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Endangered Species Video

Endangered Species from Bayard Russell on Vimeo.

A short video about Matt Horner, Matt McCormick and I’s ascent of a route we called Endangered Species on Poke-O-Moonshine in New York’s Adirondacks. This stunning 65m strip of thin ice came in about 30′ right of the famous Gorillas in the Mist. Gorrillas is a Jeff Lowe and Ed Palin route from 1996 that has seen only one repeat, and it was that same weekend by Alex Lowe and Randy Rackliff.

We added on more pitch after the ice, the so called “Horner Corner”, and rapped off a tree on a good ledge. Good friends, Kevin Mahoney and Freddie Wilkinson, repeated the route a few weeks later and added a final pitch to the summit cone.

A little bit of video got lost exporting the file.

Endangered Species

Endangered Species TopoWhen Matt McCormick, Matt Horner and I went to Poke-O-Moonshine on the Friday before the Mountain Fest, there were a couple of things that we did do, and a couple of things that we didn’t do; here’s the deal.

We did climb the corner system that is the first part of Gorrillas in the Mist. The ice was formed right of Gorillas in a beautiful, narrow and thin streak. We climbed it for two pitches, one of which being the most intense lead I have ever had, and then belayed. The ice continued above, but “dead ended” below an awesome roof. We took a right from the belay and climbed up into a dihedral, and around that roof, to a good ledge, and rapped off a tree.

We did not do the third ascent of Gorrilas, or even the third ascent of the “big wall” section of Poko. We rapped a pitch below the cliff top, and that pitch would not have been trivial.

Matt, Matt and I all feel good about what we did. Our climb felt complete enough and significant enough to warrent a name, at least as a variation. We climbed some really beautiful pitches, ones that you don’t get many chances in life to climb, but there is room for improvement. There is potentially some really bad-ass looking climbing above our second pitch for a complete and really hard route. Where we decided to rap was an obvious break, the terrain above looked slow and time consuming and we decided to head down and proceed with the Mountain Fest festivities, instead of scrapping our way around another roof, in the dark, with one headlight.

I have read a little bit about our ascent online and it seems like there is a bit of confusion about it. I just want to make sure we are getting credit for what we did do, not what we didn’t.

Pole Dance

South Face of Frankenstein

Pole Dance, NEI 5-ish, gains the attractive pillar hanging over the roof in the upper right of the photo. Kevin Mahoney lead the business on the first ascent on December 17th.

After an exciting afternoon on the ground dodging missiles in the south facing sun, Poledance went down. This new route at Frankenstein is right of the Bragg-Pheasant in a spot I had never seen any real ice before. The oblique afternoon sun cooled things off and we went for it. We all had a chance to lead the easy first pitch, but it was Kevin Mahoney’s turn when we finally had a chance to do the pitch that mattered.

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What looked like M7 from the ground revealed itself to be NEI 5 or 5+ up and out a corner/roof and onto a hanging pillar, or pole – the route’s namesake. Classy swings into an iced up crack, a good stance right where it mattered and a beautiful upper tube of bubbling, blobby steeper-than-it-looked ice climbing made this thing really fun to climb. I would say, “go and do it”, but two days of sun and temps hovering around the freezing mark must have taken a toll.

Fun to break a streak of early season, getting-it-back-together shenanigans on a great new route with two great friends. Here are some shots of Matt McCormick following the business, and one of me up on the route’s upper “pole”.

Read the full account at MattMcCormickClimbing.blogspot.com.