No. Wait. Sorry. That's from Penthouse Forum.

Yeah, so this is Brian. He and I had been climbing together for about two months, I guess, before this trip. Brian had read my first Seneca trip report and had emailed me and offered to go climbing. I took him up on it. We climbed together several times (to verify that neither one of us was psychotic) at Great Falls in Virginia (Brian's local!) and had a very bloody day of grovelling together, along with Brian'r regular partner Andy Gerry, at Old Rag, my old slogging ground.

Brian has been rock climbing for about six years. He's a regular at Seneca. By contrast, I consider myself to be a reasonably experienced mountaineer and decent ice climber, but I've only started rock climbing this year (go figure). I am regularly petrified at Seneca. I find rock to be much more difficult and intimidating than any other climbing discipline I've tried so far. It was a goal of mine to get back to Seneca to climb again, and Brian, as always, was willing. We decided to road trip up on a Saturday and do some easy routes. Since I've yet to lead a rock pitch (this will change, as it inevitably must), and Seneca was until recently represented moreover by a GREAT AND ABIDING FEAR in my head, it was up to Brian to do the work on the sharp end. For this bit of charity, and many other others, I am grateful. Would have been pretty sad otherwise, I'd think.

We didn't get started until a little after 10am. Brian planned to begin on South Peak East Face and climb Skyline Traverse (3 pitches, 5.3) to Broadway Ledge, then traverse around to South Peak West Face and climb Conn's West Direct Finish (3 pitches, 5.4) to the summit. And so we did.

We started from the base of the scramble up to a wide ledge below the first pitch proper of Skyline. I made the call to rope up for the scramble up the ledge. Just seemed to make sense. You can do it either way.