Up in Lake George, NY (the Adirondacks), there is a mega classic climb called Little Finger (5.5) on this piece of rock in the lake called Roger’s Rock, or more specifically, Roger’s Slide on Roger’s Rock. Legend has it that colonist Roger slid down Roger’s Slide to evade an enemy (perhaps the French). Climbing up the Slide, it is clear he would have died, but such is local legend.
Nevertheless, since Little Finger is such a classic, and only 3 pitches of 5.5 trad climbing on slab, I figured, if this Roger guy can slide down during battle, certainly I can climb up with my uncle (let’s call him Jim) and my dad (let’s call him John) following up (both with very little climbing experience). Needless to say, it did not go to plan. Here’s what happened:
Preparations
As neither Jim nor John have ever done multipitch climbing, we did a bit of review the day before. I built an anchor on a tree and we went through the motions of attaching a PAS, testing it, removing it, and rappelling. I cannot emphasize how glad I was that we had done this before getting on the wall; having an idea of what was going to happen helped us be quicker and safer on the wall.
Roger’s Slide is only accessible by water, and since there’s nowhere to park a boat, you have to paddle to it. Jim has his own kayak, but John and I needed to rent a canoe. Most people rent from a RV park close by, and it worked out well. However, they open at 9AM, which is a bit late for getting started, especially in the summer, so getting the canoe the night before may have been a better idea. We were running late, and we didn’t even get on the water until closer to 10:30AM/11AM, which should have been the first red flag…
The Climb
The Mountain Project is incredibly descriptive, and finding the climb and the spot for canoes/kayaks was quite easy. Now, to be clear, many comments make it very clear that climbing Little Finger in the summer is a bad idea, but I thought that they just meant it would be very uncomfortable, hence the need for an early start. True, an actually early start would have helped a bunch, but this wall is East facing (a very late start for fast people would have worked), so you really bake for the first part of the day.
Had the heat just been discomfort, I think we could have handled it. We were all prepared for a miserable day in the sun (which it was). Alas, the rock is dark, and so the heating by the sun was actually problematic. Indeed, I started getting literally burned by the rock, which definitely upped the technicality. P1 is very long, so you have to run it out anyway, but I also could not stop to place gear without burning myself some. Luckily, since it is so slabby, I was able to lean on the clothed parts of my body while placing gear, which greatly reduced the burning.
The climbing is, honestly, very easy (for someone who can slab and crack climb) overall. Unsurprisingly, there are some committing slab moves that were not my favorite (as the rubber melts off my shoe), but the rock is pretty bomber (at least for P1). I was impressed by how well Jim and John climbed up; I figured it would be quite hard for new climbers. It was definitely a challenge, and they had to take breaks at some points, but I think the angle of the slab is very forgiving.
Meanwhile, I was up at the anchor for P1, which is as much of a hanging belay that you can have on a slab, so my feet were in insane pain from both standing and getting burnt. There are 2 petons that you can back up (I used a .4 and a nut), though the petons are very far apart (vertically), so you really need 20ft of cord to make the bottom peton work (which I did with my 20ft cord). Pulling up both ropes for some reason was harder than usual, and I got a nasty burn/blister on my finger, which is still healing weeks later. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was a tough angle. Regardless, once they were finally up with me, we were quite cramped for space. As it was tight on space already, my rope management got out of hand, and it took us quite a while to get set up for P2.
This whole ordeal, from the ground to ready at the top of P1, took 2 hours (giant red flag).
I knew that P3 was just as long, and at that moment I knew we were not going to make it up. We were too slow. Plus, with the heat killing us, it was only a matter of time before we started making mistakes in our delirium (as our water bottles became depleted after P2). There were some rap rings to either side of us, but it would be a very sketchy shimmy to bail on those. So, we decided to do one more pitch, and hope that I found better rap rings along the way, since P2 is purely a gear anchor.
As the comments say, the rock gets very sketchy on P2. Truly, some flakes are ready to kill someone, but it is very obvious which flakes these are. This made good placements all the more important (e.g., being well protected, and not “protecting” in a flake that is ready to break), which naturally increased the burning. Because of the technicality of avoiding sketchy (yet juggy) flakes, I found this to be harder climbing than P1. Still, P2 is pretty short, so it was easy to communicate what to watch out for.
Just below where Mountain Project said the anchor should be, I found a set of rap rings to the right of the climb. The descent is supposed to be 3 raps down a line to the right of the route, so I knew that it had to be the right rappel. The problem was that it was also a bit (albeit less) sketchy slab traverse to get there. I knew I had to do it, so I placed a .3 and a nut, and began the traverse. It was a bit trusting, and I was scared, but in the end it really wasn’t that bad, as you get a nice ledge to grab (and later stand on) below the anchor.
The bolts and rings looked pretty new, and I was using a quad, but something happened that I had never seen before. While the anchor was weighted (Jim/John taking a rest), one of the bolt hangers started flexing like it was playdough. I’m no metallurgist, so maybe it’s really fine, but I would not have been surprised if it snapped after a bit more force. Needless to say, I’m never second-guessing my use of a quad ever again, as it could have been catastrophic failure had I used a different system.
Luckily, no gear failed, and Jim & John were making slow but steady progress upward. I will never understand how, but Jim simply trusted me and the slab, and just walked across it like it was nothing. By the start of P2, the sole to John’s climbing shoe had completely removed itself (I have also never seen this happen, but perhaps the heat?), and so he may as well have been climbing in just socks. When it came time for the trusting slab, he had no sole to trust on his right foot. After getting the beta, he slowly made his way over, and for the final move he grabbed Jim’s arm like he was in Mission Impossible, and made it to our small ledge.
The Rappel
Out of water and overheated, we dialed in for the rappel. Since it was so late, the sun started moving behind the rock, which was quite a blessing. I decided we would do a single line rappel on GRIGRIs since I didn’t want to worry about new climbers with ATCs. I still set them up in a line and went down first, so it would have been alright either way, but I still didn’t want to worry. We make it to the next rappel with no issue. This anchor, however, was quite rusty, and it had two nice looking carabiners at the top. I decided to use the nice carabiners (I know, maybe a little overly cautious, but in our state I think that was fair). Finally, we make it to the ground, but the rope won’t come down. I still do not know what happened, but all I know later is that it was extremely pig-tailed. It took 2 of us weighting one side on our GRIGRIs to finally pull whatever it was through, and then it still took 2 of us to pull the rest down. We almost lost a brand new rope, but somehow it came down.
We weren’t back to the boats until 5:45PM, but at least we were safe and no gear was lost. In the end, everyone was happy with what we accomplished, but we will never forget the horrors of summer climbing on East facing rock.
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