TGR's Winter Climbing Thread

[Will]

Yeah yeah yeah... it's winter and so we should all be skiing. Some of use have two wives though, and spend time with each depending on the situation. Thus... TGR's winter climbing thread. If you've got photos, TRs, or plain ol' recollections of shit that went down while you were going up (and it happened in winter), then post it here.

I'll start:
12/24 - Mike and spend x-mas eve day doing some warm-weather top roping in the catskills. Nice way to start the season after too much time in the library (me) or lab (mike).

The warm up climb:


Top roping in the "Hellhole"
Me:






Mike:




And some ice bouldering to round out the day:






12/27 - Mike and I head to Vermont for a few days. It rained on the way up, but that changed to snow overnight. So we did the only sensible thing and went ice climbing at Lake Willoughby.



This here is the "Mindbender" amphitheatre, with Mike for scale. We climbed "Plug-n-chug" (NEI 5, 2 pitches) which is the left hand flow. The right hand flow is "renormalization" (NEI 4, 1 or 2 pitches). And the center flow is "Mindbender" (NEI 5+, 2 pitches) which ought to have a dead vertical pillar making up the entire first pitch. I guess it's not quite "in" yet. For that matter, neither was plug-n-chug. We found a fair amount of hollow and cauliflowered ice.


As it turns out, the center pillar was pretty much a tube from top to bottom, when you reached the top of it you could look in and see the elevator shaft drop away beneath you. That was a pleasant realization.. especially as I'd left Mike strapped to an anchor about 2/3rds of the way up that column. [EDIT: Hey! I found a picture on neice.com of the exact same feature on Mindbender. It was taken by Alden Pellett the day after we climbed Plug n' Chug.]



Here's Mike toping out on "plug-n-chug".




And what ice climbing TR would be complete without an extremo-close up of my face?


More to come, stay tuned....

[bcrider]

wow!

cool pics of a crazy sport. thanks for sharing.

[Orange Julius]

is NEI 5 equiv. to WI 5?

that is some phat stuff, canadian rockies style!

[JD]

Bump for some sinker ice and for how fun that ampitheater looks. Good on ya...

[Will]

is NEI 5 equiv. to WI 5?

Basically. There's some fine distinction between the two, and I have no idea what it is. For a while the NEI scale topped out at 5+, so no matter how thin or long the climb was, it was still a 5. But now we've got 6's, so that's no longer the case.

[Yeti]

And what ice climbing TR would be complete without an extremo-close up of my face?

It isn't ice climbing unless you adze yourself in the face. Well done!

[Ireallyliketoski2]

I can't make it into work today, I'm sick brah!

[Will]

For the record, that was a chunk of ice that hit my nose, and not the adze. (Never look at your axe when testing or pulling on it, kids. Ice though, that’ll just fuck you up.)

Anyways, I’ve gone and done it again. Mike and I tried out a different flavor of ice today and headed to Frankenstein Cliff in Crawford Notch.

We started off on Smear. That’s some guy named “Guy” finishing off the grade 3 version.


Mike and I took the line to his right which goes at about 4 I think. In the following photo Mike’s rap line falls about 3 feet to the left of where we went up.


Here’s Mike finishing pitch 1.




And here’s Al Hospers, administrator of Neclimbs.com, as seen from pitch two. Nice guy, I dropped ice on him.



Mike was a bit out of sorts from yesterdays adventure and hasn’t really found his head for leading so far this season, so I told him that either he led the next climb or I was taking him up something steep. So here we are at some climb that I was too lazy to look up in the guidebook. I’d guess grade 2+ or so.


Might rain tomorrow ( ) so our climbing trip might be cut one day short. Whatever though, I'll be back after new years for a day or so. In the meantime, let's see some photos or TRs from other folks!

[Dr. Send]

This isn't really a TR, but the weather was so frikken nice a couple weeks ago that i decided to go up to squamish to see what was up, and the friction was insanely good. I did Mantra (which previously took me three days of work) on my first try, and I got higher on Chris's Arete on my first try than I ever have before (and then Brad got on it and greased it up so i never got past my high point). Of course, the sun went down four hours after it came over the chief so the day wasnt that long, but it was okay because my skin is as soft as a baby's bottom from not climbing enough. All in all, probably the best conditions I've ever felt in Squampton.

[Sphinx]

After three years of denial, I decided that climbing is kinda fun after all. Something to do on Christmas day while visiting family.

The parents and I decided to go to Smith and eat christmas cookies, rather than stay at home and eat christmas cookies.

We started on a little 5.7. Whoa, climbing feels weird!


Up to the Shipwreck Wall, on Walking While Intoxicated, 10b. Mom:


Me:


Since the 11c next to WWI shares the same anchor, Dad and I decided to work out the moves. Really cool, really fun technical crimps.

Dad on the hard crossover:




My turn. Thought-provoking moves up a blank scoop.


Testing the hole. It sucks, an edge to the right and a 1.5 finger pocket are far better.






Jug!


Set up for the last hard move, a throw off bad feet to a sloping edge.


By then, we were too tired to get off the toprope and try redpointing, so we climbed some more moderate routes instead.

It started raining at 4, so we drove home. Not bad for christmas.

[Will]

So actually I'm in Jackson skiing right now, but I thought I'd share some more photos from a day of ice climbing after the new year. I've got one more set of photos on the way, but those pics are still on the computer at home. For the time being here are some pics of one of Willoughby's classics: The Last Gentleman.

Grade 5 - three pitches. It's the big center flow with a steeper variation to the left.


Sorry for the foreshortening


This is "Promenade", 5+, It's steeper than it looks.


Top of the second pitch


Chris finishing off the second pitch


And starting up the third


Good day, eh?


Coming soon: We had a date with the last gentleman, next up is a black dike.

[Will]

...a black, filthy, horrendous icicle 600 feet high.

Ok, so the Dike is not as fearsome as it once was. We didn't break a pick, drop the rope, and lose a mitten on a solo ascent in '71 as Bouchard did, but with three pitches of scrappy grade 4/5 ice and some mixed climbing we had fun.



The above photo is taken from NEIce.com. It's from early last season and shows the dike in nicer weather, less snow, and possibly thicker ice than when Chris and I did it in early January.

We got full value out of the climb. It was snowing for most of the day creating a nice alpine experience with winds, snow, and little spindrift avalanches. Not so great for photos though.

Here's the view from the top of the first pitch down towards Chris. Although I was cleaning about 3-6 inches of snow off the ice as I climbed up, between the falling snow and spindrift my tracks were almost filled by the time Chris made it up.




This is the view of the Hassig's Direct variation (not really "in" I think) which goes straight up from the first belay.


The second pitch begins with a rock traverse into the corner and then heads up the corner. I would have taken a picture of Chris getting some mixed action in the crux, but my mind was instead focused on belaying. The pitch was mostly scrappy climbing with thin ice, mixed climbing and rock-pro only.


Here's the view down from the top of the third pitch, after a wallow through deep snow and saplings.


Ah.... good anchor!


And another good day out!

[Sphinx]

Ice climbing....I never figured out if I really loved it or really hated it. So now I ski.

Sweet photos, the Dike looks plenty fearsome to a gaper like me.

[Trackhead]

Will, nice thread and cool pics. I used to ice climb about 100 days/year back in when I used to live in Bozo. Have done a whole lot of it since. But this thread kind of makes me want to swing some action again.

Anyway, why are you making your leader haul the pack on this route? Unless it's just his down jacket or something.

[truth]

Ice climbing frozen waterfalls is insane. Glacial ice I can dig, but that pic of the hollow glass tube scares the crap out of me.

[Will]

Anyway, why are you making your leader haul the pack on this route? Unless it's just his down jacket or something.

Yeah, it looks like he's hauling 40 pounds around up there, but I'm pretty sure the pack is close to empty.

We had this whole debate as to whether to bring packs up the gent as the descent is just a rap on V-threads. But in the end we couldn't figure out what we would leave at the base of the climb. It's not like I took an inventory of what Chris was carrying, but all that was in my pack was a liter of water, a snickers bar, a roll of tape, a belay parka, and some fleece gloves for the belay (a liter, a layer, and lunch) - all things I would want on the climb.

[Trackhead]

Yeah, it looks like he's hauling 40 pounds around up there, but I'm pretty sure the pack is close to empty.

We had this whole debate as to whether to bring packs up the gent as the descent is just a rap on V-threads. But in the end we couldn't figure out what we would leave at the base of the climb. It's not like I took an inventory of what Chris was carrying, but all that was in my pack was a liter of water, a snickers bar, a roll of tape, a belay parka, and some fleece gloves for the belay (a liter, a layer, and lunch) - all things I would want on the climb.

I just figured climbing with frozen hands and beating the piss out of your knuckles wasn't enough suffering for you. Probably filled it full o' rocks.

Nice routes out there.