Ice Climbing January 2005

Kerry managed to head back to the Adirondacks and do two more days of ice climbing in late January.  Kerry stayed at the Keene Valley Lodge, and since the rest of the place was rented out Friday night and Saturday, he ended up in a very nice suite that could have slept 6, but he had it all to himself.  He climbed some GREAT and classic ice climbs at Poke-O-Moonshine; even made use of his new fancy stretchy ice climbing jacket, and heard a bunch of great stories about Simon Yates (the fellow Kerry climbed with, Ian, climbed with Simon Yates, of "Touching the Void" fame about a week earlier).

One of the great climbs that we did on this trip was Positive Thinking (usually simply called PT).  The two pictures below are both
shots of the this incredible climb.


  


Ian showed up that first morning and we decided to head to Poke-O-Moonshine.  It was definitely a bit brisk morning; a balmy
NEGATIVE 9 in Keene Valley when we left.  When Ian showed up Friday morning he did look a bit like a raccoon, in that he
had bruises under his eyes, since he had broken his nose about a week earlier. It’s actually an interesting story in that he was climbing
with Simon Yates (yes the same Simon Yates of “Touching the Void” fame-the one who "cut the rope"). They were doing the upper
pitches of Positive Thinking (one of the classic climbs that we did on Saturday) when a fellow kicked off a 50 pound chunk of ice that
hit Ian in the face.  It’s a great story … and I’ll get to it later. The first climb we did was called Neurosis.  This is a classic but historically
the first pitch is about 200 feet and it was very thin.  The climbing was fairly  delicate, This was an excellent pitch.  The second pitch was
between 150 and 200 feet.  It was technically easier than the first pitch, but there was quite a bit more snow to contend with and in many
ways dealing with the snow can be trickier than vertical ice.  Once at the top, we did two double rope rappels to get down.  Both of these
were just EXCELLENT.   Great views, great exposure, just a gorgeous rap down – especially the second one! We then hiked down to
a climb called Discord, which is another classic climb.  This was just an incredible day of climbing!! 
 

The lower left picture shows Ian rigging up two V-Threads (more on these later), and the picture to it's right is a shot
of Discord.

   

The next day, Saturday was definitely warmer than Friday, with it reaching around 20 degrees, with a lot of sun, and it ended up being a glorious day for climbing.  We had decided to head back to Poke-O, and try to get on a climb called Positive Thinking.  This is an NEI 5 climb (i.e., hard, steep, and long), and is supposedly the most sought after ice climb in the Adirondacks.   It doesn’t come in completely most years, so when it does "everyone" wants to get on it. This climb is SO cool.  The first pitch is about 180 feet long with some very, very nice climbing.   The second pitch was incredible.  It wasn’t as consistently steep as the first pitch, but I think I enjoyed the second pitch a bit more.  It was right at 200 feet long and had a lot of intricate climbing, in and around squeezes and chandelier/icicles.  The last 120 feet of the pitch were amazing.  There was about a 50 foot section of a very narrow chimney (barely shoulder width), that was really cool moving up through.  Near the top (near the belay) is where Ian broke his nose with Simon Yates. To rap down we had to set a couple of V-threads. These are really cool – a bit spooky looking, but cool.  As it turns out, we set up two of these to use as our rap anchors. The view was amazing.  You could see Lake Champlain, and could see all the way across into Vermont!! The rap down was awesome.  Most of it was either over chandeliers and/or free space.   You didn’t want to slam (or walk over) the ends of the huge daggers/icicles as you rapped down.  Hence, you would get close to the end of a chandelier and then push off hard and effectively jump backward while taking a fastslide down so you can miss and get below the chandeliers.  Really cool.  It was one of the more exciting 200 foot rappels I had ever done.  This was indeed an incredible climb!!!  Not to be missed.

The first below picture shows the top of Discord, while the story to the right shows Kerry with the Waterfall section (of Poko) along with the ranger hut
in the background.

      

SIMON YATES story: Simon Yates story: As I alluded to earlier, Ian broke his nose about a
week or so before my trip on the very climb we did: Positive Thinking (PT).  Simon Yates (again
the “Touching the Void” Simon) was in town for a winter festival, and he hooked up with Ian to do some
ice climbing.  They went to Poke-O-Moonshine, and the first climb they did was Positive Thinking. Another
party showed up right after them. One of the other two fellows was a VERY good climber/guide, named Rich, who
actually runs most of the climbing rescues that take place.  His partner was a young relatively
inexperienced guy.  They decided that all four would climb it side by side, so everyone could get the climb
in.   Things went well for the first pitch, and then Simon looked at the second pitch and asked if it would
be OK if he led it.   He did and he did a fine job. It’s tough to climb side by side on the second pitch (too much ice can break
off and it constricts too much to actually be side by side, so Ian stayed down and then Rich led the second pitch after Simon was up.
Once there it was decided that Rich’s partner would go, but he would leave the screws in (since they were strenuous to get out). 
Then Ian would go last and remove everyone’s screws (after the other three were all at the belay station).  Everything went well, and
Ian was right at the last bulge (about 10 feet from the belay spot) when the young guy breaks and kicks off a 50 pound chunk of
ice. It fell the ten feet and hit Ian right in the face.  Remarkably he didn’t come off, but blood went everywhere (bloody nose). 
In fact when we did this climb Saturday we could still see some of the blood on the ice.   Anyway, Ian is shaking
it off and trying to stop the bleeding and he looks up and all three of the other climbers have distinctly
different looks on their the faces.  The young kid that kicked off the ice had a sick look on his face as
if he felt so bad that he wanted to commit suicide.  Rich had the serious grim professional look of “Oh no
… are we going to have to have a complicated rescue??”), whereas Simon pulled out one of his hand
rolled cigarettes and lit it, and looked at Ian, as if it was just a normal everyday thing.  Alpinists and
true mountaineers are indeed a different breed!!  Anyway, Ian came on up, and they continued climbing
the rest of the day (with a broken nose).  At the end of the day, Simon did say something akin to “tough
bugger”.  Apparently, Simon was a really cool lay back guy, who is actually a strong ice climber, even though he is
almost too alpinist – in that he sets alpine style anchors (i.e., really thin!!) when they don’t necessarily need to be that way. 


The photo below is again of the Waterfall area at Poko, and if you look closely you'll see people on the right side:
one about two-thirds of the way up (on the ONLY rest spot of the entire thing), and then 4 or 5 folks at the bottom.



After we had reached the bottom of PT, we took our time, and ate lunch and re-hydrated.  We had decided to go the “Waterfall” area, and hopefully try a climb called Goat’s Foot.  The Waterfall area is a cool area.  On the walk down, we saw a porcupine up in a tree!!! Pretty cool.  As it turns out, Goats Foot was taken, so we did a variation of the WaterFall section called Bushido.  It looked like it would be a piece of cake, but was I ever wrong.  The entire Waterfall Sheet ranges from 4+ to 5+, which means that it’s very steep and hard. Bushido was a LONG route.   Again, I thought this would be easy, but it was relentlessly steep.  The ice was very hard and very knobby, which made setting the tools (without shattering ice), and driving in your crampon points hard.  The climb was about 150 feet long.  About half way up there is a little ledge, but it’s only a small respite, in that the upper part was extremely tough with it being very steep and had several ice corners that took a lot of very crowded stemming.  It was so tight that it was hard to kick your crampons hard and accurately and as such it was tricky with the feet. This was a great climb, but it was HARD!!  I had expected a nice easy cruise, and ended up with the hardest climb of the trip. Another amazing day of climbing, and another great trip!!!!  It seems like every trip up to the Daks keeps getting better and better.

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