Sunday, 13-Oct-2013

Sunday was a bit of a gross day…  Not fully rain, but neither Daniel nor myself wanted to aim for any large ascents, for fear of the sky opening up on top of us.

So instead, we grabbed our gear from the cars and walked up to the Ledges out behind the Loj, to set up at the old rappel point.  It hadn’t seen use in years, but we knew that a single 70m rope would get down to the bottom… so we set it up and started our exploration.

You see, the idea of cleaning up the ledges and turning them into a full climbing area has long been a goal of Daniel and myself.  Some other NUHOCers have talked about it, but no one ever really makes a move to do it… Today was going to be our recon day.  See if there was enough interesting rock to make a go of it.  See if the area was even worth the effort to clean up.

As we lowered ourselves off the cliff face, and down onto the side, we had our answer.

The rock was disgusting, covered in dirt and lichen and small growth.

But underneath that… just below the surface… the granite was solid.  Rough, but with clean cracks running through it.  Cracks just big enough to get fingers and hands into.  It’s a perfect cliff, just waiting for someone to clean it off and set up a few good routes.

So we kept exploring – checking out the boulder field below the cliff, and even trying out a few routes.  None of the climbing was too exciting or solid, though we did finish out a few smaller lines that we’ll probably clean up over the winter.  From there, we kept exploring… doing a bit of photography, and tried to find a solid trail that would take us back to the top of the ledges.

As we walked, we started working up names for the cliff faces, and even came up with a few route names as well… all names that will remain secret until we actually start setting the routes, however.