Crane Mountain Shenanigans

Solid Night on the mountain. Kristen and I left from Saratoga to meet up with some friends coming down from Clarkson for a night on Crane. We didn't know where they were exactly or if they were even going to be there when we got there. When we got to the pond, we walked around looking for them on different sites. From across the pond I heard someone talking. Dave is really loud, and it sounded like him. My ears perked, and I yelled "Dave!?" to hear a response of "YEAH!?" with nothing else after that. We walked in that direction and actually met up with some other people looking for the same group. Pretty neat/lucky way to find the group.

Crane Mtn Pond


Heading down to the Caves


What a hot mess.


Cinching down the Purchase for the Highline


On the Highline


Off the Highline


And Back on.


Mouth of the Cave


Going In...


And some shots from inside the cave!

Justin crawling in


First downclimb (with a rope assist)




Second Downclimb


And we found this guy when we couldn't go any further without going underwater.



Hiking Back up to the Campsite




Turns out I can't hold my liquor too well on an empty stomach. 30 mins and .5L later, I couldn't walk anymore. That stuff was dangerous. I ended up crashing about an hour and a half after I started. Whoops. My sleep was interrupted by fireworks and a guitar. Mind you, no one on our site brought a guitar. We must have made some friends.

I woke up in the middle of the night, everyone was asleep by then, and I decided to go take some pictures. I walked around the pond, still buzzin a bit, woke some people up and found a good spot. I wanted to get a star trail shot, but turns out my duct tape/sticks as a shutter release method didn't work. How about a 30 second exposure at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO? Just checked the Metadata, turns out this was at 4:30am.

Stars over Crane (Click for full Res.)


The moon headed down.


Camp site littered with empty handles, hammocks, sleeping bags, and vomit.


I wanted to catch the sunrise. I was a bit late, but there were still some awesome views. I got up around 7:15 and headed to the top, passing two from our group on their way down. One was barefoot, the other was covered in vomit (not his own). Turns out they thought it was a good idea to hike to the top at night, and they passed out up there. It got light out and windy, so they headed down.

Sunrise from the Shadows. 


Out in the Distance


And over the top. Fog sitting in the Hudson River Valley over Warrensburg


We waited in the parking lot for the Hangover crew (one in flip flops). We found some big spiders, and tried getting them to fight. It was... Interesting.


Winning!


That's all until next weekend. Hopefully I'll stay awake longer for Ullrfest! I'll be extremely disappointed if I don't.

I just opened my contact case. I didn't want to put them in this morning because I knew my hands would be dirty, but damn...

Wow Fuj, extremely nice!!! You sure are getting out and enjoying life. Muy bueno. Bravo!

A great tale, as usual. No bears this time, but plenty of candor and human drama to make up for it.

Hiking, slack lining, caving, camping, and spider fights. This tale has it all.

Granted I'm an old fart, but I can't fathom .5L in 30 mins earning the classification = "can't hold liquor."

Sweet pics. Post em bigger next time.

Harvey44 wrote

Granted I'm an old fart, but I can't fathom .5L in 30 mins earning the classification = "can't hold liquor."

Sweet pics. Post em bigger next time.

Granted I kept it down, I was asleep after an hour.

I thought you wanted us to keep the pictures at 500x500? The forum kind of kills the quality anyways. Most of the picture titles are clickable links if you want full res. It will open in Flickr, click "Actions" on the top left of the image, then "View all sizes" to see them super big.

Or just look at my photostream here

I agree with Harv:  another entertaining tale.  And really excellent pics Fuj, I especially like the sunrise pics.

I didn't know Crane had caves.  Pretty cool.  Crane is an amazing mountain:  beautiful pond, great summit, caves, cliffs.  There's quite a bit of climbing on many of the cliffs too.  I haven't climbed there but it looks really interesting.

One thing about the caves:  you probably know about bat populations suffering dramatic declines from white nose syndrome.  For quite a while the Chimney Mountain caves were off limits.  I beleive that restriction is now lifted (and was lifted as of the time you visited a couple weeks back), but it's something to be aware of.  Check the DEC's website or here for info on possible closures.

I heard about the closures, but wasn't until this weekend.

When we got up to the pond, all the other guys were just coming back from climbing. I had all my gear and was pretty upset I didn't get to go. I haven't been in almost exactly a year now. A kid in my photography class said he climbs every Monday/Weds at RockSport before class. I guess this means I will be climbing 2x a week again! I'm looking forward to it. And it's only $2/Day for an ACC Student.

The caves at Crane are much tighter and more technical than the ones at Chimney. Have you ever done the full loop at crane? The trail head off of Crane Mountain Road has the Rock bridge just before it starts to get steep. Go under the rock bridge, follow the water... into the ground. There were lots of logs and other debris to be cleared out of the way to squeeze in. And even then, you are on your hands and knees for the first 20 feet or so. There are no real large rooms like at Chimney. It's all one crevice that you have to do a lot of squeezing through. There are a few spots that looked like they went out to the surface. I would like to go back sometime and check them out. A few places had 20+ ft ceilings, but it looked like some of the debris on the ground had fallen within the year. Definitely not something you wanna be climbing on.

Where we finally hit the end must've been a sump. I guess that means we were at the same elevation as the lowest swap? I bet if we went underwater for a ways we could have come out in it. That's probably how that sally got into the bottom.

fujative wrote

Go under the rock bridge, follow the water... into the ground. There were lots of logs and other debris to be cleared out of the way to squeeze in. And even then, you are on your hands and knees for the first 20 feet or so. There are no real large rooms like at Chimney. It's all one crevice that you have to do a lot of squeezing through.

Yowza.

fujative wrote

Where we finally hit the end must've been a sump. I guess that means we were at the same elevation as the lowest swap? I bet if we went underwater for a ways we could have come out in it. That's probably how that sally got into the bottom.

Translation?

fujative wrote

I thought you wanted us to keep the pictures at 500x500? The forum kind of kills the quality anyways.

I'm learning. 

If anyone is every curious about the latest conventional wisdom I keep it in the NYSkiBlog Guide.

The biggest size the forum can handle without creating a scroll bar is 735px wide.  Actually it can handle 745 but then if someone "quotes" the pic then 745 is too wide.  (With major help from someone who know WTF they are doing) I created a mod to the CSS which takes the 750px size and limits it to 735x automatically.  While I don't think images look the same as they do in BLOGGER (the blog, Jeff's blog etc) I've learned how to compensate. If I'm going to post pictures in the forum, I add about 15% to the saturation and contrast.

FYI I think your pics always look very good.

I have hiked there many times but didn't know about the caves.  I'm curious how you found out about those.  Your Chimney Mtn cave photos were also really nice.  I've been in those caves, but not nearly as far in as you explored, didn't realize there were rooms that big!  Being underground freaks me out more now than it did say 20 years ago.

Too bad you missed climbing at Crane.  I've only gotten out once this summer myself (in the Gunks).  If you're interested in Crane, check out this guy's website.  Another recommendation comes to mind:  do Roger's Rock on Lake George.  Outstanding climb (Little Finger, 5.5) with a unique approach (canoe).

fujative wrote

Where we finally hit the end must've been a sump. I guess that means we were at the same elevation as the lowest swap? I bet if we went underwater for a ways we could have come out in it. That's probably how that sally got into the bottom.

Translation?

Sump
I say it's probably the elevation of the lowest swamp because it's likely at the water table.

Sally
Then again, chances are pretty good that it just got swept down with the water.

Jeff - Walt, the kid who organized the whole shindig, is the one who knew about it. He said that he heard about it a few different times and finally decided to look for it. He knew where the rock bridge was, but he said he spend a solid hour looking for the actual entrance. It's a tight one, alright. And very wet.

fujative wrote

Sally

Hey, isn't that a newt?  Or is it a red eft?

Pardon my ignorance. Red Eft for sure. But I'll stick with Sally

Sally's fine.  I'm just relieved that Harv was the one to ask for the definitions.