| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2011-03-30 21:04:36 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson
Aaron Yahr 3.26.11 Our plans to climb ice in Huntington Ravine were thwarted by bad weather, so we decided to climb this sheltered, moderate ice gully up the side of Scar Ridge. You can just barely see this gully if you park in the Lincoln Woods lot and look across to the other side of the Kanc. It's tucked in the corner of the ravine between Scar Ridge peak and Black Mountain, and tops out within a quarter mile of the Scar Ridge summit. Despite this climb being in the official guidebook for northern new england ice climbing, we weren't too concerned about seeing other people up there. If the name didn't scare people off, the 3-mile bushwack approach including a difficult bridge-less stream crossing at the beginning probably would. We parked in Lincoln Woods while it was still in the lower teens in the morning (felt more like February than late March), and started our bushwack around 8am. Unfortunately Hancock Brook, a major stream crossing at the beginning of the bushwack, was completely melted out and too wide to rock hope. However, we spied a sketchy-looking tree that had fallen across and used this to shimmy across resulting in zero wet feet. The route finding was a bit tough after then. We thought there was just one major stream leading up to the ravine and we could just follow it, but it turned out there were quite a few decoy streams leading away from our destination. Of course I picked one of the decoy streams to follow and we only noticed the error after we were half way up Black Mountain and the clouds cleared enough for us to notice. Long-Way-Home gully popped out of the clouds like a beacon and we headed for it, reaching the base around 11am. It looked like the base of a glacier, with all sorts of avalanche debris from a few weeks ago and little mini crevasses where water had cut through the snow. We geared up at the base of some WI 1 ice and scrambled up. The gully turned back into snow soon and would have made for awesome skiing. At this point the gully split and we chose the largest center flow. The guidebook says 6 pitches of ice, but that must only be in lean snow years or early in the season. We got to the base of some easy bulges and decided to get serious and bring the rope out. I led the first pitch, up easy WI1-2 ice, then Aaron led another similar pitch. The third pitch was the most interesting, with some steeper ice steps near the summit. There was apparently some flowing water underneath because with one particular swing I created a 1-foot geyser spraying out. We topped out after those three pitches and admired the view across the valley in to the Pemi Wilderness. The summit was only a quarter mile away, but it would be a difficult bushwack and we were trying to get back to boston at a reasonable hour, so we decided to head back down. That decision may have officially disqualified the trip as a true mountaineering venture, but it was a fun climb nevertheless. We rappelled over the steeper ice and then downclimbed the snow gully, returning to our car with an hour to spare before dark. Eric |