High Slab Climbing

.
(Part 4, final part of the September 1981 ADK saga.)
.
The next day I climbed Mt. Colden’s north face as an easy free-solo rock climb (or “slide”/”slab” climb) in hiking boots with no rock gear. It is not too technical, but is very high, the entire face being somewhere under 1,000 feet high.
.
You start by going up a waterfall gully (geologically called a trapdike) on the left of the face, which is an easy rock climb if not too wet. At a certain point, you escape the gully to the right when you can climb out onto the slab. This slab is a long, huge, moderately steep and very exposed friction climb to the top, with no real foot- or hand-holds, and very little places to put climbing anchors even if you had them. You just rely on balance and friction techniques – and dry rock.
.
(This Colden’s north face is also one of the classic Adirondack ice and snow climbs in winter, if the snow on the slab is consolidated enough. One climbs up the now-frozen waterfall/trapdike and then out onto the moderate snow climb of the slab. I have never got the chance to do this as an ice climb, as it was never in good condition when I was ready for it, but it is still at the top of my list.)
.
The rock slab was not too bad for me. The exposure was not freaking me out as I moved up, as I had been climbing a lot of rock that year. I was hundreds of feet up, at the top of the slab section and very close to the summit, when I came to the little 12-foot wall at the top of the slab that blocked the way to the wooded summit.
.
But there was a thin layer of morning ice glaze on this wall, right where I did not need it, and I was a bit concerned about what to do. Down-climbing was out of the question, and there did not appear to be any escape off the slab to the right or left. I could not even rest comfortably on the slanting slab, and my legs were starting to cramp up badly. I consulted the climbing guidebook and realized that I had no choice but to go up the icy wall.
.
It was a bit dicey. If you fall off this short wall, you land on the upper reaches of the steeply-sloping slab with nothing to grab, so you are looking at a long, sliding, bouncing and accelerating skid of hundreds and hundreds of feet down into the trees below. Not pretty. My concern was getting close to real fear as my leg muscles started to cramp into knots.
.
I actually remember very little about the specific climbing moves that got me up that last short iced wall. All I remember about that spot was the battle to control my fear and to think, to look carefully at the ground I must climb, and to act decisively. But I somehow did gain the summit of Colden, which is somewhat disappointing as a summit because it has trees that obscure any 360-degree view.
.
I descended the west ridge, picked up my gear and very humbly limped down the valley trails back to the roadhead.
.
-Zenwind.

Striving On

.
Trying to become a Buddha is easy,
But ending delusions is hard.
So many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.
.
~Shih-wu~ (14th cen. Chinese Ch'an/Zen mountain hermit)

Impermanent as a Bubble

.
This body's existence is like a bubble's.
May as well accept what happens.
Events and hopes seldom agree.
But he who can step back doesn't worry.
We blossom and fade like flowers;
Gather and part like clouds.
Worldly thoughts I forgot long ago,
Relaxing all day on a peak.
.
~Shih-wu~ (14th cen. Chinese Ch'an/Zen mountain hermit)

On the Mountains of Truth

.
“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”
.
-- Nietzsche.

Cold Mountain Poem #12

.
In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I'm back at Cold Mountain:
I'll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
.
~Han Shan (8th century Chinese Ch'an/Zen/Taoist mountain lunatic/poet)

The Men That Don’t Fit In

.
“There’s a race of men who don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
.
“They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsies' blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.”
...
.
~Robert Service.

Wanderer's Night Song

.
“Over all the summits
it is calm.
In all the treetops
you can feel
hardly a breeze -
The birds remain silent in the woods.
Just wait, soon
You will rest as well."
.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Symphony of Triumph

.
“It was a symphony of triumph.
The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.”
.
~Ayn Rand~ ("Atlas Shrugged")

Allegheny Mountain Poem #1

.
“On high hilltop.
Storm roaring through the trees.
Snuggled next to a big boulder,
I am warm and dry.
Ha! Ha!”
.
~Ross Barlow. (late-1970s)

Invictus

.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
.
~ by William Ernest Henley (1875).

Zenwind high at Seneca Rocks