I have finally done it--I successfully climbed a 5.9+!! On August 31, 1999, I headed out to Sugarloaf Mountain after work to try get a few climbs in before dark. I began on A Flake Called Lee as Fabrizia Guglielmetti successfully completed Bloodguard. I then watched Charles Danforth quickly scamper up the same climb. It was now my turn to take a crack at it--I honestly didn't think that I could do it. The beginning had these tiny little hand holds, and I had use what little smearing technique that I have for my feet. I was amazed that I was able to climb this first face, and by the time I reached a roof, my arms were starting to give out. After some sitting in the harness debating my next move, I finally just grunted past the roof and made it to the top just in time to see the most beautiful sunset! Definitely well worth the hand-cramping!!

      After a visit to REI for an attic sale, Charles and I headed out towards Annapolis Rocks at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 25. We got to the part of the Appalachian Trail where we had to start hiking from and realized that there would probably be a lot of climbers on the rocks as the parking lot was full. After parking on the grass, we started out ~2.5-mile hike to the rocks. With most of the climbing gear in his pack, Charles was carrying nearly 60 lbs. in his pack! Leaving much of the weight with the experienced backpacker, I carried only about 20 lbs. in my pack.

      The hike there was nice, and had only one steep hill, thank goodness! We got to the rocks and saw that indeed, there were many climbers, including some sort of expedition group with students. We scoped out the rocks and picked a climb just to the right of the group. While setting up our top rope, we got to watch some students climb while blindfolded! We hiked down to the bottom and began to climb what was so far the most inverted climb I had done, though it wasn't horribly inverted. The rock felt a bit slippery, perhaps because the air was a bit chilly. We each climbed twice and decided that we should take down the rope and begin to set up our camp.

      After many questions from various boy scouts, we took down our gear and found a place to put our tent. We luckily found a spot that was a bit further away from the larger camps. We found a "spring" where we could filter some water, but we had to instruct others to filter it to avoid getting nasty parasites. We then cooked a fine meal of pasta and got a gorgeous view of the sunset near out campsite. It was the first time I had actually seen the sun getting lower and lower in the sky each moment. Very amazing! The air was quite chilly that night and we were getting very sleepy, so we headed to our tent by about 8:30. But we decided we weren't so pathetic because we were out watching a most gorgeous sunset and stargazing, while others were back home in bars somewhere. The moon was incredibly bright that night, so that when we awoke in the middle of the night, a light wasn't necessary to find your way out of the tent. It also made it such that I noticed all of the little critters crawling around on the outside of the tent (all of which I'm childishly afraid of!). Charles had to quickly get rid of a rather larger walking stick that had been crawling around near the tent door at one point. But even with the bright light and rocky ground, we were able to get a good enough night's sleep in order to get up early the next morning and climb.

      We decided to set up a rope at Black Crack, which is listed in Mark's guidebook as a classic 5.9 climb. Also, other climber's around on Saturday had suggested that we give it a try. We slung some huge boulders at the top of the climb and hiked down. I first free climbed a short bit to the right of Black Crack, which was easy enough. Now I had to try the climb itself. Well, it wasn't easy , and I wasn't able to finish it. I did the first few moves and quickly realized how inverted the climb was. The rock was much more slippery than on Saturday, as it was still fairly cold. (The sun was still on the other side of the rocks.) I went through quite a bit of chalk. After a few more moves, I was having trouble keeping my body weight close to the rocks due to the angle of the climb. It's the type of climb where you have to keep moving because the holds aren't that great. But I was out of energy and couldn't keep moving. So I fell off and went for a ride-I swung very far out! After swinging back and forth wildly several times, I now know that I fully trust my harness and rope, my belayer, and physics! This made me nauseous enough though that I had to come down.

      I then belayed Charles up Black Crack, and he did a much better job than I did. He got about halfway up the climb, just under a large roof, before swinging out, though not quite as far out as myself. I lowered him down and wanted to try again myself. I didn't get any farther than the first time though. After being lowered, I decided I'd better take a rest, so I took a nap on a nearby rock while Charles looked around at other climbs.

      Later, we each attempted the climb once more. Charles got a move or two further his next time around, but I think the roofs were still giving him trouble. I never made past about halfway. I then tried the 5.7/5.8 climb just to the right of Black Crack. It has a big cave in the bottom third of the climb, but I didn't feel comfortable going about it. I was at least 10 feet over from where the other end of the rope was, so I knew that if I slipped, I would swing really far, and probably hit the rock. There were some sort of funky moves required to get around or above this cave. So I down-climbed instead. Charles then attempted the same climb, getting a bit higher than I had. We then decided to the pull the ropes, since we were both starting to not feel well.

      After taking down the climbing gear, we went for a short hike up to Black Rocks, about a mile north on the AT. On the way we ran into someone that recognized me as his neighbor. It's a small world, I guess. The hike itself was flat and very pretty. We noticed several trees turning pretty shades of orange and peach. We got to Black Rocks and got a much better view than from Annapolis Rocks. But we couldn't figure out why they're called Black Rocks- they're not black at all! I thought perhaps from the shadows being cast by rocks jutting out here and there, but who knows! After a yummy snack of Raspberry Newtons, we headed back to our campsite.

      We packed up our gear and prepared for the 2.5-mile hike back out to the car. Both Charles and I were glad that most of the hike would be flat or downhill. One part though was a pretty steep hill. I somehow had managed to pool some huge reserve of energy from somewhere and went up the hill pretty quickly. This will probably be the only time that I beat Charles up a hill while hiking. And the fact that he was carrying approximately half of my own body weight on his back probably had something to do with that! We were both very glad to get to the car and drive to the nearest Pizza Hut for some lunch/dinner.

      This trip ended up being more of introduction to backpacking for me, than a climbing trip, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Maybe now I'll be ready for our hike up Mount Washington next week (okay, maybe I just won't pass out as quickly now!!) More about that next week...

      On Wednesday, October 6, 1999, I summited my first mountain, Mount Washington, in New Hampshire. Though I wouldn't say that I conquered the mountain, but only tied with it, because I took the cog train down! Charles Danforth and I drove towards the mountain at about 7 in the morning, somewhat still sleepy. The drive was breathtaking. The leaves were all at about their peak color for the fall. The tops of the mountains were white with snow, and covered with gray clouds. Every so often you could see strips of crystal clear blue sky poking through.

      We got on the Tuckerman's Ravine Trail by 8. We spotted the first bit of snow at 8:41. Finally worked into a good pace after the first hour. It slowly got a bit colder, and we started to see more snow on the trees. The first snowballs of the year were thrown! Hiking up through the trees was really beautiful, though it was strange to see snow on all of the colored leaves!

      We reached Tuckerman's Ravine at about 9:40. Just below that there was considerably more snow, at least an inch on the ground. The ravine was even more beautiful than the rest of the mountain below. It was like standing in the bottom center of a huge mountain bowl. And behind us was a gorgeous view of other mountains- they looked completely black. They were all covered with huge gray clouds that seemed to create a roof on Mt. Washington. After a break and taking some photos, we continued on into the clouds.

      The next part of the climb was considerable colder and more windy. Some the rocks were a bit icy, so I began to move a little slower than before. We started following the tracks of two people and their dog. We could see only about 30 or so feet ahead of us, so I had no idea how much higher the summit was, though I now know we were about halfway up the mountain at this point. Ahead I could hear a waterfall and we started to see some small waterfalls near our feet.

      It was amazing to look below us-I didn't realize how high we had already climbed, though it was hard to tell since we were in a cloud! As we continued on, I saw a pretty big waterfall to the left, running past very green, moss-covered rock face. The rocks got more and more slippery, and the mountain steeper.

      We soon got to a point where there weren't any more trees, only some grass around the rocks. It was getting quite windy. The two people whose tracks that we had been following passed us on their way down. They had apparently gotten very close to the summit but decided to turn around because of the weather. We probably should have turned around at this point as well, but the weather did not yet seem so bad, and we were quite anxious to get to the summit.

      After this, it got a little rough. There no longer was even any grass, and the air was getting thin. Several very strong gusts of wind came through, nearly knocking me over. My toes and fingers were beginning to get cold. My feet had gotten wet when we were near the waterfalls. And I now was using my hands to help me stay upright in the wind, so my mittens were wet and getting torn. But it was really neat how we could only see to one or two cairn ahead of us. Had someone told me that the next cairn was the summit, I would have believed him or her, since I couldn't see past them!

      When we thought that we were on 2 tenths of a mile from the summit, we seriously considered turning around since I was getting fairly cold. But we decided instead to go on since we were so close, and since there are buildings to warm up in on the summit. We figured we could always try to get a ride down the auto road if necessary.

      We walked past the last cairn and to the last bit of the road. From here its just up a staircase to the summit. The winds then were probably about 60 mph-very cold! We walked up the last few rocks to the summit and what a rush that was! We estimate that when we were on the summit that the wind was probably nearing 80 mph. I was holding on to the summit sign to remain standing. It was snowing pretty hard, but it was actually ice pellets hitting us in our faces. Some fellows in sneakers snapped a photo for us and we quickly got down to go inside.

      We luckily got some hot cocoa just before the cafeteria closed. We found out that the auto road was now closed because the conditions were getting so bad. We thought we would be able to catch a ride with some of the weather monitoring folks, but they thought that the road was too icy to take extra passengers in the back of their pickup truck. Or only options were to climb down (which I wasn't thrilled with in the ever-worsening weather) or pay $28 each to take the train down. We opted for the train.

      We then found out that the fellows in sneakers had actually also hiked up (a much longer trail than we had taken). They also thought it would be prudent to take the train down rather than risk hiking. We were told we could take a shuttle from where the train let off to where our car was, 50 miles away on the other side of the mountain.

      The train ride was interesting. The train car looked like an upside-down canoe, and was steam powered. We had to stop several times to let other trains that were heading up the mountain go by. We got down in a little more than an hour, probably in much better condition than had we hiked down. But we soon found out that there were only two hikers shuttles each day, and we'd missed the last one. Luckily Charles' mom doesn't live too far, and was able to come pick us up and drive us around to the other side of the mountain to the car. (Again, a much warmer option!)

      Well, my first real mountaineering experience was definitely one to remember. Despite the cold and wind on the last leg of the hike, I really enjoyed it, and summiting was wonderful!