| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-03-18 23:06:41 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Ice Climbing in Crawford Notch
Steve & Christiaan March 17 & 18, 2007 The snow had been falling most of Friday and was starting to accumulate quickly, so we decided to leave "early"... driving out of town around 6:30pm. After 5 hours of crawling trough the snow on Rt 16, we finally arrived at Intervale and were asleep by midnight. Awake at 6am, headed over to Frankenstein, only to find that the access road and parking lot had not been plowed. A 4wd SUV made it up the hill just fine, but my Accord wasn't quite cutting it... so we dug a hole in the snow bank along the road and rammed the car through the snow into an unplowed lot. "We'll deal with digging it out later!". We were the first party on Standard route on Saturday. Christiaan led all three pitches, going up the center and knocking a hole in the icicles to access the belay cave, then heading up directly over the cave and to a high 2nd belay on the right. Finally, a short vertical buldge to the top. We walked off to the right, and stopped at Dracula, where there were 6 guys out for their yearly ice climbing trip with two guides. Half of them were following their guide up the fat route on the left, and the others were top-roping to an anchor in the middle of the much thinner but wider right side. We waited about an hour for the left hand route to clear out, and Steve jumped right on it, scaling some nice grade 3+/4 stuff to a tiny cave that made for a cozy belay. Christiaan followed up, and found that he didn't quite fit into the hole at the back of the cave. But Steve was soon ready and climbing over the opening and onto the vertical section above. The ice was highly chandeliered, and straight up for about 10-15m. A great climb, we topped out just as the sun was setting. After rappeling down on very frozen ropes, we hiked out in the dark. Saturday evening activities consisted of digging the car out, almost losing a bag of essential gear, and eating bar food for dinner at the Moat Mountain restaurant, surrounded by dozens of St Patricks day partiers in green shirts, silly hats, and with flashing shamrocks on their necklaces. We finished off the evening by lugging all our sleeping and climbing gear up the hill to Intervale, where we cranked the heat and spread it all out to dry. Sunday morning, we woke up feeling like we had been hit by a truck... tired and sore. But we dragged ourselves to Dunkin Donuts for the usual fare, and headed back to Dracula for another go at the right hand side. It was much colder out this morning, with a chilly wind blowing snow flurries up the notch. Steve made quick work of the first pitch... climbing part way up the left and then traversing over soft ice, under falling water to the center of the right hand ice flow. He reached the "belay point", which sucked. With plenty of rope left, he decided to push on. Despite frozen fingers and tired arms, Steve climbed the hard ice vertical pitch in fine fasion, managing with the few crappy screws and draws he had left. Another impressive ascent. Christiaan followed up and we both rappeled back down the impressively steep 45m high face. Since it was already past 1pm, and we wanted to get home on time, we deicided to forgoe other routes and headed to the car. By this time, the snow was falling rapidly. On the way up through Crawford Notch itself, we saw some climbers on Elephant Head gulley, and couldn't resist the lure of a quick pitch right next to the road. After parking and hiking the "strenuous" 100yards along the road to the climb, we roped up and Christiaan led the right hand side. The ice was VERY soft, apparently having re-formed after nearly disappearing last week. The last bit was a column of vertical slush with a rock finish on top. Rapelling down through the snow and wind, we were ready to call it a day. A quick stop in Lincoln for food, and clear roads on the way home got us back to Boston just after 8pm. Another great weekend of climbing... hopefully not quite the last. |