What's Happening

I couldn't get a good read on what was going on with the ice up in the Notches so Elliot Gaddy and I decided to go check it out, and burn off the previous night's birthday party haze while we were at it. I hadn't expected much, but was surprised to see even less; there was almost no substantial ice at Frankenstein. There was snow on the ground, but nothing just south of the Frankenstein turn off. Should have gotten plenty today, though.

Instead we took a run up Shoestring Gully on Mt Webster and had fun swinging the tools into the sticky, fresh stuff. The right had finish, up a three foot wide runnel, was in great shape.

It seems to me that by next weekend there will be plenty to climb in the White Mountains, and judging by some shots of Lake Willoughby I saw today on NEIce it looks like it'll be good to go in no time.

November Rain

Early season drips on Cannon Cliff.

This is the time of year when climbers go from dismissing horrible weather by saying, "we've got the water, now all we need is the cold," to embracing it as we scramble to find a partner for a last second predawn start in the season's first sub-freezing temps. With all the holiday obligations we have this time of year, finding the time to get in some early season climbing can be really difficult, especially with the short warning typical of the changing seasons. The reward for the observant and flexible ice climber, though, can be some of the season's most interesting climbing, right when you're the least used to it.

Bayard on an unfinished early season stratch-fest on Cannon.

Cannon Cliff is where quite a few seasoned New England climbers' eyes turn this time of year; waiting for just that sort of weather pattern that disgusts most people, late fall rain. Not just any rain though, the kind that gets followed by a ferocious clearing wind and falling temps. The flash freeze. Cannon gets "locked up" in January's persistent cold, but in December it is still in transition, and long, hard-to-get-to drips can be the result, dangling up high over some obscure overlap above the Big Wall, off to the side of Omega or over the Old Man's dog.

Smaller, but subject to the same effects of bad early season weather is the cliff above Greely Ponds in NH's Mad River Notch; most well known for hosting The Drool of the Beast. It has been a productive, mostly single pitch, Cannon-esque, traditional mixed crag; complete with yellow drippy ice and requisite pin placements. One wall in particular, shown below, now has a couple of interesting routes, put up on the lead, still with a little more potential for bolt-free, back country, mixed routes.

Peter Doucette getting the ball rolling on Doghouse, M7. Visible on the left side of the roofs
is the prominent overhanging corner of Kevin Mahoney's Ironclad Reactor, missing it's icicle.

Kevin on the FA of Ironclad Reactor, M7+.

Peter up high on the Doghouse. We finished up the hanging
icicle above, a fixed pin now protects those final moves.

Both of these routes, and a third called the Drool of the Bitch, M6+R (Wilkinson/Russell/Mahoney), haven't seen a second ascent. Probably the same is true of a route or two on the east side of the ponds reportedly established by Joe Terrevechia.

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After the early season spasm of winter's first freezes, the most jaded of ice climbers quietly retire to indoor workouts and plans of trips to the south rock climbing. It is the interesting thin fresh ice that won't survive January's cold sublimation that parallels that rare individuals motivation. This recent spate of cold temps has me thinking we're almost to it's beginning.

Spring

I packed up the computer with my ice tools and just found it again, buried under a stack of bills. It's been a busy spring, though, full of wedding planning, rock climbing and a little work here and there. Here's the fun stuff.

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The first trip of the season was down to the east side of the Sea of Cortez, to Guaymas, Mexico for our friends James and Marcia's wedding. The 12 piece mariachi band was a hit with the gringos.

After the festivities Anne and I were able to get some climbing in, in Cochise Stronghold, outside of Tuscon, AZ. One of the most easily accessible cliffs is a beautiful formation called Sheep's Head. The classic 7 pitch, 5.9, Absinthe of Malice goes right up a prominent buttress visible from miles away (just left of the thin shade line that runs from bottom to summit on the tallest formation in the photo, right above the horses).



The second trip of the season was down to the Red River Gorge, which is the perfect segue from ice climbing to rock climbing: it's steep, but the holds are good. Check my fiance Anne Skidmore's Bivuac Blog out for some great shots from the trip. After ten days there, staying in a house with a posse of 10 mostly from the Conway area, we rolled to the New and had a blast on the more technical, and unforgiving routes on the rugged Nuttal sandstone with our own personal local tour guide, Pat Goodman. We all really enjoyed the warm community in Fayetteville, very reminiscent of home.

A return to the climbing in New Hampshire is always exciting after a great trip, and the motivation is usually up. Promptly after getting back my friend Eric Eisle got me out to a cliff west of his beloved Berlin, and not Mt Forist. It's called Square Mountain, one of three "Squares" in the White Mountains, and it's way back in the Kilkenny Range. He had the 1 1/2 hour approach sussed and we marched right out there, taking a compass bearing from a small clearing for the final approach.

We got out there and repeated a two pitch 5.10 which had a good, steep, wide crack on the first pitch and rappelled off. Taking a walk at the base we spied a line that looked an awful lot like Cathedral Ledge's Mordor Roof. An old 5.8 approach pitch, complete with 1/4" bolts, got us to a great belay under the 6 foot roof, where I tipped-toed out to a hand jam over the lip, almost. My second try got me over the roof and into a perfectly clean, unclimbed 70m crack system! I belayed at a good ledge and Eric led the final 60m of 5.9 crack climbing, though some great features, corners and overlaps, to the top. Check out his blog, The Last Print Journalist, for more on the route and, more importantly, in-depth discussions of the life and politics north of New Hampshire's notches.

Taken from Eric Eisle's blog, lastprintjournalist.com.

Eric at the first belay on The Pikey, Square Mountain, NH

The next project of the spring was out at Owl's Cliff, another confusing name shared by multiple NH crags. This one is above Sawyer Pond, off the Kanc. Ray Rice and I tromped out there to find Brady Libby's single pitch crack climb that was rumured to be stellar.

Ray Rice on a slightly wet Crack of the Future, Brady Libby's stellar 5.12 crack.

It took me three trips out the 4.7 miles of mountain biking and hiking to finally send this dead vertical finger crack and face climb. This pitch is one of the best in NH.

Most recently, I just got back from a week in the Gunks, staying with and being shown around by local guide and friend Ryan Stefiuk. Check out his website at bigfootmountainguides.com for Catskill ice climbing beta, how to make your own fruit boots and a variety of other stuff including a recent big day on Cannon Cliff. Most memorable was doing Fat City Direct, 5.10d, at the Near Trapps, it completely blew my mind. While climbing it I could have sworn, continously, for about twenty feet, that the next move would be 5.12. It never was though. What an amazing pitch on an incredible route, on of my all time favorites.

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I'm back home on the first rainy day in over a week getting caught up with details, which include getting a suit picked out for my August wedding. Here's to good weather.

Another Square

In my experience all the good granite in New Hampshire is close to the road, and I've spent quite a few hours testing that theory. Its not always the case, but most of the back woods cliffs just don't come together the way Cathedral or Cannon do. Their too blocky, too rotten, its always something.

My friend Eric Eisle told us to look across from Success where we were camping toward the Kilkenny range north and west of Berlin. There was a cliff over there I was familiar with from tight topo lines on the map. It looked like Cathedral just as he had claimed. And although it was hard to tell from about 15 miles away, it seemed clean..

I do enjoy hacking around the woods, especially up north were the spruce and fir conceal partridge and the moose droppings are deep, so when Eric said he was heading out there last week I took an extra day off from the two week climbing trip I had just taken and met him early. He had the approach sussed from an earlier recon trip, a huge advantage cause all I had to do was fall in line behind him for the hour and a half approach.

The cliff wasn't quite the dead vertical dream Eric had pitched it as, but I had been taking it all with a grain of salt and it really did look pretty good. He had a line in mind already, right up the profile you would see from Berlin, and he lead a good pitch up a wide crack to get us started. I could could hear a little disappointment in his voice when I yelled down to him about ancient looking rappel anchor on the second 70m pitch. We topped out and established the rappel line we would use again later that day.

Once on the ground we walked further west along the cliff to see what there was to see, and I quickly became convinced of the line to do. It had slabby, but featured first pitch, with an old 1/4" bolt visible from the ground, followed by a 6 foot roof that a hand crack made it just down to the lip of before blasting off, seemingly to the top of the cliff another 70m away.





Eric lead a slightly dirty, wandering and run-out Conway style 5.8 slab pitch up to a good ledge under the roof and got in a gear anchor. We reconvened below the roof I took a stab at a direct line and settled for a traverse left to the obvious crack system we had seen below that ran straight up to the trees. We fiddled around a bit figuring how to do the traverse, high or low, and I eventually crab crawled below the roof, back cleaning cams to straighted out the rope which had a few bends to make make still. Feeling like was at Cathedral Ledge, poking gear into the Mordor Roof, I eventually got something to stick and almost pulled the 5.11 hump up and over the lip until tight hand jam popped. Next go I settled into a better jam and was able to pull some surprisingly gymnastic trad climbing to get settled into a perfect, but sharp, clean hand crack. Another 30 feet of perfect hand jams got me settled into a belay stance with a good another gear anchor.

From here Eric lead a 70m 5.9-ish crack pitch that involved all sorts of minor obstacles from face moves between systems, a corner, overlaps and the occasional pocket when the crack would peter out for a bit.

We rapped down the rappel line we had established earlier, getting a core shot right in the middle of my brand new rope as it scraped over the edge of a ledge on the rappels.

Eric did a great job hitting the end of the flagging tape which marked the trail we had taken in, across half a mile against the grain of brooks and terrain. From there it was a almost a simple slog, except for the beaver flooded section of old woods road which wanted a pair of rubber boots, great grass hummock hopping skills of a lack of concern. Back at the car, still a light to spare I marveled at how well the day had gone. Thanks to Eric's earlier recon we scooted right out to the cliff, climbed two routes, one with two new pitches of clean crack climbing, at an interested grade, ground up with the same rack I would take for an after work cragging session on Cathedral's well worn routes. It was truly a rare opportunity.

Snake Mountain, Vermont

Doing the second ascent of a burly little Snake Mountain rig, Fang Shui.

Photo by Josh Worley.

There is this thing happening over in the up-side-down state. After driving past this cliff on their way to the Daks for years, huge icicles just hanging there, climbers, especially Josh Worley, started poking around up there, power drill at the ready. What they found has changed the way good wholesome Vermont boys are introduced to winter climbing. Lake Willoughby? May as well be in New Hampshire (I concur), these guys are climbing M10 before they ever chug up a WI 5 column and strap themselves into a screw belay. This phenomena has been on display at the MWV Ice Fest's dry tool comp, held annually in North Conway - most of the contestants are employed at the Outdoor Gear Exchange in Burlington, Josh Worley's recruiting ground for the dark arts of upside down mixed climbing. Pounding pins, and grabbing turf shots? Why bother when you can sip a latte bought in town while cruising through the Iowa like fields of the Champlain Valley on your way to your own personal mixed crag, complete with fixed draws on every route? Winter climbing now follows summer's lead west of the Connecticut River; instead of scaring the shit out of yourself learning to trad climb and ice climb, you can get as strong as a bull first and then slip into ice climbing and traditional mixed climbing (when it feels like a warm-up). Snake Mountain: the new gateway drug?

Note: I should be clear, all the developers over at Snake are hardmen who have put their time in freezing their asses off at places like Lake Willuoghby, and crankin hard rock routes in the summer time. I just love the opportunity thats afforded the new generation in the Champlain Valley by the proximity of a world class mixed crag, but not mich local ice. I probably should have written the above in the future tense.

Bayard on Solid Gold, an excellent Josh Worley route on great limestone.

Photo by Ray Rice.

The man, Ray Rice, on one of the best, and truly mixed, mixed routes you could find anywhere, Matt McCormick's Paradigm Shift.

Josh Worley checking out the moves on a great looking new line.

Paradigm Shift's upper icicle, not shown is the 50' of vertical ice above.

Photos of February

Tim Keenan on the Unemployment Line, M9, Madison, NH


Lion's Head on a beautiful day.

Bayard onsighting Something About You Makes Me Wild, M8, Frankenstein. Steve House photo.

Ice Fest to mid February in Nothing Flat

This happened to me last year too, February came, the MWV Ice Fest soon followed and the next thing I know its almost March.

After a great start to the climbing season, I've been taking it easy, guiding and resting some. The Ice Fest was a blast, with an estimated 300+ people attending the Steve House slide show/Face Off at the Cranmore wall. Steve's show focused on personal growth and partnerships and even included a public declaration of man love for his climbing partner, Vince Anderson. I love that sorta stuff. Steve rounded out his visit by soloing both Repentance and Remission before 11:00am Monday; one of only a handful of solos of Repentance and Remission's first ever. An impressive and bold feat that was harder on the man than he expected. Keep your eye out for Jim Surette's video of the ropeless climb, it's an incredible piece of north east history and we're lucky to have it for posterity.

The Face off was a success with participation ballooning from last year's handfull to 16 competitors. The Vermont sporto mixed climbing scene is largely responsible, with a whole host of young guys hitting it hard over at Snake Mountain, just south of Burlington, and getting good at this esoteric offshoot of something climbing related. I hear there were some strong showings, but could only hear the crowd blow up and the occasional thunk of a tool into the Ice-Holdz from the behind the scenes where they had the competitors in isolation, playing basketball.

Jim Ewing did a great job setting the route. I was the only participant to get to the top, although others got damn close, and was rewarded $100 and a down OR vest. Whit Magro came in second and also received another OR piece, an Alibi jacket. Thanks to OR for donated the prizes. We had a blast the whole weekend, a huge thanks to Anne Skidmore, Sarah Garlick, Rick Wilcox and Brad White for throwing one hell of a party. Great job!

Looking forward to seeing what next year offers..

See some great photos from the weekend here.