Best of Both Worlds
This season has been two things: very cold and very snowy.
While I've been ice climbing and shoveling away here, Emilie headed east for a guest guiding stint in New Hampshire at the Mount Washington Valley Ice Festival and for a week of Ice Guide Instructor training with the American Mountain Guides Association. You may have noticed her recenly in photos taken from a mid-winter full conditions mixed climb of Cannon Mountain's famous Whitney-Gilman Ridge (images by Tim Kemple for EMS) and rock-climbing in the early fall morning in the Gunks (images by Tomas Donoso for OR).
Here in the Adirondacks, the early-season ice climbing fever has worn off a bit- often leaving the place to ourselves on a mid-week day. This leaves the increasingly warmer and softer ice to fewer and fewer people, while the diurnal melt-freeze cycles feed and grow fat ice flows seemingly overnight. (Of course, those thin lines on southern aspects start to delaminate and fall down too.) But on the big East & West facing ice climbs- ice climbing in the warm sun is just darn NICE when you can get it. And the northern aspects will be fun into March- which is a great time to enjoy ice climbing in warmer, friendlier conditions.
Much of the snow we've gotten since the season started early (Emilie and Lori climbed the North Face of Gothics after a freak early winter storm in mid-October!)- had stayed cold and very dry, but quite plentiful. The backcountry skiing and climbing has come into shape. We've had some great powder days while it was cold. I think the present thaw cycle (really the first of this season) is really a good thing in the long term, helping to consolidate the snowpack and start feeding the ice climbs again.
So really, now it's the best of both worlds for ice climbing and backcountry skiing.
The videos below feature a few select days from this winter's transition from ice climbing into backcountry skiing. Starting with a wintry day of multi-pitch climbing with Mike and Anne during Mountainfest,
then a full day of steep-ice at Poke-O-Moonshine with Gray in late January.
The backcountry ski season kicked off solid this past weekend with a Dynafit Ski Camp. Jason, John and I pulled from a quiver of Dynafit skis (we all chose Stokes) and boots (Jason used TLT5's, I used my trusty (wider) Zzero4s and John chose (to upgrade on day 2) Zzero4s) for two days of classic Adirondack backcountry skiiing. We were blessed with really enjoyable and surprsingly stable powder conditions. Thanks to Mike Kaz and Dynafit for the support and to Drew and the Mountaineer for being by far the best technical climbing and backcountry shop in East.
