“I can go anywhere within 8 hours. Seneca is 8 hours away”
That’s more or less how the conversation started, and a week and a half later, on 17 June, Dave was headed South towards Seneca, and I was headed West to meet him. We found each other at the most likely place: the climbing store. The rest of the evening was fairly predictable: campfire, beer, and catching up; all of which resulted in going to bed much later than I would have guessed given our planned 7am departure.
I woke at 2am to the crash of thunder and the sound of rain pelting the tent…
After realizing my tent was set up below a tree, I stayed awake for a while, counting the interval between lightning flashes and the associated boom of thunder. It never got too close and eventually I drifted back to sleep, while wondering what we would do on Saturday instead of climbing.
Things looked a little better in the morning and the formation was out in the sunshine… always a good sign.
We shouldered our packs and decided to take our gear for a hike, first to the North summit before returning to the bottom to do some actual rock climbing (figuring this would give the rock time to dry out). No dice.. the trail to the North summit is currently closed! (Scheduled to re-open in August 2011).
Now without options, we figured it was worth taking a look at the rock. After the scramble-ish hike to the East face of the South Summit, we were greeted with a shocking sight: dry rock, and no line at the base of Skyline Traverse. We racked up and started climbing.
Skyline is a classic route, and I highly recommend it to anyone heading to Seneca. We climbed the first two pitches, enjoying the fun and sometimes exposed climbing.
At the belay, I handed Dave the rest of the rack, put him on belay and watched as he scampered up his first ever trad lead. Go Dave!
After reaching Lower Broadway Ledge, we walked over to the base of “Up and Coming” and started climbing. The climbing was fairly easy, but by virture of my not tending far enough right on lead we managed to finish on the last part of A Christian Delight.
Unfortunately one side effect of this was we ended up on the wrong side of a 5 person party climbing the Old Ladies route to the summit ledge. So, we relaxed a bit and meandered our way up the final two pitches behind the helmetless(!!) folks. Once on the summit ledge, we did a little bit of scrambling:
… and Dave stood on the summit for the first time.
Apparently always one step ahead of us, the party of 5 beat us to the aptly named “Traffic Jam” descent notch and we chatted with two climbers from PA (I believe they are the owners of Milton Rock Gym). At this point the evening became routine for Seneca.. rappel off the formation, 220′ to the ground, hike down the “thighmaster”, drop your pack off at camp, and go each pizza on the upper porch of the only restaurant in town!
Saturday night featured another rain storm, although more intense and longer lasting than the one experienced the previous night. I was hopeful we might get lucky again and find dry rock on Sunday.
‘Twas not to be.
We hiked up the “thighmaster”, hoping to get three pitches of climbing in before Dave had to start the long trek home. Originally planning on climbing the direct finish to Conn’s West, we revised our ambition to an easier climb as we encountered wet rock on the hike up. Nearing the base of the cliff, it started sprinkling, then raining. Since discretion is the better part of valor, we turned tail and hiked back to the car. Bummer.
Despite only getting one day of climbing in, we had great success: 7 pitches climbed, a first trad lead, and we got to stand on the summit!
Dave’s pictures from the weekend (including some pictures of me)
Other pictures of mine.
Edit (06 August): Dave’s trip report is online.
