Back to Stonehouse

Hey there!  This weekend I took my friend Kevin out to Stonehouse Pond to show him the ropes (pun intended) of ice climbing.  Kevin recently got himself outfitted with new boots and crampons and a set of used tools (courtesy of Craigslist), and was itching to try them out before his class with IME next weekend at Ice Fest.  Aimee joined us on a remarkably warm January day, and it was a great outing.  We did all top-roping, and got to mix it up a little bit, courtesy of a father/son climbing team that we swapped top-ropes with.  Kevin did great for his first time out, and Aimee is continuing to kick ass.  I'm feeling much stronger and more confident as well, and hope to find some longer climbs soon.

Also, last week Aimee and I joined a meetup group for some climbing up North.  We met at the covered bridge ice flows off of the Kanc, but found no ice.  We relocated to the North End slabs at Cathedral ledge and were able to get a few runs in before calling it an early day to meet Kevin in North Conway.  Somehow I resisted the urge to buy some used ice screws at IME.  I think I am going to finish out the season with just top-roping.

Stonehouse Pond

On Saturday, Aimee and I drove to Stonehouse Pond in Barrington, New Hampshire to check on the conditions.  Stonehouse is the closest ice climbing to Boston that I have found so far.  It's not much, but made a great spot for Aimee's first time out.  I took a risk and left the 60-meter rope in the car, opting instead for the lighter 30-meter rope.  By extending an anchor to the top of the cliff we were able to set up a top rope, leaving a few meters of spare rope, making the cliff about 13 meters or so.

The surface ice was quite aerated and took a lot of clearing to get to the better ice below, but we each got 4 or 5 climbs in.  Aimee did great for her first time out.  Her gloves proved to be too bulky to allow for a good grip on the tools, and left her with cold, tired hands.  After switching her into a pair of thinner stretchy gloves that I had brought her hands warmed up and she was climbing like a pro.

We made a journey to the ever-awesome Kittery Trading Post afterwards to look for some better gloves for future climbing.

Frankenstein January 8

This past Sunday I joined some fellow Bostonians for a day of ice climbing at Frankenstein Cliff in New Hampshire's Crawford Notch.  My fellow climbers and I met up on the Rock and Ice Climbing Boston Meet-Up group.  Four of us carpooled up, leaving my house around 5:15 AM.  With a quick breakfast stop in Concord, we made it to the parking lot right at 8:00.  The approach is quite simple, merely a walk down the railroad tracks (closed for the winter) until you are under the climb you want to tackle, then a short uphill and you are at the base.

We decided to start our day at "Lost in the Forest", a nice easy mix of 2's and 3's, with a nice short vertical section on the right.  We set up a few top-ropes and played around until some time after noon.  Deciding it was time for a little more, we traversed a couple hundred feet along the hill and came to "A Walk in the Forest", which is mostly rated at 3 and 4.  It's a really long climb that required two ropes to top rope, and got progressively steeper towards the top.  Had a nice chat with Pablo and B. of New England Adventures who were just finishing their climb and rapping down to finish the day.

It was a really nice day of climbing.  The ice seemed pretty good, though I haven't been climbing long enough to say that with much comparison, and the weather was great.  It is weird being around that much ice and not having any snow on the ground, though.  Probably the best part was seeing first-hand how accessible the cliffs were.  Made me hopeful for future climbing here.

Your intrepid author

   Frankenstein's Amphitheater Section (I think)

Photos

The View of Mt. Washington.  Not much white in the White Mountains this winter.

Me, on the summit of Mt. Osceola

Catch-Up

This post is playing catch-up from a trip just before New Years.  In early December, Kevin, my good friend and developing climbing partner, and I started planning our first un-guided winter overnight hike/mountaineering trip.  After some internet research we decided Mount Osceola was going to be our target.  Mt. Osceola and East Osceola are located near Waterville Valley and are both 4,000 footers.  The route we picked started near Tripoli road, took us over both summits, then descended toward Greeley Pond and then back to the car.  Not really knowing what to expect we definitely over-packed, especially considering most hikers summit from the Greeley Pond side and do both peaks as a day-trip.  We, however, wanted to do the overnight for the experience and to try out my new four-season tent.  The most unnecessary equipment was an ice-tool each and a small diameter 30-meter "glacier" rope each.  We knew there was a really steep descent and had heard reports of icy trails, so we brought the two ropes and some anchor materials in case we decided to rappel the steep section.  As it turned out, crampons were sufficient.  Also, thank god we left our snowshoes in the car, because there wasn't too much up there.

The summit was icy, windy, and cold, and provided great views of the Tripyramids and Mt. Washington.  Here we donned crampons and descended into the saddle to find a campsite.  After setting up camp and sitting around we both got really cold (temps in the low teens) so decided to hop in our sleeping bags and cook dinner from inside the tent (stove in the vestibule of course).  Our biggest mistake was not removing enough of our sweaty clothes before getting in our sleeping bags, and we struggled to warm up.  Eventually, as we peeled layers off, the sleeping bags started to work effectively and we warmed right up.  We spent the next several hours melting snow and cooking dinner, and still ran out of things to do before 6:00 PM.  

The following day we broke camp and began the descent.  We were both glad for our crampons and the going was smooth until about a half mile down the Greeley Pond trail when we came across a sign indicating a trail closure due to hurricane damage.  Two options were to hike back over the mountains or hike to the other parking lot on the Kancamangus and hope to hitch a ride back to the car.  Our last option, and the one we went with was to forge ahead and take our chances.  The trail was mostly fine, but in some places the trail had been taken over by nearby streams and we hopped back and forth from bank to bank depending on where the level ground was.  The biggest hurdles were two river crossings with washed out bridges.  The first we forded and made it across dry, but the last was much deeper and faster.  After hiking the banks and testing a few possible fords we ended up back at the washed out bridge and just made a dash for it, knowing that the car and warm socks wasn't far ahead.  As it turns out, between gaiters and gore-tex we didn't really get wet anyway.

All in all it was a successful trip with a few lessons learned:

1. Take outerwear off before getting into sleeping bags
2. Vent the tent more to reduce condensation
3. Insulated bottles, or bottle insulators are a must (I had to carry out 40 ounces of frozen water)
4. Check for trail closures before departing
5. bring a filter or strainer for removing pine needles from snow-melt drinking water

Background Info

Hello, and welcome to the latest in my series of blogs.  For back reading, feel free to read Tony Rides and Tony Walks, about my cross-country motorcycle trip and round-the-world backpacking trip, respectively.  I started this blog to document and journalize some of my activities around New England.  As per the title of the blog, I am pretty new to a lot of these endeavors.  I am not a guide and am not writing this as instructional material.  Many of these activities are inherently dangerous and participation in any of them is at your own risk.  Last bit of administration: if any "accomplished" climbers, mountaineers, hikers, skiiers, etc. have an urge to post comments or send me e-mails telling me how stupid I am being, please keep them to yourselves.  If you have constructive advice to give, however, then I would love to hear it.

My introduction to mountaineering came in high school when I participated in a three-week course at the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School in th John Muir Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  I was a voluntary participant, not one of their court-ordered projects.  I really treasured that experience, but life and other interests kept me out of the mountains for the next ten years, except for some day-hikes, car-camping, and the likes.  My interest was rekindled when my friend Jerod and I passed through Turkey and decided that a 300-mile trek called the Lycian Way would be a worthy endeavor.  It was, as were a few nights of hiking in Wadi Rum in Jordan, and some overnights in Israel.  These paved the way for us signing up for two weeks of expedition style high altitude mountaineering in Bolivia, which is were I had my first taste for ice climbing.  These adventures are discussed in more detail in my blog Tony Walks.