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Re: Western Pennsylvania Climbers Forum:
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mountainman
Jan 2, 2008, 7:49 AM
Views: 10249
Registered: Jan 29, 2003
Posts: 337
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My great Christmas ice climbing adventure
I haven't ice climbed since March, so I wasn’t in the groove. I had to really think about how to dress, and what to bring for the greatly varying conditions. I still screwed up. I should have taken my triple gore tex shell for the extremely wet conditions, but I lucked out.
It turned out to be unusually warm. The highs were in the thirties, and it was very wet. The ice was dripping. There were violent snowstorms.
Another problem was I hadn’t flown since September. I went out to the airport the week before to pump up the tires, top off the fuel tanks, check the oil, stick foam plugs in the vents and plug in the engine heater.
It was fairly warm for Christmas, and the day after I went out to the airport late morning. My forecast was good, and it was a Visual Flight Rule day. I loaded my gear, fired up, taxied out and off I went, into the wild blue yonder! In only 3.1 hours I landed in the very deep hole of Lake Placid, New York.
Thursday, December 27 was our first day. We drove towards Whiteface Ski Area. and hiked steeply through the snow and over giant boulders to the base of Multiplication Gully. The approach was pretty exhausting. We had to wait a bit for the guys in front of us, but soon made our way up the first pitch to the nice belay area. We had done this a couple years ago, when there was far more ice. The second pitch was very demanding, very steep and intimidating.
We’d only taken my 70 meter dry rope, so had an adventure descending, but we made it and hiked out. It was snowing very hard, but the temperature was above freezing, so it wasn’t stressful.
The rope fell out of my pack on the way down and I had to go back for it. Luckily it wasn’t far. We drove farther into the boonies and hiked through the snow to Chiller Pillar. There was only one line climbable, so we walked around and set it up. I used my X Monsters, but was really tired, and pooped out at the top. We got very wet, as the snow was falling relentlessly. We dragged ourselves out, and had a very slow trip to the Cascade Inn, as there were weenies going 15 MPH and a bad wreck also.
It’s always a joy to settle in to the Cascade on an ice climbing trip. Dry the gear out, cook dinner, hot showers, good sleep. It’s the place.
The next morning we headed down to Chapel Pond. It was even warmer, and I believe the high was 37°! We did the first pitch of Crystal Ice Tower again, then went over and did two pitches of Chounard’s Gully. It was wet, slushy and pretty easy. It would be tougher in cold conditions. We walked down and looked at Lions On The Beach and Hot Shot, but there were busloads of guides and noobies, all over the ice. We went to Pitchoff Right and did a couple lines until dark. They are nice and steep. Adam had forgotten his androids in the car, so he used my Hugh Banner Spitfires and pronounced them excellent. However, a violent rain storm with giant wind gusts came around midnight.
Saturday morning, Will came by. We drove down to Pitchoff Left and climbed a few lines. Since it had rained all night, the ice had been blasted down a bit, then went back to the car to eat a few sandwiches. It led to a talk about whether we should climb some more or hit the road, and me to the sky. We decided to leave, as we’d had two great days of climbing, and Saturday was pretty poor.
At the airport, Will used the tool to remove a little snow on my wings while I packed up. Due to the warmth, there wasn’t any ice to deal with. The clouds were at about 4000 feet, so I decided to take off under visual rules. I stupidly turned south into the mountains, as I thought I saw a clean line. I flew into a box canyon, and was just able to fly over the ridge without going into the icy clouds.
However, I kept going south without leaving the mountains behind, which I don’t understand, until I tried to go over a ridge and suddenly entered the clouds. I couldn’t see anything, so gave it full power and climbed, announcing to Boston Center that I needed an Instrument Flight Rule clearance. I didn’t crash into anything, but was really shook up, and after a few thousand feet of ice, was above all the clouds and into bright sunshine. I was in the clear all the way home, but I had 50 MPH of headwinds and it took me about 4.5 hours to get home. Luckily, the ice in the clouds had gone by the time I got to Pittsburgh, then I descended without picking up any ice and landed at Washington County without any problems.
I must admit, I should have gotten a IFR clearance before leaving Lake Placid, and not tried to kill myself, but I learned a lot from that experience.
(This post was edited by mountainman on Jan 2, 2008, 7:51 AM)
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Post edited by mountainman
() on Jan 2, 2008, 7:51 AM
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