New England Rock Climbing, 5-6 May 2001:
Things Don't Fall Apart

Brian Connors, Dan Sutton and I met in New Hampshire for a weekend of rock climbing at Whitehorse and Cathedral Ledges. I regularly climb with Brian hither and yon, and had climbed with Dan once before at Whitehorse. This was the first time Dan and Brian had met.

The New Hampshire winter had been long, and as recently as a week before we were set to go up there were still reports of snow and ice up high. Brian, Dan and I were psyched to perhaps get in a last alpine route of the season for one of the two days we'd be up north. Then temps warmed up to 80+ and all the white stuff went bye-bye. No matter, though. There was plenty left to climb. We agreed after some discussion to try a couple of classic moderate routes on Whitehorse and Cathedral. For Brian and I the trip held a bit of added importance; our last two winter trips had been mixed successes, and we were intent on making this one a good one. This was a little bit unfair to Dan, but he dealt with our quavering neuroses quite well.

After a slight, very uncharateristic cock-up on meeting times Saturday morning, Brian, Dan and I made our way to Whitehorse slabs, where we found rapidly melting snow at the base.

Dan has provided the following alternate version of the above. Out of tremendous guilt, I include it, without rebuttal (and there is a rebuttal, if only a small one):
"Brian and I sat our fat, white asses in bed while Dan waited at the foot of the crag at the appointed time for a half hour, then finally came and found and woke our sorry selves up."

Moving on...

The route we'd chosen was Standard Route (5.5, with a 5.7 crux variation, which we did), the most popular and one of the best protected routes at Whitehorse. All of the climbing here is runout. Even for a belayer it's nervewracking. The route as we climbed it goes:

  1. Solo up to the Launch Pad where most parties rope up
  2. Out right to the Toilet Bowl, up left to the Quartz Pocket variation
  3. Up the Quartz Pocket to the Pinch Belay
  4. Back around right and up past The Arch to Lunch Ledge
  5. Right through the crux traverse with several possible variations
  6. Then left out over a traverse to [normally two pitches of 5.2 X, which we avoided more out of convenience than necessity] easy dikes and fourth and fifth-class climbing [back out right, then left - still with me?] to the top.

If you didn't get all that I'll do my best to elucidate on the way up.

There had been early rain (I could insert a bit of a rebuttal here but I shan't), so the lower slabs were very slick and covered in wet needles and various bits of discarded tree paraphenalia. Clambering over the combined texture up to the broken Launch Pad, the first flat ledge about 150 feet up from the base at right center, was unnerving to say the least. Dan and Brian started up and I brought up the rear. After a few mini-slips I was quickly on all fours. It didn't help that we found a dead toad on the route on the way up. I mean, seriously... what chance did I have if Mr. Toad couldn't hang on to the rock?
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