| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-04-27 13:07:35 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Farewell to Huntington Ravine April 22nd 2007 Chayil and Vesna Last weeks avalanche danger on Mt. Washington thwarted my farewell climb of Pinnacle Gully, but only till this Sunday. New job at RPI might be geographically close to various climbing destinations, but lets face it, chances are I won have much time for climbing, at least not till I get the tenure . So, I had to go one last time before I leave Boston in May. Chayil was in, so we set out from Boston early Sun morning and got onto Tucks Trail at 10:30am. The day was gorgeous, blindingly sunny, so we roasted like chickens in the oven. The gear never felt so heavy as when we got to the ravine floor and started postholing up to the base of Pinnacle Gully. We saw a dot on the horizon at the top of Central Gully, that kept going steadily downa dude soloed up Pinnacle and downclimbed Central, as we found when we caught up with him at the base of Pinnacle. He warned me of many inches of rotten ice covering the solid ice all the way up Pinnacle, but he said nothing of the fountains gushing out every time the pick hits the solid ice Talk about Niagara Falls!! Already on the first pitch, before I made my third stick I was completely soaked! The water gushed from all sides, but most strikingly (pun intended) from my tool placements, so much so that I was at times blinded by the jet gushing straight at my face. The spring outfit I happily donned for the occasion, gave the final touch to this free-shower experience: I had no hat, thin gloves and only a thin base layer topped by a xc-ski jacket with porous armpit-vents that successfully conducted water to where it wreaked most havoc. I was hosed, drenched, Niagara-ed!! And three pitches to go. I had to stick to the right, steeper side, because the left side was mostly burried by snow undercut by rivers of slush. While climbing was fairly easythe first steep part considerably shortened by extra snow cover (15+ feet, the guy said)placing the screws was a hard labor because I had to hack away sometimes a whole foot-depth of rot to get to the solid ice. Needless to say, it took time. All the long screws I amassed this season came in extra handy, but it sure was a job getting them in. At first I religiously placed pro every little way, placing total of 7 screws before I run out of rope and set up the first hanging belay, but it took so long that I got fed up with it all and on consequent two pitches I placed only 4 and 2 pieces between anchors, respectively. Quite unorthodox, but what a hell, I was shaking like demented in my soaked light outfit and death by hypothermia seemed more unpleasant than a fairly unlikely fall. Chayil cruised both climbing and cleaning and the second and third pitches went much faster, which was just as well because the wind was picking up and the daylight was running out and I was ready for my dinner. The last bit was over a gush of running water over a steep bulge (the milder snow ramp to the left of it looking completely undercut by a genuine torrent and, therefore, quite scary) and I almost run out of the rope before I dug out of snow the cracks in a rock outcrop good enough to set up an anchor with 2 small nuts and a #4 TCU cam. That was the very first place I could find that was amenable to rock proeverything else was completely buried under the huge dump of snow. We walked out onto the Alpine Garden quite soaked and frozen but happy. The wind has picked up considerably by then, and I was tossed around by the gusts of 50 mph or more. It got especially annoying on top of the Lion Head and I was so busy staying on my feet that I didnt notice that the usual (mild and relaxing) Lion Head Tr. was closed and diverted to the Winter Tr., which is this obnoxious steep slog through the dense woods with absurdly hardpacked middle and powdery post-holing sides. Previous hikers had slicked the middle by repeated glissading over the deep postholes left by some giant who had originally broken-in the trail. What an ordeal we had going down the blasted thing! Just as I thought of exclaiming my discontent with the state of the affairs, the trail broke onto the wimp-friendly Tucks highway, and we were back at Pinkham exactly 12 hours after we left it in the morning. Yes, it was a bit of an epic with most blame going to the approach and the descent, although the climb itself helped the exhaustion with its unrelenting wetness. But, despite all, it was a worthy farewell to Mt. Wash and the Hunts, at least for now. Vesna |