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.
Great to see you are climbing ice Elaina! I can't wait to get back out there and stab some ice up in Colorado - or even here in New Mexico.
ReplyDeleteYeah it was a great trip, we'll have to go swing tools together sometime, or just go rock climbing, that would be cool too ;)
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