Drove to the Gunks Friday afternoon again and set tents for TR Staff Training. They were lucky... with the fantastic weather forecast the campground was completely full by 8pm. They didn't arrive until three hours later.

On Saturday I went to the Uberfall and rope soloed three climbs using my Ushba Basic Ascender. It works amazingly well -- feeds with absolutely no friction. I climbed Retribution, Nosedive and Apoplexy. Worked Retribution using the crimp above the roof and not the arete. Then did all three climbs cleanly. All fun climbs! Ran into Alice and Ryan who were climbing for the day. Alice claims it is her first time back climbing in approximately forever, but she looked pretty strong to me. Tired from the hard burns on TR, I took a long walk all the way around the Trapps heading out on the carriage road and returning on the overcliff road. Then I stopped at Peter's Kill to hang out with the anchor builders and take pictures.

Saturday night Iori arrived with Keith and Amanda. On Sunday Iori and I started on Madame G's. This is Iori's first ever multipitch climb. Then we moved to Hyjeck's Horror. I grunted through the poorly protected start, then cruised up to the hard, blank face about 45' off the ground. I needed my green alien for the one gear placement in the entire face. Unfortunately, I had placed it down lower. I actually borrowed a green alien from a climber on the next climb over. First time I've ever done something like that. It was a total match fit for the one pocket, so I'm glad I got it. We ran into Melissa and Angela who were down for the day. They were looking for Jim, Gary and Wendy who we also managed to find, so we got everyone pointed in the right direction to rendezvous. After that we did the first two pitches of RMC (followed by Adam and his friends). Then we set a toprope anchor above Ape Call. We waited for Rock and Snow Rich to lead the climb, then we rapped off our anchor and climbed it on TR. The R protection rating had me scared. Though I feel like the R section is pretty mellow 5.8 climbing, so I'd probably lead it in the future. After Iori and I both got to the anchor, I led the last pitch of RMC and we walked down to our packs. After that we took off to eat dinner with Alice who lives south of the Gunks on the way to NYC. We had a nice time, and got back to the campground far too late. An excellent day!

Monday we slept in a bit, then packed up camp and went back to the cliff. We climbed Limelight, then walked down to High Exposure, where it turns out we were right behind Keith and Amanda. We all met at the top of the climb and did a double rope rappel to the ground. I think my 60m rope is really a 58m rope because we struggled to reach the ground. I've done that rappel easily with two 60m ropes before. We met up with Emily and her friends who were bouldering on Andrew. After that Iori and I went to the Uberfall where I led Bunny to set a TR on Retribution. I wanted to try the climb with a full rack and my camera (over 15lbs of gear) to see how it felt. It felt hard :-) Too hard with all that weight. So I left the rack at the base of the climb, went up cleanly and broke down the anchor. After that we drove back to Ithaca and a nice shower.