| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2012-01-24 10:23:07 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Scar Ridge via Long Way Home Gully
1.16.2012 17 hours car-to-car Eric Gilbertson Erika Uyterhoeven Rick Abbot Scar Ridge had thwarted my attempts twice already – once due to lack of daylight on an ice-climbing attempt, and another due to an injury – but this time had to be different, I thought to myself. I looked down at my belay device and quickly pulled in more slack from the red and purple ropes. I had just finished leading the last pitch of the Long Way Home Gully ice climbing route up the north face of Scar Ridge, and was now belaying up Erika and Rick. We were just a quarter mile from the summit now, but that quarter mile could potentially be some of the densest and most difficult bushwacking in New England. And we wouldn’t have the advantage of daylight to help in navigation – the sun would officially set in about 10 minutes. Luckily I had brought my GPS with the summit marked just for this last push. After Erika and Rick made it up safely I dropped the ropes and whipped out my Garmin Etrex Vista to turn it on and start acquiring satellites – but it was already on. Shoot! “Warning – Low Batteries,” it complained in a popup message. I had mistakenly left it on all day, and now - the only time I really needed it – it could run out of batteries at any instant (and I didn’t have any spares)! This might very well turn into failed attempt number three! Our day had started at 5:30am at Camelot Cabin and we spent the 45-minute drive to Lincoln, NH strategizing how to approach our climb. The Long Way Home Gully is actually (surprisingly!) in the New England ice climbing guidebook, and they say the best approach is to park at the Lincoln Woods trailhead, cross the Hancock Branch stream, and then bushwack to the base of the climb. I had tried this approach in March of 2011 and the stream was unfrozen and too deep to ford, but luckily I had found a fallen tree to scramble across. This year, however, I didn’t expect that tree to be there anymore. Hurricane Irene had caused massive flooding the previous summer and probably wiped out any fallen trees across that stream. It also hadn’t been cold enough recently for us to trust that the stream would be frozen. However, I remembered briefly walking along an XC ski trail on the opposite side of the river last time, and knew it had to somehow connect to the Loon Mountain Ski Resort area, which was conveniently on the south side of the stream. We decided we’d rather look for that ski trail and follow it in (potentially adding a few miles of hiking), rather than chance the shorter stream crossing which might turn out to be an impossible stream crossing. When we got to Lincoln we turned off on the bridge to Loon Mountain and followed roads as far East up the river as we could. Eventually we reached the edge of the condos and found a nice little parking lot at a trailhead. Perfect! According to my GPS we were only a mile away from where we would have crossed the stream. That wouldn’t add too much time, though, since we would be following trails for that mile instead of bushwacking. We suited up and left the cars at 8am. I was a little nervous about some XC skiers getting mad at us for walking on their trail, but there were all sorts of other footprints on it, and it hadn’t even been groomed yet (probably not enough snow?). We soon passed by the stream crossing location I remembered, and I didn’t see a single tree across the stream. There wasn’t any ice over the stream either, so we had definitely made the right decision to park on this side. The trail then veered right up towards Black Mountain, but I remembered from last time that we needed to follow the stream up farther. We officially started bushwacking then, but the woods were so open it was hardly any more difficult than walking on a trail. Last time I was here I had cut up into the woods too early and ended up climbing halfway up a gully on Black Mountain, so this time I made sure to go farther up the stream. After about half a mile I recognized the area that led up to the ice climb and started heading up into the woods. Rick and Erika had never been here so had to blindly trust me, but I was confident we were on the right route. The bushwacking continued to be extremely tame, and we made good time up the ravine. By 11am we were catching glimpses of the slide paths on the side of Scar Ridge and knew we were headed in the right direction. Along the way I actually saw some bear tracks in the snow. Shouldn’t they be hibernating now?! By noon we were at the base of the slides and had to make a decision – there were actually two huge slide paths separated by a ridge in the middle. I saw quite a bit of ice on both of them, but remembered looking on Google Earth that the right slide topped out 0.26 miles from the summit of Scar Ridge while the left one topped out 0.29 miles from the summit. I knew from my brother Matthew’s description of the top of Scar Ridge that even 0.03 miles could take an agonizingly long time in all the impenetrable spruce. (Matthew had bushwacked up from the south last summer). The right slide was also the one I had climbed last year, and had fewer unknown variables that could affect our speed. Speed would be crucial here, because I definitely didn’t want to get stuck bushwacking to the summit in the dark. Rick casually mentioned that the left slide looked like it had a lot of ice, but since I was leading I made the call to try the right slide. They both looked like they’d be equally fun anyways. The terrain started getting steeper and at the base of some low-angle ice we finally switched out snowshoes for crampons. I kept my snowshoes for the final summit push, but Rick made the decision that he would leave his snowshoes behind to save weight, and just let me and Erika tag the summit. The ice wasn’t steep enough to need ropes yet (maybe WI 1) so we soloed up , getting to swing the tools some to warm up for the steeper stuff. We climbed up a mix of snow and ice in the gully for about an hour until we reached the base of the true ice climbing. Now the guidebook claims “5-8 pitches” of ice, but last time I only found three actual pitches, and this time looked about the same. Maybe if all the snow were gone (like after the slide avalanched), or very early season you could squeeze out 8 pitches of ice. Oh well, it would still be fun. Rick and Erika set up the ropes at a nice tree belay on the side and I started racking up my ice screws and slings. By 1:30pm I was swinging the tools and climbing up. It was probably only WI2 or so ice, but was still steep enough to warrant a rope. I placed most of my screws on that pitch but saved three for a nice belay anchor in the middle of the slide. I guess I could have weaved back into the trees, but most of the fun about this day was making the mountain harder (ie funner) than it needed to be. Usually an odd number of climbers means the group moves really slow, but I belayed Erika and Rick up at the same time and we actually weren’t that much slower than a two-person team would have been. I led up one more similar WI2 pitch, and then the final pitch got a little bit steeper. At the very top of the ice one of my swings actually produced a one-foot geyser of water spurting out! I guess all that ice starts as water somehow, and I’d found the source of the water. I carefully avoided making any more geysers and climbed up into the trees for the final belay. Surprising I saw a sling wrapped around one of the trees with a caribbeaner on the end. I didn’t think anyone else would bother to bushwack in so far for an ice climb, but apparently there’s at least one other person out there as devoted as we were. By this point it was about 4pm and I was getting a little nervous that we would be benighted while still bushwacking to the summit. To make matters worse, I had somehow managed to tangle the ropes behind me on this pitch and Erika and Rick were having trouble untangling them (in hindsight I should have clipped both ropes to each screw as I climbed instead of alternating ropes, since my route didn’t really zig-zag much). This error cost us precious minutes and it was already 4:45pm by the time Erika and Rick made it to the top. That left us with 10 minutes of official daylight, and maybe 30 more of twilight before needing the headlamps. Since my GPS could quit at any moment from low batteries, I knew our best bet was to go fast and light to try to beat the darkness to the summit. I stuffed a few emergency supplies into the lid of my pack, ditched the crampons and climbing gear, and grabbed the snowshoes. I turned off the GPS and stuffed it in my jacket pocket. I’d have to find the summit on my own, and only when I felt I was on the top would I whip out the GPS to help find the summit register. Rick decided to prepare the ropes for a speedy rappel the instant we got back. I had no idea how long it would take us, but guessed probably an hour or so. Erika decided to go super-ultralight – carrying nothing but what she was wearing. With one final glance to the north at the setting sun hitting Franconia Ridge, I pulled up my hood and plunged into the forest. The snow was deep enough to warrant snowshoes, but the terrain was steep enough to make them a hindrance. And the trees were dense enough that most steps landed in a spruce trap – where you sink down a foot farther than you anticipated into a thicket of branches. The best analogy I can think of for this bushwacking was swimming up a waterfall. Most steps did not result in any progress up the mountain, and rarely would I step on solid ground. I probably made the most progress when I could find a solid tree branch to hold on to and pull myself up and over the mess of snow and branches beneath. Eventually I put on the snowshoes and the steepness lessened, and these helped a little. At times it was actually easier to crawl under the branches, and Erika said I looked like a mole tunneling through the snow and branches. Perhaps halfway up to the top the trees started becoming slightly less impenetrable and we actually encountered a few 5ftx5ft clear sections. This definitely helped us move faster. The slope got less and less steep until, looking around I couldn’t discern whether any other direction would bring us higher. Were we at the top? I didn’t see any sign (I knew there should be one on the true summit), and it was finally too dark to see without artificial light, so I donned my headlamp and started searching for higher ground. I also whipped out the GPS, and it said we were within 50ft of the top. Within another minute I spotted a rectangular piece of wood on a tree that said “SCAR”. We’d made it! We could even rest easy that all we had to do was follow our tracks back to the top of the climb – no need to do any route-finding in the dark. We snapped a few victory shots on the top and signed the register. I noted that the last person up there was from back in October (three months ago), and I also found Matthew’s sign-in from back in September (I guess now I truly believe him that he got to the top). It had taken us an hour to get to the top, and we knew Rick would probably be expecting us soon, so we quickly turned around and retraced our steps back to the climb. We made it back by 6:15pm, and Rick immediately started rappelling down the slide. It was completely dark now, but we knew exactly how to get back so that wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately since we’d topped out in the middle of the slide we had to do a diagonal rappel to get to more trees, but we managed without too much sliding on the ice. I guess we could have rappelled straight down the middle, but that would have required setting V-threads for anchors for subsequent rappels and trees would be a whole lot faster. We did two more tree rappels, and then finally reached easy snow terrain. Erika and Rick had fun glissading most of the rest of the way down the steep gully, while I decided to keep my butt dry and walk down. We made it safely back to the base of the ice, with only a couple places requiring down-climbing. The hike out took a little longer than expected since we were all pretty tired, but we managed to stagger back to the car by 1am for a 17-hour round trip. Eric and Matthew's New England Hundred Highest Page |