Lost In the Sun

This past weekend I had the chance to climb my longest multi-pitch route yet: Lost In the Sun (5.5) in Crawford Notch, NH.  It's a 7 pitch route, but with running water over the bolted section of the 6th pitch, my lead partner decided to rap after completing 5 pitches.  This was just fine with me.  Prior to this, the longest route I had climbed was Birdland at Red Rocks and I only completed 4 pitches on that route due to timing.  I had gone into this climb with the goal of climbing my longest multi-pitch (check!), but it ended up being so much more than that. 

Our day started with a 6:15am alarm to give us enough time to pack up our campsite from the night prior and eat a good breakfast before driving to the highway pull off.  I'm not a morning person, so I gave myself a big gold star for this one.  We probably left camp at about 7:30am & arrived at the pull off around 7:45am. The approach was intense.  Not quite as bad as Seneca Rocks, but so far this approach takes second place.  I knew this when I agreed to climb the route, so mentally I was somewhat prepared, but physically I was not prepared.  Right off the bat, I had to cross the Saco River barefoot.  My partner was able to cross by stepping/jumping from boulder to boulder, but I just knew that I would fall in and hurt myself if I attempted this.  So, I clipped my shoes to my pack, rolled up my pant legs and crossed the river barefoot.  My feet were almost numb by the time I reached the other side, but I was proud of my accomplishment.  Only yards from the car... and I was giving myself bonus points.

The online descriptions that I read for this climb estimated the total approach time to be 30-45 minutes. Mine was over an hour due to the slow pace that I kept (my partner could have made in 30 minutes flat!).  We stopped to rest a couple of times at my request. The heat wasn't awful, but I was sweating up a storm and wanted to make sure that I was staying hydrated & giving myself time to catch my breath.  We finally made it to the base of the climb sometime around 9am.

The climbing was fun and easy (although run out).  My favorite feature on the climb was the famous Snake Flake.  I had intentions of swapping lead with my partner, but after seeing how run out and wet most of the pitches were, I ended up just following him.  All went well until he reached the top of the 4th pitch & I took him off of belay.  I was preparing myself to go on belay, when he yelled down to me that I needed to take cover fast and get down low.  I was confused by this command until I heard a loud rumbling noise & realized that a rock fall was happening.  I had no visual on this before getting down low, so my heart was pounding thinking that the worst was about to happen. I stayed down low until the rumbling stopped.  Apparently, a large boulder had come loose from the top of the mountain.  My partner witnessed a cloud of debris at the top of the mountain as the boulder made it's way down and alerted me then.  Luckily, the boulder rolled down the gully that we had hiked up on our approach & not the slabs that we were climbing on.  The gully was just yards away from the route that we were on.  Crazy stuff.  Luckily, neither one of us was on lead when this happened!

We rapped down 5 times with our double ropes, took our time descending the steep, rocky trail & called it a day.  Our big reward for the day?  Dinner & ice cream frappes from a diner on our ride back to Boston.  And we live to climb again.