Day Two
Crawford Notch: The Day of Rains

We had decided to try another route in Crawford Notch, on Mt. Willard, called The Cleft (NEI 2-3), which is a couple hundred yards to the right of Hitchcock Gully (NEI 3+). We had planned on climbing the first pitch of Hitchcock (again), from which we would traverse over the ice slabs and rock to The Cleft. The guidebook described a line of similar difficulty to the upper portion of Hitchcock. It was a shorter route than Shoestring, which was good. Our ultimate goal for the trip was a route in Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington, and that would be a very long day. Today we'd do something a bit less physically demanding (we hoped) to conserve energy and recover a bit.

Or, alternatively, a lot.

Rain. Tapering a bit now and again to somewhere between spitting and leaky faucet, but also: quite warm. Highs in the 50s predicted.

We knew what we had to do, even if it might be frutiless. We ate breakfast, got dressed and drove to Crawford Notch. Just because. On our last trip we had experienced a fair amount of rain, but we'd found that it was often snowing in Crawford Notch while drops fell in the valley. We were hoping for the same today. It was not to be.

We drove up 302 and found exactly zero cars in the Willey's Slide pullout. Highly unusual. There is almost always someone on Willey's. We drove on up to the Notch pullout and found one vehicle. We sat in the... RAV4 and watched the drizzle collect on the windshield. A group of three climbers showed up, got out and walked up the road to check out Elephant's Head Gully (NEI 3+). They quickly returned to their car, reentered it, and sped away.

I will spare you the minutiae and say that we decided, I'd like to think mutually, to bag the day. More often than not I play Bad Cop. More often than not Brian plays Good Cop. We had a mostly typecast conversation. I felt that it was fundamentally too warm to climb and was concerned about the stability of the ice ("Smart climbers don't climb in this crap." "Desperate climbers do." Etc.). Brian was mostly silent, save for intermittent groaning and sighing. The forecast was for a cold snap overnight, which would hopefully solidify the ice that was left. We still had tomorrow, but losing a day, for whatever reason, stung.

The facts are as follows:
We just hadn't been able to climb much this year due to conditions, and every day that slipped through our fingers left a mark. I felt pretty bad about the whole thing. Brian and I my partnership had evolved into something more equitable (read: i'm leading, at least on ice) this season, and we were enjoying the benefits. We were climbing, and climbing, dare I say, reasonably well. But realistically speaking, this was it. We had two more days to climb ice on the East Coast. And now, make it one more day. I had an Alaska ice trip planned a couple of weeks later. Brian wasn't so fortunate. For him the next ice season was at least 10 months into the future, if winter ever decides to come back. He and I had a trip to Mt. Shuksan¹¹ planned in June, but three months can seem like an eternity.

At any rate, much like our last trip, the rain and high temperature beat us for a day. We drove back into Conway and did, essentially, nothing. We got our gear together for Huntington Ravine, and tried to forget that the day existed.

Day Three
Huntington Ravine, Mt. Washington
Crawford Notch

We got out of bed at 5.30am and quickly ate an early breakfast, threw the gear into the... RAV4 and did the drive to Pinkham Notch. We had settled on O'Dell's Gully (NEI 2), a longer alpine line in Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington.

My introduction to mountaineering had taken place on Mt. Washington in 1999. I still count the experience as one of the most positive and informative of my relatively short climbing life to date. We had ventured up into Huntington Ravine on that trip. It was awe-inspiring. And humbling. A steady 80mph wind had us doubled over and/or sailing like kites. There were a few parties on the routes, notably Pinnacle Gully (NEI 3), probably the best-known ice climb on the East Coast, and for good reason. At the time I couldn't imagine climbing in those conditions. At present I can just barely imagine it, and I still wouldn't want to give it much of a shot.

If you want to do a route in Huntington Ravine you're in for a long day. It's a 2.6-mile walk with 2100' of elevation gain to the ravine floor, another 1300' to the top of the climbs, and then another 3.6-mile descent back to Pinkham via the Lion Head trail, the typical descent (it is possible to rappel or downclimb a couple of the exit gullies in the ravine). Most parties take 6-10 hours car to car. We figured we would take a while.

We pulled in to Pinkham and walked in to the visitor's center to sign the climber's register and check the avalanche report. What we saw on the latter truly suprised me. Avalanche Danger: HIGH. Now, it was 7am and the report was from the previous day. But I simply didn't expect the rating. I assumed that much of the rain we'd seen down in the valley had been snow up high on Mt. Washington, but I didn't expect them to have received enough snowfall to go from a LOW rating to HIGH in a day. The report cited warming ice and snowpack (with ice dam weaknesses being a hazard, in addition to avalanche danger) coupled with new snow, all of which created instability and made the probability of a slide likely. I spoke to one of the AMC folks and tried to get a read on summit conditions, which are posted hourly. What we heard follows, in part: Three inches of new snow. Blowing snow and freezing fog. Winds holding at 89mph. Wind gusts to 103mph. Wind chill -50 degrees.

No thanks. This was not friendly climbing weather. It was downright surly. I had expected to be cold and not exactly comfortable. I had, however, neglected to bring my coal-powered suit and flamethrower. Brian and I decided, well... there wasn't much of a decision to make. We just weren't going to go all the way up there and get shut down. (The next day we checked the avy report and there was essentially an apology, saying that the HIGH rating had been a bit too conservative when compared to developing and, finally, actual conditions. Oh well. We'd still have been blown off the route.)

The morning was not without humor. Brian ran into a couple of guys staying at Dodge Lodge while we were contemplating what might become of our day. We were listening to the report and looking at posted conditions. One of the guys asked Brian what we were planning to do today. Brian told him we were going to climb a route in Huntington, but the avalanche danger was a bit too high. The guy responded with, "Can't they just blow it up?" Brian didn't quite catch on. "You mean, like, with an M-80 or something?" Brian quipped. It finally occurred to us that the guy was suggesting the same method of avy control employed by ski resorts: your friendly cannon.

No, they can't.

Above, Huntington Ravine from Pinkham Notch, 7.30am.

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¹¹My personal mountain with the most mojo, at least inside these United States. At least... inside the Lower 48. We plan to do the Fisher Chimneys route.