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perswig
climber
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Apr 19, 2009 - 10:05pm PT
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Sunday, Acadia with Troy. (Part 3 of 3)
I love the drive to Bar Harbor. Two hours door to cliff, if done correctly. You can wind it up to 75 between the little towns, and some days you know that if the police are out, they'll be where you expect them. Today was such a day.
(Plus, after making the trip a dozen or so times one summer doing fill-in work for one of the island climbing shops, it's hardwired. At least today it was late enough in the day to lessen the moose-collision risk.)
The towns go by, Camden, Belfast, Northport, Lincolnville, Ducktrap (my favorite), East Orland, Bucksport. The ocean ever on your right, sometimes just out of sight, sometimes glinting and distracting. Sure there is increasing kitch to this part of route 1, tourist traps and whathaveyou, but there are also enormous, grand captain's homes, tight little capes with gardens starting to bloom, blueberry burns, horse farms. Of course, famous cat houses.
We start at South Bubble.
Troy heeding the threat, sign on top.
Troy heading up Moroviana P1.
P2.
Troy leaving the belay (note via ferrata) and gaining the crack.
I replace the old rap slings (I think I placed them 4 years ago?), we rap, and then go up the adjoining flared chimney. Gear in back, but better climbed out at the edges. Troy finds this out when he gets his knee stuck at the chockstone.
He eventually opts for the buttress out right.
We hike off and down, I solo up the nice dihedral on the left of the upper slabs, set a TR (oh, the shame), and laugh ourselves off the .10ish slab.
Troy does better than I do, we both do better than expected. Good practice for harder Whitehorse routes.
We bail just as an older guy crashes up the talus (off-trail) carrying a huge pack of gear, two ropes and an Ipod gizmo. He eyes some of the climbs, mumbles something about 'practice', ties both ropes to his harness and starts climbing up toward the starting buttress of Gargoyle, etc. Not sure what his system was going to be. Hoping not to read about him in the news this week.
Plenty of daylight left, but I'm losing steam and the day's cooling off. We run up to the precipice, civilized approach.
Climb Wafer Step (5.5d - sandbagging locals). Troy following.
Good views.
Call it a day. Call it three days. Call it a great spring and a good start to rock. My hands hurt, I'm sunburnt, and I might be ready to go back to work.
Thanks for visiting, and thanks for everyone improving the signal-to-noise ratio lately.
Dale
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Apr 20, 2009 - 08:03am PT
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South Bubble is a crazy experience,nothing like what it appears from the lot.Another wonderous day at Precipice too,methinks Tradchick and I will have to visit again this summer.Some stuff there is too good to be true.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 20, 2009 - 09:25am PT
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Looks like Acadia's season begins earlier than I realized. It's 4 or 5 hours from us, so we
don't get there too often (and when we do it's by freeway, not the scenic route Perswig takes).
But the drives are all part of the experience, aren't they? We drive past Lake Chocorua on
our way home from the Valley, it's often worth a stop for the view or to let the dog swim.
Those lenticular clouds from last Friday (see the Clouds thread) wound down to a mild, pretty
sunset over the lake.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Apr 20, 2009 - 10:13am PT
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Bah Haba!!!!!
YAY!!!!
Looks like fun!
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Apr 20, 2009 - 10:15am PT
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Nice stuff. Just when I'm ready to give up, there are neat posts like these!
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perswig
climber
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Apr 20, 2009 - 01:26pm PT
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Chiloe, the Park Loop road just opened this week, so that seems the unofficial start to Acadia climbing. You can get to Otter year-round but it's a hike to Precipice or S. Bubble, etc w/o the road. Like your neck of the woods, everywhere was as dry as I've ever seen it; it felt like fall climbing (except my hands are softer).
Tomcat, it IS amazing what you find at the Bubble. I swear Gargoyle is the hardest .8, and when the flake at the last bit pulls off, it's gonna get much harder, I think.
It's no surprise those MDI climbers are strong. The whole place is STEEP. (Wafer Step 5.5 my ass)
Crimpie, you and Brassnuts are doing a great job keeping TRs alive, and lots of good climbing threads have surfaced lately. Nice to see.
Dale
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Aya K
Trad climber
New York
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Apr 20, 2009 - 07:29pm PT
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Since I put it in the what are you doing this weekend thread but it's mroe appropriate here
Went golfing Friday afternoon.
Saturday we went to Lost City, only ran into a few other climbers, which is one of the nice things about it, and did a bunch of great routes; who knew that there were so many moderates there? (we warmed up on a 3 or 4 of 6-7-8ish things) Then moved on to some routes that were clean, others not so much
and ended the day with a long walk back down to the right end of the cliff to do Evelyn, an offwidthy thing in one of the many cool chasms formed by the broken off fins at Lost City. The best part was the approach, which involved squirming through a hole into a mini talus cave before popping out into the mossy ferny hidden little chasm.
(note the head disappearing into the cave by the packs)
Sunday we checked out Peterskill and I have to say, there are many many ultracool routes their; it's just a shame that they're all waaay too short. Also, the multitudes of topropers are superannoying, not because they're toproping per se, but because they seem to tend to set up like 5 topropes at a time, be annoyed if you want to lead a climb under one that they're not using (can't you just climb when we're done? we're leaving in two hours. How long are you going to take? or when I had to work on cam that got stuck - does it always take this long to climb with gear), and also we found a lot of topropes dangling around for whom we couldn't identify the owners despite asking everyone in the vicinity both on top and bottom (in this instance, out of curiosity - would you go ahead and rap on those ropes, which are occupying the only bolted anchors on the formation? or would you go ahead and take the extra ten minutes to walk off?).
On the other hand, I learned some highly important facts, like that the gunks are 600 feet tall, using a petzl minitraxion to rope solo rather than a belayer to TR a climb is safer (because a belayer can get hit by a rock and get knocked out), and nuts are better than cams because they're cheaper so you can leave them behind.
We also were startled to walk around a corner to see a black vulture warming itself in the sun, clearly pissed off at us. Its nest was in the little talus cave behind it. Good thing we were being good citizens and had the dogs on leashes!!!
I was under the impression that black vultures were still relatively rare around the gunks, but we saw this pair at the nest, and I saw at least one other pair over at lost city.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 26, 2009 - 07:30pm PT
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Beautiful weather downeast this weekend, for climbers and blackflies alike.
Although we missed the big party in California, I imagine a few locals got outdoors.
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divad
Trad climber
wmass
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Apr 26, 2009 - 09:09pm PT
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We had Cannon all to ourselfs on Friday, 4/24, and did a casual cruise of Whitney Gilman. The descent was sketchy with lots of unpacked snow up top. Sorry, no pics.
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Apr 26, 2009 - 10:46pm PT
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Mini TR...
Trapps Friday.
Looks like a bomb hit. Don't go there until further notice. Massive rock fall, (and trees) but they are blaming some poor nesting peregrine pair for this.
Wish I had pictures. Hawk area had a white rock hit the face on the way down that looks like somebody had car-sized can of white spray paint.
We did P1 of Erect Direction because High E was too busy. Hit Keep on Struttin after that. Tossed in Dry Heaves, and P1 of Son of Easy O. The place was too crowded for Friday. Because of closure?
Sat. OK it is 10 degrees warmer than Miami FL here. Got our butts kicked by the sun. Suffered by not running Te-Dum to the top. The hanging belay s*cks. Did run Disneyland to near the top. Funny watching the beached whale moves before we did it. Boy did we feel graceful with heel hook to landing in seated position! Got humbled by crux of Birdland - one hang. Then we moved on to Loosey Goosey (oops ended up doing the 8 variation, unexpected fun).
Either it was the temperature (and first time there this year), or the grades in the Nears are a grade more sand-bagged than Trapps.
Aya, Black Vultures may have been rare in the area, but I saw tons of them this weekend. In fact, one seemed to be waiting for people to die near Balrog/Dry Heaves. He just kept landing in nearby trees or on the ground looking hungry.
They really look kind of cool with those white bands on the wings in flight. Sorry, no pictures, but the hungry fella landed between 10 and 20 feet away several times.
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perswig
climber
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Apr 27, 2009 - 06:51am PT
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Bump - for Chiloe, divad, and TIG getting out - nice weekend but, damn it was warm.
Divad, your soft-snow-baking-on-top-of-slippery-leaves descent sounds like the day's crux?
Climbed in Camden Sat PM and Precipice Sun; not as busy in Acadia as I'd have expected. Fine by me.
Edited to add: the Ewing clan crushing Whitehorse.
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Aya K
Trad climber
New York
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Apr 27, 2009 - 07:27am PT
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It was a pretty slow weekend at the gunks for us, too hot - but despite hitting up the trapps we didn't really hit any crowds, so that was okay. We did Silhouette, Man's Quest for Flight, No Glow and Three Vultures on Saturday, partied hard on Saturday night, and didn't start climbing until shady-time around 2pm on Sunday, and never even made it as far as the Hurdy Gerdie block (Black Fly, Handy Andy, Easy Keyhole and Sh*t or Go Blind). That makes it 9 pitches for the weekend for me; luckily I am not the one trying to get to 1000 pitches in a season. I still hurt all over, though!!!
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tradchick
Trad climber
White Mountains
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Apr 27, 2009 - 07:39am PT
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Tomcat and I hit Cathedral after work Friday and spent Sunday at Whitehorse on Hotter than Hell and Inferno. That crack on Inferno just gets better and better! Unbelievable too, we only saw 1 other party on the south buttress all day.
Sorry no pics...
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Apr 27, 2009 - 09:18am PT
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Izzat Seventh Seal sir? If so,and a trail rope involved,one might think you enjoyed a fine link-up indeed.
I like the rope and feather shot.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 27, 2009 - 10:43am PT
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Good eye, Tom, that is indeed Seventh Seal. We didn't link to Loose Lips, however --
I'm using a rope system of improvised complexity (two ends of my bipattern rope used as
doubles) after stacking a couple of stoppers in a solution hole way off left, just to see
something between me and the ground.
Another climb that day was Ethereal Crack, not in very good style.
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Apr 27, 2009 - 10:59am PT
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My stylin' on Ethereal ebbs and flows too.Some days you get it clean,some days not so,but always worth a burn.It's a good day when my fingers aren't locked in the nut placement I so desperately desire....
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tradchick
Trad climber
White Mountains
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Apr 27, 2009 - 11:16am PT
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It's a better day when that nut isn't in the lock I so desperately need when following....or it comes out on the first try! :)
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Apr 27, 2009 - 11:23am PT
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None of my nuts come out on da first try honey....lol...
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cowpoke
climber
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Apr 27, 2009 - 12:28pm PT
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Tomcat, I'm impressed that your fingers were "locked" at all on Ethereal (I won't dive into the nuts discussion)...having tried it for the first time on Friday, it wasn't until things were less desperate that I got anything that felt like a finger jam. A humbling experience.
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Tomcat
Trad climber
Chatham N.H.
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Apr 27, 2009 - 01:48pm PT
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A smiling Tradchick laughing because her fingers fit the very thing...
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