Summary

Description

We ran into Mike St. Laurent and his climbing partner as well as Amelia, Tim, and Jim Faber while we were out there. Most of them while we were on My Wife's Pajamas, and they were walking by.

[The following is Lisa's account of the trip from her livejournal entry ...]

i had a horrible night's sleep and was pretty unenthusiastic about everything on sunday morning, but set the autopilot for "climbing trip" and managed to get my gear packed and my cranky ass in the car. Mike drove most of the way out, so i managed to get a bit of a nap, and despite arguing on the hike in, against all reasonable expections, we had a fabulous day at moore's wall.

the weather was perfect for climbing - mid-80s, slight breeze, and moore's is north-facing so it's shaded all morning and well into the afternoon. hard to believe it was carolina in july! we managed to avoid the yellowjackets swarming around the car, but hiked up to discover that they were puttering around the base of the crag, as well; we decided that "if i leave them alone, they'll leave me alone" was a workable plan and tried to ignore them. Mike led easy hard (5.5) as a warmup, and it was the ideal way to knock the rust off! we then tackled the next route over, head jam (5.6, according to the kelley guide - more on that in a minute), which has a deeply intimidating and non-obvious stem move across thin air about halfway up. Mike did some rock wrestling, but got through it in short order; i discovered (again!) that i am too damn short for the stem move and have to do a dyno with some frantic intermediate smearing. if i hadn't already hit my target heart rate for the day on the hike up, that would definitely have done it.

(a quick aside on route ratings: the yosemite decimal system is a notoriously subjective and regional beastie; even within NC, a 5.5 is not a 5.5. is not a 5.5. we use the thomas kelley climber's guide to NC, which is where my ratings originate, and is very reflective of the history of climbing in the state... routes at moore's wall are traditionally a grade steeper than pilot mountain or table rock / linville gorge; a 5.5 at moore's would easily be a 5.6 at pilot or table. and don't even get me started on national variation - california 5.8 seems to be generally carolina 5.7, which means i get to feel all tuff in the climbing gyms in san jose, but we got our butts kicked by a 5.3 at the gunks in upstate NY. altho to be fair, it was a damp and drizzly 5.3...)

as we were rapping off, chatting with the family of brits who had followed us onto easy hard, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the wind picked up. pulling down our rappel rope, i mentioned idly to Mike that it felt like rain... and about 60 seconds later, the bottom fell out. fortunately, we managed to squeeze our gear and ourselves into a corner crack and had a pleasant PB&J lunch just inside the drip line. (the brits were not so fortunate; one of the teenage girls was in the middle of easy hard, and got to wait out the 5-minute squall on the wall and then finish the route up wet rock. she was a good sport about it!)

in search of dry rock, we headed down the crag to my wife's pajamas, a little-known 5.6 with a sequence-y face start and a challenging (at least, to us!) headwall crux. the top was drying out rapidly in the sun and wind, but the bottom was still dripping and puddled... and swarmed with more yellowjackets. note to self: no more bright red ropes! fortunately, our detente seemed to be holding. Mike started up a couple times, but couldn't hold onto the wet sloper at the top of the third move - gee, i wonder why. (wet + sloper = suck.) watching him, i could see that i was short enough to use an intermediate foothold to boost myself past the sloper, so when he came off, i gave it a try.

now, you have to understand: I. Don't. Lead. my career as a climber has pretty much been defined by my not-leader-ness. and yet - no shit, there i was, with a handful of selected gear, on the sharp end of the rope. Mike was spotting me, so i figured hey, it was just a boulder problem, and it doesn't really matter if boulders are wet. i came off precipitously on my first attempt, but figured out my balance and got up enough to get a good #2 TCU (three-lobe cam) above the slope-y bit, and then Mike tackled it again. still not dry enough. at that point, i was either feeling pretty ballsy or having a complete mental failure, because i went up it again... this time, with Mike actually on belay.

i got through the wet part, into the merely-damp part, contemplated pulling up onto the ledge above me, and suddenly decided that i needed another piece in Right Fucking Now. the only crack i could find was a thin, shallow horizontal pocket; i stuck a #00 TCU in it, jerked on it a little, and decided it was good enough to keep going. (that's a third-of-an-inch-wide cam, which has about half the fall strength of the #2 i had put in earlier... assuming it's placed correctly. which is a mighty big assumption, considering how shallow that crack was.)

once i got onto the ledge, my rabbit brain woke up and said "WTF are you smoking???" i managed to stave off the panic long enough to place a pink tricam in another shallow horizontal crack. the pink tricam is my favorite piece of gear ever - they're simple, straightforward, i understand how the force works with the rock, and you can put one damn near anywhere. (i'm not the only one who feels that way, either...) in this case, the crack was just barely deep enough, but i had good solid rock under the tooth and all the way along the rockers... which was critical, since i was about to get lowered off of it!

Mike suggested i put my foot in the sling and test it with bodyweight, which i did; it held, but the unstable hang put my rabbit brain Right The Fuck Over The Edge, and i spent the entire (mercifully brief) lower chanting "it's a good pink tricam it's a good pink tricam it's a good pink tricam" over and over on a rising note of hysteria. (there's a reason i don't lead. it's not good for anybody's mental health. :-/ ) so, two firsts in one day: my first psych pro, and my first lower off my own gear...

once back on solid ground, we both took a breather, and then i gratefully handed the sharp end of the rope back to Mike - who went right up the damn thing. he was polite about pointing out to me that my #00 TCU was psych pro - hey, i knew that. and it worked. i kept going! - as he moved it to a better placement several feet up, and pretty damn surprised that my pink tricam was as solid as it was, for as shallow as it was. (did i mention that i<3 me some pink tricam?) he worked through the headwall crux with style and only minimal grumping - and that's a pretty stiff lead for the third climb of the day when we haven't been out in months! i had a moment of fear when the by-now-background hum of yellowjacket buzzing was replaced by a ginormous yellow thing big enough that i swear i heard "ride of the valkyries" as it checked out my helmet... but it, too, moved on without deciding to perforate me. whew!

and then, the moment of truth. it was 4:30, and Mike, having put up a solid 300 feet of rock, was done leading; we could have headed out for an early dinner, but the day was still beautiful - altho with the rain moved on and the sun on the wall, it definitely more like the 90-and-90 (90 degrees, 90 percent humidity) that we all know and love - and it seemed a shame not to make the most of it. i figured that since i'd already led on wet rock that day, it might be nice to try leading something dry, so we headed over to sentinel buttress (5.4). i've led the first pitch once before, with an audience of kibitzing teenage smokers and a bad attitude; this time, we had the wall to ourselves (a small miracle, since it's the place to try an introductory trad lead and is usually mobbed). the route starts about 10 feet up, and the first move up the wall is (to me) the hardest; i dithered on it for the longest time before backing up my nut with a #1 camalot (which felt enormous compared to the gear i'd been on earlier!) and just pushing through it. after that it was smooth sailing to the crow's nest.

Mike enjoyed the rare opportunity to second a route, and pronounced my gear placements acceptable; the hike out was uneventful; and dinner at foothills was - as usual - excellent. i love their sesame seared tuna, but Mike's brewhouse pork ribs were just the Best Thing Ever. (low country bbq sauce = thin, mustard-based, and just enough flavor to complement the pork, rather than overwhelming it the way most barbecue sauces do. i wonder if they'll give me the recipe?)

for a day that started with an argument, punctuated by rain, and populated by an unreasonable number of potentially-stingy things, we had an outstanding time - lots of rock, sunshine, and good food. it's been a while since we've been out on the rock - too much caving, rappelling, and socializing on the weekends, instead - but now i remember why i love to climb!