If I never climb again at Rumney then I'll only be a little disappointed, but I can't be bothered to deal with the shirtless crowds that set up camp under their favorite projects all day so they and their cohorts can work the moves. No, I'm not talking about Waimea Wall; I can't even climb that hard in my dreams. I'm talking about getting away from the boisterous shouts of encouragement, the cigarettes, the dogs, the whimpering, powerful grunts, and the occasional radio. I like people. I really do. But I'll head to Western Mass from now on for my sport fix when I have weekends from trad off. Shoot, I'll head there for the trad, too.
Farley is about an hour-and-a-half out on Route 2 from Boston. It's about the same distance as it's more famous, and admittedly more plentiful, rival in New Hampshire. The cliffs sit on power company property and the local climbing coalition is struggling to pay the mortgage on the new parking lot. No guidebook exists, and for good reason: it simply isn't developed enough in the non-climbing world for hordes of climbers to rush to. Much needs to be hashed out regarding access, and we certainly don't want to blow that up.
But it's there. And it's easy to get to, and it has good climbing without the rah-rah. Mostly, though, it has both good sport and trad. Today we'll likely clip bolts on the lower cliff and then move upstairs to plug gear when it gets crowded and hot. You'd never even know there was an upstairs. I get the sense that many people don't.
Weekend mornings such as this are unusual. There was one moment last year when, after camping for climbing's sake for about a dozen straight weekends, I awoke in a complete terror. It was 8:30am, and I'm never out of bed later than 7:30. In fact, I usually leave the house for work at 8:00. I was definitely late, and I fell out of bed while I cursed my alarm clock for not going off. Or maybe I slept through it. That was unlikely. I couldn't sleep through my neighbor's toilet flushing when they left the window open. But still, that thing was set to go off Monday through Friday at 7:09, just in time for the day's weather, and early enough for two slaps of the snooze button and the next weather report in case I was too sleepy to listen the first time.
I swore when I noticed I hadn't gotten my work clothes ready the night before, and that likely meant my lunch was unprepared, too. It was 8:35 now. Ten minutes to walk to the subway, 45 minutes to ride to Kenmore Square, and five minutes to my cubicle. No time for breakfast. That would have to come from the cafe downstairs. But what about lunch? I'm too poor to buy breakfast and lunch. Screw it. If I don't get there until 10:00 then that's when I'll get there.
My morning piss couldn't have been a more impatient event, but when I was done I ran to the kitchen and threw some sort of lunch together: apple (unwashed), grapes (unwashed), granola bar (three months old), chips (no chips? no chips. write chips on the grocery list), carrots (already washed unnecessarily from the sprayers in the store, making them slimy, yucky, and unlikely to be eaten), and an expired coupon to a local sub shop. I was sure they'd still accept it. I ran back to the living room and threw my brown paper bag into my brown canvas bag. I checked to make sure my book was there. It wasn't. Where's my book? Coffee Table? Nope. Comfy chair from Ikea? Nope. Night stand in bedroom? Nope. Book rack across from the can in the bathroom? Bingo. Time for clothes.
I stripped down and threw my boxers on first, then socks, a shirt and, just as I grabbed a pair of pants and had one leg halfway in with the other leg tripping over the waistline, I fell to the floor and realized something. It was Saturday, and I work Monday through Friday.
But today is different. We wanted to get there early in order to avoid the crowd at the main cliff. Once we got our warm-ups in, we'd head up and play above the soft and brown-needled floor. I had set my alarm clock this time. When I awoke I knew what the game-plan was: My partner drops her car off at my house and I drive west, away from the city, the heat, the sticky sidewalks, and the smell of garbage.
The problem with Farley is that everyone who climbs there knows the same thing, that getting there early is the thing to do. The lazy crowd doesn't exist here, and I think that's due to the lack of guidebook and general knowledge of the routes themselves. There hasn't been a guidebook at Rumney in years, either, but one does exist. Even so, there's so many people at each crag at Rumney that one is bound to get accidentally sandbagged only once if one has never been there, and it's easy to get 20 routes climbed in a day. Getting sandbagged five percent of the time at an over-bolted sport destination isn't such a bad deal. Getting sandbagged at Farley is almost a guarantee if you've never been there and there's no one to tell you what the grades are. Even the 12s look like eights from the bottom. But it's OK, because we know the routes and there aren't that many people there. People are nice at Farley. They don't hog the routes.
Mid-day heat is a problem here, though. The sun bears down on the main wall making it feel like an oven. We get our warm up in, our pumpy and harder-than-expected warm up, and head up to the shade. I've never led trad here. Most of the routes are well above my grade. But I'm pushing more this season than ever before and I want to test my luck. My partner points out a route that she's done already. I rack up and am ready to go.
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