Well fellas, we all knew it was coming we just didn’t know when. I’m no stranger to tendon sprains, but this one felt especially cruel of the universe. After many long months last winter spent nursing one tendon tweak after the other, I was finally getting my confidence back. I was feeling comfortable trying hard, and I’d been religious about warming up and hangboarding to avoid getting hurt again, and literally the one time I tried crimping, I dry fire and hit the ground with one fewer finger pulley than I went up with 😡
I had to cancel my thanksgiving trip to the red, which was the light at the end of the tunnel getting me through this semester. After a few days of moping and being a potato, I decided I would try to go to the Gunks for one last trip while the weather was nice. I knew it was too soon to be climbing again, but fuck it there’s always a reason not to go outside and I just wanted to make the most of a sucky situation without making it worse. I would only do a couple of climbs, nothing harder than 5.6, and avoid crimps.
My climbing hero and guru Eric generously gave me and my group a ride up to the gunks. Once we were there, Eric and his partner went off to do their own thing, while I led Danny and Grace up to Jackie and friends. Oh and did I mention? This was Cannon’s first trip to the crag!!!
We started on Jackie and made it up both pitches in pretty good time for a party of three. It was a beautiful day and stoke was very high.
Feeling bold after this first climb, I convince Grace and Danny to follow me up Big Chimney. It’s a 5.6 multipitch that starts basically in a giant narrow crack that runs deep through the cliffside. Here’s a picture of it from mountain project. It follows the chimney crack up, to the right, then you go even deeper in the crack and climb inside it until it gets too narrow to fit (you can kind of see it narrowing at the top of the picture) then you exit the crack and climb the face of the cliff for the third and final pitch, topping out amid pine trees and gorgeous gorgeous fall views.
The others were feeling…. unsure about this one. But what they supplied in rational caution I countered with completely unreasonable stoke for a big ole chimney. And stoke always wins :)) So I got started on P1, it was a short one with a spooky exposed finish and kind of a weird anchor at the top, but thankfully there was a party ahead of me and I just copied what they did to set up the belay for Danny and Grace. And god bless their hearts for putting up with my insanity the two of em made it up, and this is the three of us at the top of P2, nice and cozy in our little chimney.
After that we squeezed and shimmied and crawled our way up through the second pitch and exited the crack. I snagged a pic of Danny emerging from the chimney and making his way to the top of P2. Pitch 3 was all face climbing but it was still dope. Super fun overhang to start that goes into chill 5.5 jughauling; here’s Grace wrapping it up. And finally we top out and take a victory group pic where you can’t see the view behind us and can barely see us lol.
Overall it was a crazy fun day. So so thankful to these guys for making it such a fun trip, and super grateful I was able to take them up this silly superb chimney climb even with a tweaked finger. We hiked back down to the base, and were welcomed by an ecstatic corg who had been patiently waiting. We packed our things and started the hike back to the car, carrying heavy gear, full hearts, and one very happy very fluffy pupper.
Into The Gnar 