the beginning of bottom crux

   I don't get to climb full time anymore.  Earlier in life when I had what felt like all the time in the world, there were projects galore here in New England to keep me busy, I spent ridiculous amounts of time working and sending the hard classic climbs throughout the northeast....eventually I had to start searching out first ascent possibilities to sink my teeth into.  The mountains and hills within a day trip distance of my home in Northern Vermont have continued to generously offer up great new unclimbed lines at a quite perfectly paced rate... a rate that fits well with the time constraints of my life and a rate that fits well with the historical social fabric of New England life where things are a bit more reserved and down to earth...people always worked hard through all seasons to sustain themselves...the climate and landscape requiring nothing less.

shark tooth crimp

 If I lived in another area of the country, like the southeast or the mountains and deserts of the west, where rock and new projects seem endless, I might go a bit crazy not being able to climb full time....Thus I want to express my appreciation for the way rock climbing projects seem to present themselves to me slowly and sustainably to keep me from getting too antsy at the thought of having too many to do at once.

getting to the bottom of the crack

These photos are of a new route I climbed a few weeks ago in one of my favorite places on earth, the Adirondack State Park of NY.  This particular cliff known as the Mud Pond Cliff has been climbed on for years and there were two undone open crack projects that a local hardman Karl Swisher had put anchors on and tried and eventually left as open projects....I'd been meaning to check these two lines out for a couple years but was contentedly busy with other projects in the area...once I had a little less on my plate I walked in and was stunned by the beauty and angle of this one section of wall.  Of all the cliffs (literally thousands) spread out through the Dack's I have yet to see another with a perfect clean 20 degree overhanging angle like this...Right away I noticed another intermittent crack line between the open projects that has become "Moonshine and Chronic" 5.13+ beautiful colors and interesting angling diagonal ripples covering the wall.
    It has four bolts and four or five gear placements with a spicy 15 foot runout over a bomber cam to top out the wall.
       The hardest boulder problem is right off the ground on thin crimps and powerful foot movements to gain the bottom of the seam/crack (picutres above) Initially I thought the thing would be solid 5.14 for sure as I couldn't do the bottom crux...eventually I figured out a different hand sequence that was much more reasonable yet still the hardest series of moves on the route...after that you get some gear clip a bolt and do a rad powerful deadpoint from this position in the picture below.

Middle Crux

This climb again kept with the theme of keeping me busy for longer than I would have expected,  the combination of weather hindrances, (mostly that the wall gets sun for the first half of the day and I couldn't hang onto the crimps on the bottom crux if it was over 55 degree), beta trickery (took me many days to figure out how to actually climb the bottom crux) and a good 'ol dose of fear (letting the mental pump creep up on me in the runouts between protection).  But in the end I finally got the beta fully sauced, we had an unusual cold snap in September and I shut off my mind enough to just punch it and flow up the thing..... And so, once again....I'd like to thank the generosity of the Adirondack Mountains!

Staring down the runout to the anchors over a bomber .75 Camalot.

     Big thanks to photographer Ross Henry for taking these great shots!
And big thanks to Mammut for the Revelation 9.2mm rope that kept me off the ground on some big scary falls, the  Togir Light Harness, super comfy while hangdogging, the Zephir chalk bag filled with Mammut Chalk and the Bionic Evo Quickdraws on the nuts n bolts n cams!!

Cheers,
Peter Kamitses
Burlington VT