Tag Archives: North Conway Rock Climbing

Aug9

Return to Whitehorse Ledges, July of 2013 marks the full ascent!

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Return to Whitehorse Ledges

Weekend of July 26th – 28th

Friday, 26-Jul-13

  • Leave work early, so I can bike over to the RMV to get a renewed license
  • Renewal actually goes really cleanly… no trouble, nice person behind the counter.  I even get a massage in a cool massage chair while waiting.  Cost a whole buck.
  • Bike to Davis and grab a few steaks for the weekend – incentive to finish the route on time!
  • Bike home, pack the last few things, eat a bit and pack up the car
  • Drive onto the open road!  … Huh.  Not so open.  Traffic!
  • Finally break free, and after stopping for the rest of the food I finish the drive up to the Loj in peace and serenity… turns out the thing I was missing recently?  Driving fast down an open road with the roof down.  Really helps the whole “happiness” thing, heh.
  • Arrive at the Loj to a completely empty parking lot.  Drive the Mustang up to the LC lot, pull my gear, and start the walk up.  It’s nice… nostalgic and relaxing
  • Open the Loj up after seeing a terrifyingly low propane tank, but not a full open.  Windows?  Meh.  Stove, cocoa, and a fridge are all we need
  • Pack everything away and lay out for some more reading of American Gods ‘till Daniel arrives.  Once he does… we basically continue chilling and reading; crash early for an early morning.

Saturday, 27-Jul-13

  • Wake up early… like, normal working day early.  Maybe even earlier.  … I woke up at 7:00.  Daniel was cranky about it, but making breakfast convinced him to get his ass off the couch.
  • Scrambling eggs, eating apples and snacks, and making of lunches occurs.
  • After reviewing the route again, we roll out toward the cliffs!  Pack up the Mustang and hit the highway.  It’s a quick drive, but amazingly fun going through the mountains with the music blaring.
  • Arrive, park, pull gear, and walk over to the base of the cliff.  Racking up takes a few minutes, but it’s a good thing – there’s a team ahead of us, and we give them enough time to move ahead of us enough that we’ve got a good three pitches free ahead.
  • Move out!  CLIMBING!
    • (Official Pitch 1) walk up: we just walk up the slab to the Launch Ledge.  It’s a simple easy thing… I think it’s officially rated a 5.0, but since it’s such a shallow slab…
    • Pitch 1: I take the lead up to the toilet bowl.  It’s wet and gross, but a simple climb and an easy belay.  Daniel gets cranky about me getting his rope wet.
    • Pitch 2: Daniel leads the route over to the bottom of the Arch.  It’s clean and simple.
    • Pitch 3: The Arch.  My favorite pitch… super long, good pro, and fun moves.  I think it’s ~170 ft of climbing, but a low angle and with a big crack to the side.  FUN!
    • Pitch 4: I take the lead again, leaving the pinch belay and moving up to the Lunch Ledge.  I take a slightly non-standard route, but it’s fine and fun.
    • Pitch 5: The crux.  The evil pitch.  This is the one that’s stopped me in my tracks before… either by just being too hard, taking far too much time due to route finding trouble, or just generally being evil.  We had a choice: easy way that takes longer, or quicker hard way.  I decided to cut to the chase, and take the hard way.  It was terrifying; tons of thin moves on tiny holds, a good 700ft off the ground.  But I did it.  And soon enough we were moving onward again…
    • Pitch 6: Daniel led this one.  Sort of.  Instead of taking the well-worn simple way, he took the straight-forward way… which was quite harder.  Not due to the rock… but due to the massive amount of lichen encrusting the rock.  But Daniel beasted it out, and we continued climbing…
    • Pitch 7 & 8: We strung these two into one pitch, thanks to Daniels 70m rope.  Fun and simple – very run out though.  Like… this was a full 70m pitch (215 ft), and I had… two?  Maybe three placements?  Yeah.  Easy climbing, terrifying head games.
    • Once we finished up the route, we hung out with some of the folks we had met on the route – taking in the view and the beginnings of the sunset before starting the walk down the trail.
    • Guh… climbing is fun, but hella-tiring.  Walking off is almost worse.
    • The drive back to the Loj is epic – perfect sunset, just the right temperature to have the top down, and we get back to the parking lot just in time for dusk to finish falling.
    • Meet a few NUHOCers at the Loj who’re copying Mike and my “ninja camping at the Loj” weekend… but they’re not particularly good at it, because we meet up with them as they’re stealing firewood.  It’s all good though, and we hang out for a bit.
  • DINNER!
    • Porterhouse T-Bones, cooked cleanly with just salt and olive oil, with side dishes of garden-fresh (from my garden) tomatoes and some seared summer squash
    • Holy crap, so good.
    • And to top it off?  Mason jars full of Champagne.  Because that’s how we roll.  Also?  MaCallan 12 year Scotch.  Hell to the yes.
    • Relax for the night, and crash semi-early.

Sunday, 28-Jul-13

  • Wake up… meh.  Nah.  I’ll get up when I feel like it.  Have a few good dreams before finally getting mobile and making up some breakfast
  • Relax out on the back porch and read, nearly finishing up American Gods.
  • We debate going out to Rumney… but it’s one of those “I just… I wanna relax!” sort of days.  So we do.  Instead of rushing out we take our time closing up the Loj and packing everything… finally leaving around one or two.
  • Drive down 113, taking in the scenery and scouting out a few places to do some climbing later on in the season
  • We take the Kancamagus highway back toward I-93, grabbing a bite of dinner/lunch before taking the main highway all the way back through to Boston.
Jun30

Weekend of 23Jun – Climbing at Cathedral and Rumney

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Saturday, 23Jun12 and Sunday, 24Jun12

 

Saturday: Cathedral

Alex and I parked at the base of the cliff, and headed straight up towards the rock. Our goal was Black Lung, finishing up on the two pitches of Upper Refuse. A super-classic line reaching from the bottom of the cliff all the way to the top. Unfortunately, we hadn’t parked anywhere near the base of that climb, and instead found ourselves in the position of needing to hike all the way back to the car in order to find Black Lung.

Nope. Instead, we found a few climbs in the area, and headed up those:

 

Still in Saigon (5.8+)

This route was scary. Seriously. This route was so run out I thought we were on whitehorse, and the moves were insanely thin – small, friction moves without any sort of protection nearby. It was good though, honestly was more of a sport route than Trad – out of the 7 or so placements Alex made, only two of them were actual gear. The rest? Bolts. Boo.

I don’t know how Alex led it, to be completely honest. Maybe back when I was leading insane routes every week I could have, but as of now… dang.

In the scheme of routes, I wouldn’t recommend it as a “definitely do it!” climb… but if you’re in the area and want a challenge, definitely try it out.

Note: it was hot. Hot as in “My hand hurt from the heat of the rocks. I think I got burnt”.

Kiddy Crack (5.7)

This route is classic. It’s so good that it’s scary… every move is fun and interesting, but at no point do you get bored by the simplicity of it. This is definitely my favorite climb at Cathedral, hands-down.

I led this one, since it’s definitely my style – cracks and edges. There was one rough move right off the deck, but it was followed by super-clean crack climbing which closes out to some small face moves near the top.

It’s slightly challenging at it’s level, but so good. 100% recommended.

 

Child’s Play (5.6)

Child’s Play is another “super-classic” route, right near Kiddy Crack, rated at being one of the best routes in New England. In my opinion it’s not as good as KC, but still very clean and fun moves covered by very solid protection.

Alex led this one, and had a pretty good time of it from what I could tell. For me, seconding was a bit scary – not from any danger on the climb, but from the worry of rain. The sky opened up on us literally minutes after we finished rappelling off the top.

 

Sunday: Rumney

Unfortunately I don’t remember any of the route names from Sunday, since I wasn’t the one looking them up in the book. But the basic plan was that five of us (Alex, myself, Sean, Adam, and Liz) would climb a bit on the Main Cliff (since it would definitely be dry from the rain), and then we’d either continue climbing there, or head up to something a bit tougher as the day wore on.

 

Main Cliff:

 

5.7

This one I’d done before a few years back – it sits on the bottom tier of the main cliff, and leads up to some of the bigger and burlier climbs at Rumney. It’s got a quick tricky start, but once you master the movements the rest of the climb is classic Rumney – clean and fun face climbing. I think it was something like four bolts long though, so it doesn’t last long enough to really loose yourself in it.

I lead it and set it as a toprope for the others – simple and easy lead, definitely a good one if you want to try out the grade.

 

5.8

Unlike the climb above, this one you can get lost in it. Alex took the lead, and it was long. As in “we used almost half of the rope” long. And in climbing, that’s the farthest that you can go on a single rope… assuming you want to get the rope back afterward.

It was fun, but a bit boring to be honest. Most of the climbing was simple rock-scrambling, although near the end it did turn into a rather interesting and steep route. I’d recommend it if you want a long route with an amazing view at the top. Otherwise, don’t bother.

This was supposed to be a two-pitch route, but when we looked over to see the next pitch… it was nowhere to be found. I’m guessing that it’s very rarely climbed, and that lichen has overgrown most of the route in the meantime – we chose to rappel off instead of continuing, since missing the route up meant accidentally getting onto anything from a .10d to an .11a. Not safe.

 

G-Spot Wall:

 

5.10b

Oh man, this route. This route. Oh man.

This route was excellent – hard, challenging, but workable with very interesting and technical moves throughout. Alex again took the lead, busting it out after a few short falls / rests at the bolts; a very burly lead none-the-less though. I took the second cleanly (much to Alex’s chagrin), but cleanly due to the fact that I didn’t have to lead it.

100% recommended if you get a chance, and have strong faith in your outdoor leading skills.

 

5.7

This was a simple route that Adam and Liz had set up, since Sean had headed home after we left the Main Cliff.

This route was full of interesting moves, strange bolt locations, and generally sketchy bolting stances. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy anything about the route – the moves weren’t very fun, the route itself was scattered and unclear, and the bolts were never where they should have been – a foot above of below where they were would have been fine, but whoever bolted it was definitely not thinking about a climber of my height.

Not horrid, but unless you’re really searching for routes… pass this one over.