A Day of Firsts

27Jul08

I spent the last little while, from last Saturday to Wednesday, at a cottage near Parry Sound with my family, and boy can I feel it, even missing only two days of climbing. My legs are still groaning from todays abuse. I can’t help but feeling pleased by it. For a while, climbing had stopped making my muscles sore, mostly because they grew attuned to it, I suppose, but you can’t help feeling that you’ve actually put a good effort forward when you’re aching afterward, even if it’s just because you spent the day stemming and hanging on anchors belaying for the first time in, well, ever.

Chris and I decided to do something a little different and headed for the first time to Metcalfe Rock between Thornbury and Kimberley in the Beaver Valley area. The crag really is fantastic, with the shortest and easiest approach I’ve had yet, and a clear base that is not overly covered with talus, making it quite straight forward to move around the base.

I started by getting on what is apparently a short 5.8 sport climb. With difficulty, I made it to the third bolt, but ultimately bailed after struggling on the next move, which turned out to be the crux of the climb. The route isn’t in the guidebook, and apparently isn’t on rockclimbing.com – this route is just a bit further north than the most northern route I recognise on the site – Arete Dreams and Quantum Leap at the Rubble Heap. Anyway, I finally gave up, lowered, and let Chris lead the route, and then cleaned it on toprope, and was still shotdown my the crux move. Really, the climb was quite interesting; you work off large, juggy holds, but have to make large, gymnastic moves that are not immediately obvious. The holds might warrant a 5.8 grade, but I definitely felt the moves made the climb more difficult.

We then moved on to another climb, longer, and apparently graded harder than the last, though I found it to be quite a bit easier. I didn’t lead it though, and some sections runout quite a bit, which upped the mental aspect for Chris on lead. I definitely found the route quite enjoyable, which is somewhat surprising since it reminds me a lot of Plastic Victory Jug and Surf Zone at the Latvian Ledge at Lion’s Head, both of which I absolutely hated.

Our final choice was a beautiful trad line, Agitez Bien, a 5.10a crack that ends with a huge roof, which has to be traversed to the left and into a chimney. There are rap rings at a ledge below the roof, from which you can lower. Due to the limitations of our rack, we decided to climb to the first anchor, and then climb the rest of the route as a second pitch. I surprised myself by climbing the first part of the route without any falls; my introduction to crack climbing at Cape Croker was rather humbling, but it seems my intensive trad diet seems to have brought some improvement. At that point, I transferred the rack over to Chris, setup for a belay, and let him lead through the second pitch, which he succeeded in doing with a single take. Unfortunately, he had difficulty with the gear placements on the second part, and so his enjoyment of the route was tempered somewhat by the long runouts he had to take.

I lowered him to the ground, cleaned the anchor, and proceed up the route, to the underclings at the base of the roof. I carefully traversed this section, until I reached one of the nuts Chris placed. I was already beginning to feel the pump, but I gave a bit of a tug a wiggle to the nut, decided this would require more work, and than called for Chris to take so I could rest my sore arms. This may have proved to be the fatal mistake, as I then struggled back into the undercling, tried to get some slack into the rope, decided this approach was failing miserably, clipped directly to a nearby, adjacent nut which was permanently stuck, and worked some more before finally agreeing with Chris’ suggestion that I lower off the nut and he give it a shot. I agreed with this, as my first encounter with a hanging belay had already made me somewhat nervous, and my feet were beginning to scream at me from shoes which were clearly not designed to wear while belaying from anchors. I had contemplated taking them off at the station, but decided I wasn’t prepared for the consequences of dropping them. He then proceeded up the route, and managed to whack the nut out from the right, something I was unable and unprepared to do (the potential pendulum already made me a bit nervous). We were both quite tired after this and headed home. The part of the route I did was amazing, and I highly regret that I didn’t get the opportunity to finish it.

In any case, Metcalfe Rock was fantastic, that route was fantastic, I did my first multipitch climb (all 30m or so of it), I belayed hanging from anchors for the first time, and overall, I had a fantastic time.

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Tags: Climbing, Metcalfe Rock, Sport, Trad