Pinnacle @ Night

Summary
OwnerMITOC Gallery Administrator
Creation Date2007-04-03 16:34:42 UTC-0400
Description
Pinnacle @ Night


Sunday, April 1, 2007


Polly & Christiaan



The short version is that we climbed up Central Gully with no technical equipment, and then tried to downclimb Tuckerman's Ravine, where one of us fell and broke our leg... Oh wait... April Fools! That's not our story... that's the guy we saw coming down the Tuckerman Ravine Trail as we hiked up late on Saturday night. :)


Let me back up a little... Saturday afternoon... Everyone else has bailed on our trip, but Polly and Christiaan decide to get in one more ice climb for the season, and knowing that there would still be ice in Huntington's ravine, we left around 6pm and headed up to The Mt Washington Valley. By the time we had stopped for dinner and made our way along Rt 16 to Conway, it was dark, but the full moon was out, lighting up the snow touched peaks in the distance. Absolutely spectacular... not a cloud in the sky, no wind, and the light of the moon creating a seductively fleeting light all around. I made the mistake of thinking out loud... hey, wouldn't it be cool if we climbed at night under the moon!? Well, now that cat was out of the bag, so to speak. We ended up driving right past Intervale, and heading straight to Pinham Notch. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot for 10pm, and a gang of Quebecqois in the hiker room, getting ready for a night hike up Lion's Head. So hey, what the heck, we switched our gear over to our larger backpacks, stuffed in the sleeping bags and extra food, and headed out. About half an hour up the trail, we ran into a single guy coming down. He seemed a big agitated, and warned us that there would be a snow machine coming down soon with his buddy, who had fallen while down-climbing in Tucks and probably broken his leg. The guy was gushing his story out in bits and pieces, but we managed to figure out that they had ascended Central Gulley in Hunts, and then tried to descend in Tucks. He said he was very impressed with the medical personelle and snow machines that had come to their rescue, but that he had been told to walk down on his own. On his small pack, we didn't see any rope, ice tools, or signs of other technical gear... just crampons and a long ice axe. Old-school/hardcore... or dumb? About 1/2 an hour later, and a good way farther up the trail, the snowmobile with a ranger and a guy in a leg splint passed us... another exciting night on the mountain!
UPDATE: for the accident report, look for "3-31-2007" here: http://www.tuckerman.org/accident/Summaries07/otherincidents2007.htm


We moved pretty fast, making good time to Huntington's ravine, since the trails were luckily still mostly snow covered. But in places the snow was disappearing or turning to ice, reminding us of how much more strenuous the rocky trails are in the summer. At the base of Huntington's we ran into a bearded guy without a pack, hiking down the trail in the dark. Odd, but hey, he seemed to know what he was doing. By the time be made it to the ravine, slogged up the long snow (and rock) slope to the base of Pinnacle Gulley, put on our harnesses and crampons, racked our climbing gear and flaked the rope, it was nearly 2:30am. The ice was still fat, looking like it had melted a little on the surface, but froze again into a smooth blue mass. Christiaan took the first pitch, making his way up the ramp on the first steep pitch (NEI3). The ice was very hard and brittle, sending showers of dinner plates out of the glowing circle created by my headlamp, and down into the darkness of the gulley below. The ramp was pretty smoothed off, not providing much footing itself compared to the vertical face above and below, but there were enough axe and crampon holes to step in to make it a lot less strenuous than it could have been. Stretching the rope out to nearly all 60m, I made it to a comfortable notch at the top of the buldge, set up an anchor with the 2 remaining screws and a tool pounded into the ice, and belayed Polly up. We switched leads, and she headed up the snow slope in the middle of the climb. At 30m, she started up the second ice buldge (NEI2), a small glow on the ice above me, sending occasional bits of ice flying through the circle of light around me.


The night was incredibly clear, with amazing visibility. Looking out over the valley to the east, there were 2 snow machines grooming the slopes on Wildcat... small yellow lights going up and down all night. The patches of snow left on the dark masses of the mountains glowed errily in the moonlight, and way off in the distance we could see the yellow and orange tinted lights of a large town that was probably Portland, Maine. In fact, I suspect that the lighter line on the horizon was the Atlantic ocean, glowing in the moonlight. But in the sheltered space of Pinnacle gulley it was dark. Very dark. The overhanging rock above our heads blocked out the moonlight, and soon blocked most of the view, leaving us in the dark with the ice.


As Polly finished her pitch, built an anchor and belayed me up over the sopping wet second pitch, a glow of morning light started to appear in the east. We quickly switched leads again, and I led up the snow and low angled ice of the third pitch, which obviously had not fared as well in the sunlight as the other two. The ice was alternately soft and slushy, and baked by the sun, with thin formations hanging off at odd angles. We managed to make it nearly to the top, and passed me by to the ridge at the top. As I came up, the sun was just poking half way above the horizon to the east, sending an orange glow around the rim of the sky, and lighting our faces and the mountain around us with an amazing light.


We were amazed to discover that it was already 6:30 in the morning, and sat there for a few minutes watching the sun rise and getting some much needed food and water into our systems. The light from the sun quiclly turned yellow, and the sky faded from black to light blue, putting out the stars and waking up a pair of birds in the bushes above us. We packed up the climbing gear and headed up the final rocky slope to the Alpine Garden. Just on the other side of the Alpine Garden Trail, we found a grassy bivy spot behind some scrubby pines and laid our weary selves down for some much needed rest, as we were in no condition to go any farther. There was practically no wind, and the temperature was probably around 40 degrees... incredibly warm for Mt Washington! We had some food and drink and crawled into our sleeping bags as the sun continued to rise. About three hours of fitful sleep followed, interrupted by several early morning groups of climbers topping out, and eventually by the sun warming us up uncomfortably. Yep, you heard right, it was way too warm to sleep on Mt Washington! Probably 60 degrees out in the sun, and still no wind around 10am when we got up.


We chatted with a couple of guys who had come up Odells and Escape Hatch, and slowly packed our stuff back up. The slog up the rocks and snow fields to the summit cone seemed much longer than usual... probably due to the "excessive" amount of sleep we had gotten! But sometime after noon we made it to the summit where the wind finally picked up to a whopping 10-20mph. Finally, a bit of a chill on the mountain. An obligatory photo, and we set off again, back down towards Lion's Head. The conditions kept changing, rocks, hard snow fields, ice patches, deep snow pockets. The sun had been doing it's work, but only sporradically so far. On the summit cone, there were a few skiers heading up to tag the peak before skiing Tucks, but we were amazed to meet only one or two groups coming up Lion's Head. We expected crows on such a warm, cloudless and all-around brilliant day, but I guess they had already come and gone in the morning. There were plenty of folks in Tucks, skiing, hiking, and watching the antics of others.


Descending the Lion's Head winter route turned out to be the sketchiest part of the trip. The steep sections were still very icy, and with all the snow gone, that much more dangerous. With heavy packs and little sleep, it wasn't much fun, but with some downclimbing and but glissading, we quickly made it back to the Tuckerman Ravine trail. A couple of energy gell packs, and we took off at a surprising pace down what was left of the trail. Happily, there was still snow on most of it, though we could tell that there had been a lot of melting during the day. Towards the bottom of the trail, all that was left was a lot of slush. We arrived back at Pinham notch around 3pm.


It felt great to sit down at the Moat Mountain restaurant for a much needed burger. We got a table with a view out the windows directly to the mountain, where we could still see the snow in the gullies on Huntingtons. One group of guys sitting next to us turned out to be some of the climbers that had toped out past our bivy in the morning, and as we were leaving, three younger folks sat down at the next table, one of them looking oddly familiar. Sure enough, he was the fellow we saw coming down from the base of Huntingtons in the middle of the night. They were all from the Harvard Mountaineering Club, and had been at the Harvard Cabin, closing it up for the year.


What an incredible trip. Climbing at night certainly adds a new flavor. The weather conditions couldn't have been better! We moved at a comfortable pace... not too fast, but still steady and efficient. The perfect way to end a great winter season.