good old rain

[Ulysse]

Last October I had a couple of days off so we decided to climb in
North Conway for 3 days, On our second day we decide to head towards
Cannon to check it out. (there was lots of speculation about chos rock and
decided to look at it first hand).
Since we had climbed all day,by the time we arrived in Franconia Notch
it was alredy dark so by getting up at 0430 would mean that we would have to do the approach to our climb in the dark. We wanted to start early since the forcast wasn't looking good for the later part of the afternoon.
So 04:30 am, time to get ready, our pack was all set to go and breakfast only took a couple of minutes allong with standard morning shuffle.
after a short period, we arive at the climbers parking lot a couple of miles away, the sky if full of fog so we have no more than 20' visibility.
After what seemed like a long hike and much altitude gain I started to wonder if were going in the right direction but since we have been walking
for some time now I don't want to take the chance to turn around just in
case we were going the right way, acording to the guidebook this
was the only trail.
We had made at least 1500' of altitude gain, It seemed wrong ( I mean were on the east coast ) at the same time we bust true the fog. Yo bro!
wait a minute, were on top of the f&^# cliff.
So back down to the car we went, it's full light out now and we see the
trail that we missed (that was not in our guide) We arrive to the
base of our route around 09:30-10:00.
The climbing was really fun, lots of small gear and solid in the 10+ range, nothing bigger than a .5 bd cam on all pitches other than pitch 7
(and big gear is not required if you climb the right side of the cave). By this time it had started to rain. I figured that we could just rap down but I
ripped the anchor in place just with by body weight ( I was happy to have
our own anchor) It made me cringe to think someone had used it since
it was new webbing and rap rings!!!
So now we were up 7 pitches up and would of have to have leave
gear to get back down to the last rap rings at pitch nbr 4 Sooo up I go
its now my lead, and guess what, it's a full on rain, My chalk bag turns to
paste, the rock is slick, and we still have 400' of climbing to go.
The climbing is slow, gear is hard to find and the climbing feels hard
with wet shoes. I take out the topo and the pitches are only listed to pitch
7 the rest of the description was ---- 5-6-5.7 to the top ---- by the time we made it to the last pitch it was dark, raining hard, and little visibility, My partner arrived and we gave each other a solid hi-5. Durring the
time I was belaying, I started to have doubts, will we be able to find the trail we were on this morning. Not wanting to dampen our spirits (since the rest of me was wet as it is), I just took the moment for what it was, 2000' above the highway on a mile long blob of rock.
Try to imagine the worst possible bush wack, so thick your walking
off the ground most of the time, you loose your footing and stop, pull some branches and there's a 30' drop in true the boulders .
We would find a line of clearcut and it would suddenly stop. Hope would rise and fall even faster, getting out that night wasn't looking good. the fear of walking
into the void in the dark was horrible. could this be the edge of the cliff, is
there a 1000' or 500' drop below. so uphill again! down a safer way

At 1:30 we got back to the car and was I ever glad to get changed and
into heated seats. Getting lost in the woods at the top of cannon in cold
wet conditons make one appreciate a warm bed at night...

[The Teth]

Truly epic!