Here we go again.

To say that this ice season has been uneventful would be a bit of an understatement. There has been no winter. None. Nada. There was one brief, two-week period where the ice climbs in New Hampshire came in reasonably fat, but we weren't there. And there was so much pent-up climber frustration up north that when the climbs did come in, they were quickly attacked and summarily destroyed.

By the time we made it back to New Hampshire this year, everything that wasn't high[er] alpine was out. Fallen down. Melted. Scrapola. For the climber wanting to see the frozen this late in the game, that climber must go high. That climber must slog. But hey, as we've said: we slog. Oh yes. Yes we do. Just you try and stop us.

No driving this time.
Only flying.
Then driving.

Like so. Wing in to Manchester, grab the rental (thanks Avis, this... RAV4 was just what I was looking for to give me that hardman exterior), get on the road.

We did the two-hour drive to Franconia Notch and stopped in Lincoln for a bite to eat. We changed into our climbing threads, then drove up I-93 to SR 302 to Crawford Notch. All we wanted was a couple of pitches to get the kicka-thokka going again. We took a look at Cinema Gully (NEI 2), which a week earlier had been reported as fat, but now was as thin as rice paper (or just fallen down - the entire top third of the climb was gone). Not smart. Willey's Slide (NEI 2) is almost always reliable for a pitch or two or six, but we'd done the route (I have done it twice) last year and there were already two parties visibly on it (not at all uncommon). We had heard there was a small flow to climber's right of Willey's called Little Willey's (NEI 2) which offered several pitches "of roughly the same difficulty as Willey's Slide." So we slogged on up and right to have a look.

We found Little Willey's. It was very low-angle ice and mostly snow. I'd put it at NEI 1+. But it was fine. I don't have any pictures. It wouldn't matter anyway.

But, for the record...

I led the first pitch over a little ice bulge to a slopey snow plateau. There was very little ice by the time I'd run out the rope and I ended up with a pretty crappy belay anchor in about 10cm of frozen granular snow over rock. I did my best with the two 13cm screws that bottomed out and the one 17cm that stood up from the surface like a periscope looking for a target (I had used the only 10cm screw I had on my harness as my first piece). I called down to Brian and told him that even though the climbing was very easy, to please not weight the rope unless absolutely necessary. Brian ran up without incident (as he would), we changed over, and he continued up, using international technique. Basically steeply walking. Brian anchored off a tree at the top of the second pitch and I quickly followed. We saw a ramp up and off right, but it didn't look like it went much of anywhere. We decided that we'd try to traverse left and drop in on Willey's Slide.

I led out an easy traverse over crusty, downsloping snow-covered ice to trees and boulders. The going got increasingly thick and Brian called over and asked if it was worth it. I could see Willey's Slide but it looked like it was going to be more work than would be rewarding just to get on it. I came back, brought Brian over to a pine and we did two quick rappels to the base and walked out. Even though the climbing on Little Willey's put me to sleep, it was nice to fly in, drive up and get a [very] few sticks. It was also nice trying out our Groundskeeper Willie accents on the route.

Our plan for this trip was as follows (full climbing days):
Day one: a long, alpine route on Mt. Webster
Day two: a shorter mixed route on Mt. Willard
Day three: a longer alpine route in Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington

We had the best intentions.

And now, if it's all right with you, let's get it on.