Saturday in Keene Valley

Waiting at exit 30 bye bye clouds

Being single and unemployed has its upside.  This Memorial Day weekend welcomed three beautiful days with temps in the low 80s and no rain despite the predictions of Bob Kovachek and others.  With no commitments to honor I headed up to Keene Valley on Saturday to do some climbing with Mike, one of his coworkers (Roger), and his son Ryan.  We met at exit 30 and since these guys hadn't climbed before I suggested the King Phillips Spring Wall that we could walk to from there.  We arrived to find the easier right hand wall to be occupied by a couple other parties so we set up on the left where I hadn't climbed before.  I was pleased to see a hundred foot cliff with a nice looking crack line with a steep, blank looking face to its right.  Also many other nice moderate lines that would be perfect as an intro to climbing for the father-son team. 

Still trying to locate Ryan on the Internet because he took tons of pics on his nice camera.  Anyways, me a Mike did our fair share of belaying and each got to TR the face to the right of the nice thin crack line Spring Time.  Forty feet of moderate difficulty leads to a shear face with razor blade crimpers that was probably approaching our limits in the 5.10 area.  We both did well and after some more belaying I cruised up the crack line which I decided is awesome and leadable for me soon.  I left impressed with the quality of this cliff.  In my opinion the view of the Northway doesn't really take that much away from the place. 
On our way out Roger somehow spotted two snakes coiling around each other 30 feet up a rock face.  We stopped to check them out and all of a sudden they were falling and landed right next to us.  None of knew for sure what species they were, or if they were poisonous.  I whipped out the camera and snapped a couple shots and later determined our reptilian buddy to be a Milk Snake.  Not a poisonous variety, but you wouldn't want to receive a bite from one.

Eastern Milk Snake

After a morning full of climbing Mike and crew were ready for lunch and headed to the Noonmark Diner.  I had packed mine and headed to Chapel Pond to hike around and explore a little before we resumed with the afternoon's climb.  I made my way over to the base of the CP slab and found a huge group TRing the variation to the RR.  I then doubled back to Tillman's and Shipton's Arete enjoying the gorgeous day.  As I went back to wait I ran into an slight older gentlemen who emerged from the gulley behind me.  He had been climbing up on the CP Gulley cliff and we began chatting.  I started to piece things together and realized I was talking to Don Mellor, a long time local climber and author of previous guidebooks and many first ascents in the ADK.  He offered to go climb something while I waited.....I wish now that I had accepted, but I didn't want to ditch my buds if they returned.  It would have been neat to watch him send Arachnid Traction in his 60s.

Upper Washbowl from Chapel Pond Beach

The boys returned and we decided to head across the pond to Shiptons Arete.  I could lead this and set up to TR that plus the two routes on the face next to the arete.  New to leading I found this climb to definitely be PG as in one spot I was almost 15 feet above my last piece.  Luckily, the climb goes at 5.4 and the climbing was fairly easy for me.  Have to admit I have never been so focused climbing a 5.4......I don't even think I've climbed a 5.4 before.  Anyways, it was a good time and everyone got to try the route.  We snapped some more pics and let Mike's dog Mammut go for a well deserved swim after a day of sitting around watching us climb.  Nice day in Keene.

Ryan follows Shiptons Voyage