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November Rain

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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

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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 Bivouac 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.

Photo courtesy Erik Eisele.

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

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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. It’s not always the case, but most of the back woods cliffs just don’t come together the way Cathedral or Cannon does. They’re too blocky, too rotten.. its always something.

My friend Eric Eisele told us to look across from Success, where we were camping last summer, toward the Kilkenny Range – north and west of Berlin. There was a cliff over there I was familiar with from its 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..

Photo courtesy Erik Eisele.

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, I just fell 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 top of 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 a slabby, but featured first pitch, with an old 1/4″ bolt visible from the ground, followed by a 6 foot roof where a hand crack, beginning at its lip, seemed to blast all the way to the top of the cliff, another 70m away.

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

Eric lead a slightly dirty, wandering and run-out, Conway style 5.8 slab pitch up to a good ledge under the roof, where he belayed off a gear anchor. We reconvened there before I took a stab at a direct line through the roof, but settled instead for a traverse left to the obvious crack system we had seen from below. We fiddled around a bit, figuring how to do the traverse, high or low, eventually crab crawling below the roof, back cleaning cams to straighten out the rope which had a few bends still to make. 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 a 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 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 our trail in, working against the grain of brooks and terrain for half a mile. 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, or a lack of concern. Back at the car, with light still 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 interesting grade, ground up, with the same rack I would take for an after work cragging session on Cathedral’s well worn lines. It was truly a rare opportunity.