Quincy in September
Saturday, 28-Sep-13
I hadn’t been climbing with NUHOC in ages – I hadn’t been to a meeting in over a year, missed the annual presentation by a famous climber, and didn’t even help out at the “intro to climbing” weekends.
But, one Friday afternoon, I saw a post asking whether anyone with a car wanted to go to Quincy to do some climbing at the quarries. Originally I wasn’t thinking that I’d even be awake that early, but after canceling out of a party I had intended on going to, I found myself with an early evening and a free morning…
So I drove down to Ruggles at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday, packed gear into the trunk, and then headed down 93 toward Quincy.
Nothing else to be said really, except for the climbs we were able to set up:
- Harvard corner. I don’t know the real name of this, but it’s in the middle of the pond area… I think it’s called the BoilerPlate wall since it gets so hot in the sun.
- We set up three climbs here, though I don’t know their names.
- #1 and #2 were fun crack/face climbs, no real difficulty to them, but they had some quite interesting moves and kept us entertained through multiple runs of the second climb.
- #3 was on the boilerplate wall itself; a short vertical section followed by a large and easy slab. I stuck to the vertical section, primarily, and we took at least three runs each on this wall. It was hard face climbing, working through a series of tiny little crimps and ledges. Took a few falls on it, even.
- The Prow. This is the wall opposite the MILK / K / Ships prow wall. Dominated by a huge disconnected flake, it has amazing face moves and hellish laybacks
- The layback – 5.8 – Not 100% sure on the name, but that’s what this climb is – straight-up laybacking, using a really good crack and a horribly-slick face. It’s possible to climb is as a hand-crack, but quite tough for me since it’s just at that awkward width where my fingers can’t grip, but I can’t fit my whole hand in… Either way I went up twice, and had a blast doing so.
- The beginner’s slabs
- Alex, one of the guys who came along, wanted to get a lead in. He knew what he was doing, so I trusted him with my rack and we set up this easy, though tricky, intro climb. It was fun, and it was a nice nostalgia moment, since this climb was actually where I led my first climb on gear.