefully, carefully tip-toed over to the Entertainer to drop the line from the top.  The Entertainer (WI3/3+) was thick and we were able to do left and right variations.  But just as Doug began his first lap, the rain returned and we were forced to take shelter and sip hot drinks.  Fortunately, it was brief and even more fortunate it was the worst the weather got for the rest of the day.  We emerged, I took another burn and Doug his.  After topping out, Doug again chose to walk the loose, scary, and extremely sketchy top (while still roped up), to drop our rope on Them That Die Are The Lucky Ones (WI3+, M3).  Normally, this is an ice climb but conditions made it a mixed route, roughly an M3 in terms of difficulty.  I’ve climbed Entertainer/Ice Capades/Climax plenty of times before, but this was my first time on TTDATLO.  It’s an interesting corner climb and conditions definitely made it sort of an “alpine” climb, with snow deposits, chossy rock, wet turf and all sorts of gnarly ice…rock veiled in thin filmy ice, “snice” – ice covered by a sheet of frozen snow, and the occasional bulge of good ice.   

 

 

Ice Capades, with just enough ice at the top for a safe finish.

The Entertainer went on its left and right side.

 

Waiting it out under a rock roof.

  

Looking up the very "Alpine" start of Them That Die Are The Lucky Ones.
 





Upper Section of TTDATLO.

 

Little Black Dike looked full and thick ealier from the road, and Doug and I were psyched to get on it.  One of my favorite Catskills climbs, the usually reliable LBD is 100 feet of nearly vertical WI4.  But by the time we reached it, it was clear that sections were delaminated.  For the first time, I noticed Doug take on a serious and focused look about him as he tied-in and started to lead up.  About 30 feet into the route, I heard the scary hollow thud of tools hitting dangerous ice as Doug searched for a safe stance to place a screw.  But once Doug cleared the mid-way crux, he found himself on thicker ice with safer options and cruised the final feet to the top and calling out to me in a sing-song voice.  Even for me following, LBD was pretty scary on the lower half.  There were thin sections were you could see the rock and water running beneath the ice.  At the second screw, I found myself at an overhanging bulge and needed to rest on the rope and shake out my tired arms.  The sustained vertical climbing was definitely challenging, given that I haven't been on ice for almost a year, but I felt like I could easily return to last years' peak form and certainly achieve some greater skill or ability this year if I'm able to climb enough.

 



 

 



Little Black Dike.

Crusing up the last few feet of LBD.

 

Our day ended after LBD, the cliff was too wet and the remaining ice now too dangerous.  Doug and I both managed to get in 5 pitches of climbing on a day that didn't seem like we'd be doing any climbing at all.  I packed an entire clothing change, fearing the rain would soak me to the baselayer, but only needed to swap out a jacket after getting stuck under a drip on The Entertainer.  We both agreed, the day was a huge success and not once did it ever come close to sucking.

 

Me, with Doug.