CLIMBING STORIES

D-Day

As central Pennsylvanian limestone quarries go, this one posed a unique access problem. No there weren't any no trespassing signs. No landowners or police visited the place kicking people out. In fact the quarry was so old it was now State Game Land according to the boundaries on the topo map. And rock climbing is an allowed activity on Pennsylvania state game lands. Of course, I'm not the sort to actually ask a game warden such a question but it did arise in a conversation that Chris Zweig had when he was trying to get permission to bolt a climb in a particular State park. But that is another story. The access problem in this particular quarry was of the liquid variety. The entire bottom was water. And it was a BIG quarry. One hundred fifty feet high and about 200 yards long. I first entertained the notion of doing a long traverse just above water line in order to provide access to individual climbs. In the end, this just seemed like too much work and so the RAFT option won out. Besides, I had a raft. A big three person one at that. Bought the thing in order to pick up Sandstone Petrogrips out of the river. You could put 300 labs. of rock in this thing and easily transport rocks by pulling the raft around which was a lot easier than filling up my backpack and actually carrying 100 lbs of rock on my back. Well, I ended up not using the raft much (the big flood of 96 did a good job of depositing Petrogrips at convenient locations on dry land) so I was glad to put my investment to some good use.

For the first attempt on establishing a route I enlisted the services of Chris Zweig. At first Chris seemed a little leery about the whole idea but when he saw that my raft was actually a real raft and not one of those cheap beach toys he got quite exited by the idea. Hey, rafts are fun! you get to float around and there is just something about a raft trip that gets the little kid in you excited. And we were going rafting AND climbing at the same time. This would prove quite an adventure.

We managed to inflate the raft and carry it down a little class 4 section of climbing in order to get the thing in the water. We threw the climbing gear in and paddled off, seeking high adventure. Paddling along the length of the quarry, I kept searching for something that looked like a really classic line. We kept eying lines that looked like they would be good routes but the starts didn't look very appealing. Most of quarry had a sizable roof right out of the water. I was looking for something that would enable us to get established on the wall without too much hassle. Near the end of the quarry there was a nice low angle apron that would enable easy access to the cliff - the perfect spot to establish a beachhead. We paddled up to this and started arranging gear and figuring out how to actually climb and belay out of a raft.

This was weird! Climbing takes on a whole new aspect when you start out of a raft. It's sort of like big wall climbing. You can't drop anything. Keeping the rope dry was obviously going to be difficult so we had to be careful there. Somehow, after about 15 minutes of "duh, how the hell do we do this?" we managed to organize the gear and set up a belay without getting anything wet. When I actually managed to step out of the raft and establish myself on the rock it felt pretty good getting my land legs back.

The first order of business was to get a bolt in somewhere. This was essential to both keep the belayer from floating away and to provide a means to prevent drowning if I fell in the water loaded down with climbing gear. I also wanted something to hang the Bosch from. I didn't like the idea of that expensive heavy thing so close to deep water and not attached to anything except me. I particularly didn't like the idea of it somehow falling into the water and dragging me down with it. After I got a bolt in, Chris tied into it with about 10 feet of rope. This gave him some leeway to move around in the raft, sort of like belaying at the base of a cliff. This seemed logical at the time but we later discovered a rather unhealthy flaw to this setup.

I attached the Bosch to the bolt with a fifi hook. A 20 ft.. section of rope then ran from me to the Bosch so I could pull up the Bosch to drill when I felt the urge. This method works pretty well and I've gotten pretty comfortable with it, having placed lots of bolts on lead this way. Only occasionally have I had a problem with the Bosch getting stuck and fortunately I have yet to fall while drilling.

The climbing started out fairly easy and I soon spied a beautiful little roof that I just HAD to climb over. I was a little confused about which line to take and had been following easy stuff which was taking me somewhat to the left. There were some interesting features up right that I wanted to explore and it seemed like the most classic way to get there was to go over this great looking roof. The problem was the rock between myself and the roof wasn't the best looking stuff. This didn't worry me much as I knew I could get up it. The problem arose when I started knocking rocks down. YOU CANNOT DODGE ROCKS WHEN YOU ARE IN A RAFT. Chris found out to his horror that when he swerved to avoid a rock, he stayed where he was and THE RAFT MOVED. To his horror, he watched one particularly large rock come down aimed directly for him. At the last moment, the rock took a lucky bounced off the cliff, went over his head, hit the end of the raft, and bounced off it like it was a trampoline. Needless to say, Chris was upset about this situation. To make matters worse, he said he heard a hissing sound and swore the raft was sinking. That's probably why I like climbing with Chris - somehow it always turns into an epic.

Well, I recognize when it's time to reassess a situation so I quickly put a bolt in and came down to investigate the raft sinking problem.

Much to my relief, listen as I might I could not hear any hissing sounds coming from the raft. After about 5 minutes the thing was still firm as can be so it didn't appear that the raft was going to sink. This was a good thing since I really didn't want to get wet and lose all my gear. Zweig obviously didn't want to continue belaying from his current position so we moved the raft about 10 yards to the left and placed a bolt at water line in order to securely fasten the raft in place. This way the belayer might have a chance of actually dodging falling objects. After Chris was satisfied with the new arrangement, I went back up to tackle the roof. I managed to place a bolt under the roof and went for it. The roof was about 2 feet, not really big, but there wasn't anything resembling a good hold within reach over the roof. I spent several minutes trying to figure out what combination of fingers on a crappy crack-like feature would give the best grip but I finally came to the conclusion that it was just going to be a difficult move and just had to go for it. I had a very heart-stopping moment while pulling the roof when a tiny foothold right at the lip snapped off. I don't know how I avoided falling, (I think the cursing helped) but somehow managed to get that foot back up on the face over the roof and clawed my way up to a good hold.

The climbing became rather easy over the roof with a nice stance where I placed a bolt. All of a sudden I was on a patch of really high quality rock. This was unexpected. The climbing up to this point was not particularly esthetic. However, I found myself on sort of an arete like feature with really beautiful rock and fun 5.6-5.7 moves. I ran it out. I didn't want to stop to put a bolt in, I was having too much fun. Chris mentioned something about how far above the last bolt I was so stopped on a really fun stance at about the end of this section of nice rock. This was about 20 feet above the last bolt. Unfortunately, not long after I started drilling the Bosch really started slowing down - the dreaded sign of a soon to be dead battery.

Well frankly, that sort of sucked. To add to the character of the moment, all of that time sitting surrounded by water seemed to have had an effect on Chris' bladder. It must have been a bad situation because I heard those words rarely uttered by individuals over a certain age. "Jim, I gotta pee!" It must have been a real bad situation because I heard this over and over. "I GOTTA PEE, I GOTTA PEE!'

Necessity is the mother of invention. In sort order, I invented a new bolting method - hammering on the end of a 3/8 inch sds bit. I never heard of anyone hand drilling with out a holder for the bit, but it actually worked. After a few minutes of hammering (and listening to "I gotta pee" sounds from below) I got a hole deep enough for me to feel comfortable lowering off the bolt..

After I made it back to the raft Chris was finally free to relieve himself. However, first he had to get on belay and get on the rock because I vetoed his idea of trying to pee out of the raft.

For the next attempt, I brought along Brad Nelson and 2 fully charged bosch batteries (or so I thought). Brad quickly lead up to my high point about 1/.3 the way up the cliff and started off up left. After placing 2 bolts, a strange thing happened, the Bosch again ran out of juice. That particular battery must have been at the end of it's lifespan since I can usually get 10 holes from a battery. I brought up the other battery as Brad belayed me off of a single shallow-hole bolt. Instead of stopping at the belay (and have us both hanging from 1 bolt) we concluded that the safest option was for me to continue climbing and get some more bolts into the system. Near the top of the cliff, I placed a bolt under a small roof and the strangest thing happened. The other battery died. Both my Bosch batteries picked this particular climb to give up the ghost. Well now I had a dilemma. Belay up Brad and have us both rappel off of a single, shallow-hole bolt, or top out. It was about 30 feet to the top but from where I was the climbing looked easy so I went for it. After I climbed over the roof and got a closer look at the top-out I really regretted that particular decision.

I've never seen such an uninviting mixture of loose shale held together by a nearly impeneratable mixture of various assorted vines, briars, and tree roots. To top is all off, the stuff was much steeper than it seemed from below. I could swear it was overhanging at the top.

Progress consisted of clawing through loose dirty rock to find anything resembling an edge, then balancing from dirty, muddy edge to dirty, muddy edge with precarious desperate trepidation. To keep from falling I had to exert so much energy I felt as though I was on some 5.12 friction pitch.

Near the top, I got to the point where my only option was to grab hold of a dead tree that had fallen from the top and somehow was held in place. I dreaded the option but at least it would end my desperate struggle - one way or the other. I grabbed the tree and just monkeyed up it. Soon I was grabbing a barbed wire fence which was perched at the very edge of the cliff.

What a strange dichotomy. At one instance I was struggling for my life, and then I was climbing over a cow fence into a perfectly flat cow meadow. I belayed Brad up anchored to a tree and a cow fence.

On the way up, Brad just touched the dead tree and the thing took off down the cliff - aimed right for the raft! We couldn't see the raft from our viewpoint but I was convinced that there was no way the tree could have missed it. This provided a convincing argument NOT to rappel the route since we didn't know if was still afloat. The other convincing argument was that I was just too scared to try to rappel down through that junk I had just climbed through.

After a mile walk in climbing shoes we made it back to the raft put-in point. To my surprise the raft seemed to be intact, so we swam over to check it out. Reaching the raft we were greeted with a hilarious sight. The raft was nearly completely filled up with tree parts (branches, twigs and lots of bark). Apparently the dead tree had completely disintegrated on it's downward journey. Just another central Pennsylvania climbing adventure.