The Rose

Yesterday Alison and I, accompanied by Oscar, went climbing in Bolton Notch. We started on a sport route -- actually the site of our first date (which wasn't officially a "date"; rather, it was more of a "let's go climbing" get-together, but, of course it could be argued that it was a date since both of us later admitted to having some romantic interest... anyway, that is totally not the point of this blog entry!)

Anyway, we warmed up at the sport route, er, mentioned above, and then we continued along the base of the cliff. There were a couple of other climbing parties out there, and one of them was in the middle of climbing one of the routes we probably had our eye on. So we continued past and found ourselves looking up at a 100- plus foot high crack in the the rock known as The Rose.

An overhung 5.10 route, the rock is pretty much flat all around the crack, and you would have to lay back and cling to the crack for the entire 100 feet. I would have loved to have laid out my climbing rack and trad climbed it, but I'm not that confident yet, so we hiked around and set up a top-rope from the top. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so we will have to settle for the accompanying image of this nice red flower.

Neither of us scaled The Rose yesterday. I guess we haven't been climbing as much as we would have liked this summer -- and we certainly (until lately) haven't been outside as much as we would have liked. The Rose is totally possible, but it is three times as tall as any route at the gym and its difficulty is sustained the entire way. And, it is difficult to make a project of it because everytime you fall, the route is so overhung that you find yourself hanging by the rope 15 feet away from the rock. Once you fall, you have to get lowered to the ground to start all over again.

But I have a new mission for Autumn 2008: climb The Rose. I'm looking forward to a nice Indian summer and a pleasant fall. And I plan to return the the Notch as often as it takes to climb that thing to the top.