The Third Seneca Summit -- A Leadership Skills Development and Networking Event for Women Trad Climbers, July 27-29, 2012

The third summit was the best one yet! A couple of factors contributed to the success of the event. Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine! Need I say more?! After last year's experience, the dry and warm weekend played a big part in making this event fun. We were also fortunate to have much more seasoned leaders. Of the 40 or so women who came, one third was comfortable leading multi-pitch and taking at least one less experienced woman under her wings.

The co-organizers of the third summit were the same as for the second one: Jeanette Helfrich, Colleen Louw, Diane Kearns, and myself. In past years most of the attendees were also members of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club Mountaineering Section (PATC-MS), or the Explorers Club of Pittsburgh (ECP). This year, a number of women were not affiliated with either club, and the group came from a much wider geographical area, including Washington D.C., MD, PA, VA, WV, OH, NH, and KY. Given the feedback of the attendees of the 2nd Summit, this year's event was aimed to be held in August. Given the many conflicts that occur on any given summer weekend, the organizers finally settled on the last weekend in July. Too bad that Colleen could not make it in the end due to a conflict with professional commitment. We also retained the $25 registration fee, to cover expenses for the group campsite, breakfasts, and an invited presenter. Again, attendees of the 2nd summit had felt this contribution was acceptable. In addition, the organizers once again secured monetary and in-kind support from the ECP and PATC-MS, The Gendarme, which is Diane Kearn's gear shop and climbing school business, and from RESLscience, my own publishing business.

The goal of Seneca Summit is to develop the leadership skills of women trad climbers, and to serve as a networking event for women who lead, or want to begin to lead traditional rock climbs.

Saturday morning started at 8 am with group breakfast and introductions. Each attendee also briefly spoke about her climbing ability, and her goals for the weekend. Diane then helped sort people into groups.

The most experienced women formed into trad-climbing teams and headed out to climb multi pitch.

Next was a group of experienced seconds who wanted to do their first trad lead. I took them on the original first pitch of Ecstasy Junior. All four women accomplished leading this climb on trad! We also worked on other lead climbing skills such as gear placement, anchor building, and rapelling.

Another group of climbers headed over to the South End to toprope, mock lead, and possibly lead. Jeanette was helped by Ana Gelabert in setting up topropes on Totem, Blood on the Tracks, Candy Corner, and Ye Gods. This group also practiced gear placement, anchor building, and belaying the leader.

The fourth group was led by Diane and went over to the East Face of the North Peak to practice setting up topropes. Climbers in this group also toproped Isadora's Run, and Streptococcus.

Climbers were supposed to return by 5:30 pm for yoga with guest presenter Erin Larsen. But owing to the wonderful weather conditions, teams were slow to trickle back to The Gendarme. Erin showed great flexibility :) in keeping the class going first on the lawn behind The Gendarme, and then inside The Gendarme's new indoor teaching facility.

Around 7:30 pm, potluck dishes started appearing. And what a feast it was! Wonderful salads of leaves and grains, tortellini, fried sausages, cheeses galore, rosemary bread, green beans, cherries, pineapples, cake and more. Some passers-by even wanted to pay if we let them partake or let them take away some of our glorious food!

Once it turned dark, the slide shows began. Jeanette kicked us off with a few photos about the history of women climbing at Seneca. She mentioned that Jan Conn (of the Conn's routes at Seneca) is expected to visit later this year. She also showed pictures of Gina Hoag and Maura Kistler leading at Seneca. After that, she shared a few photos of her climbing trip to Utah. Judith Scanlon and I were up next. We showed slides from out trip to the Tetons last September. Our goal was to be inspirational, showing that there is a lot you can do even if you do not have much mountaineering experience, if you set yourselves good goals and train for them. Finally, Diane shared from her treasure vault of climbing and skiing pictures from all over the world.

I left the party at about 11:30 pm. There was still a small group eagerly talking and laughing late into the night under the moon and stars.

Sunday morning began early, at 7 am, with a yoga and stretching session led by Erin. Climbers trickled back to the Gendarme porch around 8 am for breakfast. Next up, I was to give a physics presentation. Given that the weather was so very good, I suggested that multi-pitch teams, and especially, climbers who would have to depart Seneca Rocks early, should go climbing!

At around 8:30 am, I talked about the physics of climbing movement. Diane had asked me to keep the equations to a minimum this year. So I focused on free-body diagrams and a discussion of the forces acting on a climber.

By 9:30 am, the remaining attendees formed into climbing teams. Several of the experienced lead climbers were willing to take 2, even 3, other women on multi-pitch adventures. I saw some of the other teams throughout my day -- I seconded Lindsay Hastings on her first mutli-pitch lead of Old Ladies' Route -- and they were all smiles!

I was very sad to leave Seneca Rocks at 6 pm, while there was still daylight left to climb.

I hope everyone made it back down and home safely. See you again next year!

Reflections, thoughts, and food for thought:

The spreadsheet continues to be very helpful. But this year, worried about overflowing the group campsite, which allows 40 people and 10 cars, only, we closed registration a few days before the event started. In hindsight I think that was not a good idea given that people (notoriously) tend to make their decisions at the very last minute. Maybe next year we could leave it open but tell anyone that if the group campsite fills they need to go to the walk in sites (and pay for it?).

The bathroom issue in town came up again. Maybe we could budget for renting a portapotty for the next event?

We should check weather history at Seneca and depending on that, possibly stick with the end of July or early August weekend, which seemed to work well.

We seem to have settled into a good format for the event. Now we need to keep it going into 2013! As before, the Friends of Seneca account will hold over any surplus monies that this event may have generated. So we ma have some money in the pot to play with in 2013 -- to make the Summit even bigger and better.

Yeah to attracting more leaders this time! You made all the difference in the world. Rather than networking networking, we got some good climbing networking going!

Congratulations to the new leaders! For the first time, we actually accomplished one of my personal goals for the Seneca Summits, expressed in the above mission statement, which is, to get more women to take the sharp end on trad. I know my co-organizers share in my belief that self reliance and independence are critical in the mountains. We had several attendees do their first ever single- or multi-pitch trad lead at this year's event. That is so satisfactorily!

A "Thank You" to our Sponsors:

The Gendarme/Seneca Rocks Climbing School
Homepage: http://www.seneca-rocks.com/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Gendarme/25831503899

Potomac Appalachian Trail Club Mountaineering Section
Homepage: http://www.potomacmountainclub.org/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/PotomacMountainClub

Explorers Club of Pittsburgh
Homepage: http://www.pittecp.org/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/groups/42705455822/

RESLscience
Homepage: http://reslscience.webs.com/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/ResLscience

History: 

Link to the first Seneca Summit: http://leadershiprocks.blogspot.com/2011/04/2nd-seneca-summit-leadership-skills.html
Link to the second Seneca Summit: http://leadershiprocks.blogspot.com/2011/04/2nd-seneca-summit-leadership-skills.html