Saturday, November 17, 2007

Uniform Queen

After 5 days of sitting still at my First Aid refresher it was time to push my pulse above 60 again. Thankfully I got a hold of Marc Hammer, who was keen to join me for an adventure up on the Stanley Headwall. During soloing Nemesis last Sunday, I saw a lot of potential for some new lines, and more importantly, it appeared that the very rare Uniform Queen was formed. As we pulled into the parking lot in the morning, Raphael and Eamonn beat us by minutes with the same goal in mind. Although a bit disappointed, we decided to walk up anyways, and maybe try one of the other potential new routes close by. After a bit of a confusion at the base, the two Canadiens could not resist trying this new line between Suffer Machine and Uniform Queen, therefore in a sudden the Queen was ours. Since Hammer has not had a chance to touch any ice yet this season, he offered me to lead all the pitches, which was a nice tread for me. Since I was only out once before and not quite broken in yet,I had quite a challenge on the first 3 pitches. They were all quite serious and runout, specially the 2nd pitch, with only one piece of protection in 40m. The 4th pitch was an almost vertical candle with good ice and awesome positions. Overall, a challenging climb in a wild place, which had to be celebrated with way too many beers in the Drake.

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