Back at the Gunks

The weather was absolutely beautiful this past weekend for another trip down to the Gunks. I'm always psyched to meet up with my friend Jamie Hamilton and check out all that place has to offer. Jamie is absolutely crushing these days and is making quick repeats of hard 13's and hiking 12's like it's no big deal. The video below shows him making an Alzheimer's onsight of Pleasure Dome 12b/c at Lost city. Jamie's heading out to the desert southwest in a week or so and I'm he'll be tearing it up at the creek all winter and coming back mutated in the spring.

On Sat morning we went out to Sleepy Hollow and I was psyched to lead Bone Hard .12b pg-13/R. This is an amazing route with really cool movement and some dicey gear. The crux is placing a questionable offset nut, which zippered as I lowered off, and then punching it through a short boulder problem past a strenuous pin clip. Apparently this has been led often with a long sling pre-hung from the pin but not often ground up. The video shows some footage of the crux. It's a bit shaky but I figured I'd put it in since Jamie went through the effort of climbing a tree to take it.

After that we sessioned an amazing, bouldery 13a called Renaissance that Jamie had worked out direct start to. We only toproped it but perhaps with some more work I would be psyched to try and lead it.

This route is just one of so many lines at the Gunks that combine hard climbing with bad or really hard to place gear. Just having seen the new film Progression and watching the American crew destroy that place, it got me thinking about how many routes lie in the Gunks with few, if any, lead repeats. It would be rad to see a crew of the caliber that went to the Gritstone come to the Gunks and try and repeat some of these hard, scary lines!

This weekend I teach my training workshop at the Boston Rock Gym which I'm really psyched for and then the following Friday we're off to the Red River Gorge for Thanksgiving!