Off-route climbing

Yesterday MIke and I went climbing in the 'Gunks. We jumped on 'High Exposure' (5.6 and 3 stars). How hard can 5.6 be? After I start off on pitch 2, traversing along a ledge, I reach the edge of the arete and look around the corner. Small feet and hands on a near-vertical face. Deep breath and go. I get in gear as soon as I can and traverse to some chalked holds that head upwards back towards the arete. Following them becomes difficult as the rope drag increases as I have put 2 less-than-90 degree turns in the rope. The moves on the face kept getting harder, so I tried traversing back around the arete to the side I started on. Easy ground. Full body climbing got my up the last few 5.easy moves to the huge ledge from where I would belay Mike.

I had to pull up the slack with all my might. The guidebook said something about rope drag on pitch 2, but no 5.6 leader could handle that. Was I off-route? I could've swore the guidebook said to traverse around the arete, and MIke didn't think I was off-route.

The third pitch I nailed properly, and it was the kind of climbing I wished would never end. We rappell down and go on our way, me scratching my head about the rope drag. (I discovered this morning that I had indeed gone way off-route. The climb stays on the same side of the arete until pitch 3. That explains a lot.)

So then we decide to tackle 'Easy Overhang' (5.2 and 3 stars as well). Pfft, 5.2. I easily send the first pitch and offer to let Mike lead the 5.2 second pitch, which the guide book says starts in a left-facing corner to the right of where pitch one ends. Mike looks up, sees the thin crack too small for any of our protection and says, "No." Ok, so I rack up and run up the corner. (The gear ended up being pretty good.)

The moves kept getting progressively harder. I pulled through an overhang and thought, "That must've been the eponymous 5.2 crux overhang. A bit stiff for 5.2, but I have trouble differentiating these low grades." Continuing up 20 feet I come upon another overhang. "What the... ?!" So I pull through the hardest 5.2 overhang I have ever encountered; practically the hardest overhang I have ever lead through, continue to the top and build an anchor.

As Mike approaches the second overhang I hear him saying "There is no way this is 5.2, maybe 5.6." We laugh about it when he gets to the top because we know we were off-route. Upon rappell to the belay ledge we see what must clearly be pitch 2: a veritable staircase of a left-facing corner about 20 further to the right. We clearly didn't walk far right enough. On the drive home I flipped through the guidebook to discover that I had lead 'Easy Baby' (5.6, 1st pitch of Easy O then 2nd pitch of Baby). Well, I hadn't lead the 2nd pitch of Baby yet (did the 1st with Scott), so now I have lead the whole thing.

Someday I will lead 'High Exposure' and 'Easy Overhang' properly. Someday...