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.