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The Gunks, the Traps

So I went rock climbing this weekend. I brought my camera along, but I came to realize something on my my first pitch of Shockley's Ceiling -- if you want the view you should see it for yourself.

Anyway, I started off my Saturday in the Gunks with Shockley's Ceiling. Stephen's brother Tom lead, and we made it up the first two pitches without incident. The third pitch gave him some trouble though, and he took two falls. I caught him both times at the expense of my left hand, which got eaten up by the belay rope. He's a lot heavier than me, so when he fell it dragged me up and pinned my hand on the rock. But that was okay, at least I caught his fall and was tied in so he was fine.

He eventually made it up over the Ceiling, but I couldn't get it by the fourth try. I blame it on my puny arms. So I ended up having to rap down and meet up with Matt (one of Tom's friends) and Stephen cleaned out the rest of the route.

Tom and I then went on to do Minty next, and I actually finished that one. It has a few tough parts but nothing spectactular. After those two, it was about 6pm, so we went out for dinner. And sleeping in tents.

Sunday (today) we went up Gelsa, which took me a while. The second and third pitches on it were amazing. Two had almost no handholds to speak of, and three was a really tight corner with not a lot of anything, and a loose rock. I fell once on three and needed to take a breather. But I figured it out after some thinking. The rap down off Gelsa was beautiful...it was an overhang, so you're rapping down air the whole way.

If it isn't obvious, I really dig rock climbing after my first taste, and hope to be again Real Soon Now (tm).