New Hampshire Ice Climbing Part 2: Ice Festival

After our STERLING ROPE tour we beelined it to North Conway.  My cold was quickly killing my energy level and I could feel myself slipping into my own personal hell, complete with a faucet for a nose, Guiness world record continuous sneezing and a pounding headache to top it all off. I was ready to party...

We went straight to IME to touch base with our friends Stephen Meinhold, Freddie Wilkinson and Janet Bergman.  The beer was flowing and so was my nose, things were not looking good.  After all the demo gear was checked back in we headed over to the community center where the indoor mixed comp was getting underway. I decided to try and take a nap before the Steve House slideshow and slept all the way through till the following morning.

Saturday morning after wrapping up the Mountain Hardwear gear demo, we headed out to the North End of Cathedral Ledges to shoot some footage of Janet's Intro to Ice climbing clinic. The approach was nice and short and the ice climbing was super casual, pretty picked out yet still tons of fun.

Sunday morning dawned quickly after the late night AAC 80's themed party.  The Sub Zero Down jackets flew off the table in no time and I headed out to Trollville to join Freddie Wilkinson's Intro to Mixed Climbing Clinic.  Pat and I arrived at the crag and got some great footage of the mixed climbing action.  Whit Magro, from Team Mammut floated a sweet looking M6 line up a steep wall. He totally floated up the thing and was totally unfazed when his feet cut pulling the lip.  Whit regained his footing and cruised to the anchor.

With the Ice Fest over and the MHW demo gear shipped out, we had the rest of the week to hit the crags around North Conway.  The next morning we headed out to Frankenstein and after a quick tutorial on placing ice screws, I led my first ice route.  It was appropriately named Waterfall, probably a WI2, super easy climbing with short vertical sections broken up by ledges.  I sunk the screws with ease and felt totally comfortable on the sharp end.

Frankenstein was so good we hit it up again the next 2 days.  Pat and I climbed the Standard Route the next day and hng out in the cave taking in the view of the valley. Pat was pretty hung over so we took it easy and ran laps on it while we watched our friends Karsten and Lindsay scream their way up a route off to our right.

Wednesday I headed back to Frankenstein with Fowler and local guide Sam. We climbed a couple of pitches and I led the first pitch of Pegasus WI3 to the Rock finish. It was super sweet with taller vertical sections than the previous days climbs.  I got pretty pumped and took my time shaking out and making sure each tool placement was super solid. After I belayed Sam to the top of the pitch he told me I ice climb like a rock climber...I'm fairly sure that wasn't a compliment.

My friend Jason explained it best.  Rock climbers body positioning looks like the letter K.  Ice climbers body positioning should look like an X or an inverted Y.  That totally visualized it for me, wish I had that image in my head earlier in the trip!

All in all it was a great week of climbing surrounded by an even greater climbing community. The folks of North Conway were warm and welcoming, hooked us up with a place to crash, home cooked meals and put on an successful event.  I'm looking forward to making a trip back up there next winter and hope to bring some of y'all along with me for the ride.

New Hampshire Ice Climbing Part 1: Sterling Rope Factory Tour

There I was minding my own business climbing in the desert oasis of Joshua Tree last month when I get an email from my friend Jon Fowler. Fowler was looking for an ice climbing partner in February and thought it would also be a good opportunity to research logistics on running guided ice climbing trips there next winter.  Last thing on my mind at the time was freezing my ass off in New England, all I wanted was sunshine and to work on my tan slash continuous freckle collection.

Upon return to WV where it had been dumping snow for the last month, my thoughts turned back to ice climbing and the plan started coming together.  The plan was to blast up to North Conway for a week during the NORTH CONWAY ICE FESTIVAL.  Fowler has tons of friends in North Conway for us to crash with so accomodations were covered, now we just needed more people to split the cost of gas with.

 So we recruited Pat Goodman, a new member of the MOUNTAIN HARDWEAR athlete team. Pat was going to document the festival for MHW and get as much video footage as possible.  Icing on the cake was that MHW needed help running their gear demo during the festival and I promptly volunteered my services for that job in exchange for some schwag and some expenses. I love it when a plan comes together.

Thursday 5pm we met at my house, piled into Pat's Previa and began the 15 hour push up to North Conway, NH. Driving was uneventful and Pat pretty much drove the whole way while I helped navigate and tried to shake the feeling that I was catching a cold.  We hit the border of Maine and decided to cruise up to the STERLING ROPE factory in Biddeford and visit our favorite rope maker.

JB gave us the tour, we walked through the whole process from the time the raw materials enter the building to the hand coiling of the finished ropes.  Coolest part was watching the UIAA testing on their drop tower.  We watched as they tested the Ion 9.5 on the tower, and it took 5 drops one after another with no resting between drops before it broke.  Let me just say there is no way in hell that a human body could ever break a rope under those conditions.  Your body would be black and blue and your pelvis would be in a million little pieces by the end of it.  

These are some tough ropes, we picked up a couple that were hot off the presses and we continued onto our final destination the NORTH CONWAY ICE FESTIVAL. We would arrive in town just in time for the evening festivities, beer, indoor mixed ice comp, and the Steve House Slideshow.