Summary of 3 weekends of activities in Rumbling Bald. Over the past years, I had heard tales of big cave and crack hidden around the Rumbling Bald area. After many walks, hikes up and down and across hollers, I was finally lucky enough to turn a corner and stumble upon the entrance to the “mines of mora”.
Weekend 1: This was the trip to just hike around the area and try to locate the cave. Alexis, Beamer, and her parents walked around the bouldering areas. I dove off trail and went upper and over multiple hollows. After circling many ridges and looping back and forth, i had decide to give up on it for the day. I then decide to turn this small ridge and dropped down to return to the parking lot. Luck, stuck me and it happen to glance up a bench in the hillside and spied a large rock with a splitting crack. Scrambling up the hillside, I arrived at bench and found this large massive cave and crack
Weekend 2. Recruited Josh and Alexis to hike back out to the Boulder. Josh enjoys a good suffer and oddity. Plus we both were still injury and nursing crimping injurys. Now I had the quick trail beta to make it from the normal parking lot to the cave. ~45-50 min hike. Upon arriving, the crack was wet. It sitting under a lot of vegetation and seeps. We spent a good bit of time cleaning and sussing out how it goes. By the end of the day we had worked out the lower section to rest jug. Snow and Sun would switch wildly between the 2.
Weekend 3. The entire week, I waited and watched the forecast, 7 days of dry weather was predicted and would be needed to fully dry out the cave. I was able to recruit Bk and Josh. After looking over some maps, and pieced together enough info to attempted new parking lot approach. Bk thought we would be still near the normaly bouldering areas and was destroyed as we passed bald parking. Sadly from the new parking lot, I overshot the appoarch and had to roll down from top of hill. No lie this was sucky. Bk face showed instance regret, while Lipko cackled. Eventually, setup shop and got a good session. Bk got stoke on crack again. Everyone was able to link and do all the individual moves, even the crux headwall turn. I was able to put it all together in a flurry of growls. The crux handcrack was just a bit to small for me to be really secure, but I had a moment of fear as my feet cut and just stuck in teh crack with 2 flaring jams. Somehow, I moved and made progress to the headwall and got to a good jug. After a slopey rollout right, I was able to stand up. I think this was done by Bruce B, way in the past. I never was able to get more information from Reardon on it, other then a blurb of info. For me personally, this was a Balrog Crack.
