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May 22, 2015
Hi Folks,
It’s been a tough several days and frankly I’ve had a very hard time writing the Report this week. First the deaths of Dean Potter and Graham Hunt in a wing-suit BASE jump that went bad. I met Dean briefly at Rumney many years ago and he was definitely one of a kind. I think that was the same day that I saw a pair of prosthetic legs propped up at the base of Waimea. I was, shall we say, overwhelmed that day. I posted a lot of stuff about Dean on the NEClimbs.com forum and our Facebook page lately, mainly because I’ve been struggling to understand how someone can so fully put themselves out on the edge as he did. I’m not sure it’s something that I can ever understand.
Here are all of the links to articles about Dean that I’ve posted over the past several days:
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web15s/newswire-hunt-potter-yosemite
http://www.outsideonline.com/1898131/aerialist
http://thestonemind.com/2015/05/19/a-rare-and-confounding-thing/
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/extreme-athlete-dean-potter-knew-dangers-of-base-jumping/ar-BBjTWig
http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/dean-potter-killed-in-wingsuit-accident-in-yosemite
RIP Dean and Graham.
Then 2 days ago a friend and local MWV fixture Greg Muzerall had a massive heart attack and died while riding his mountain bike down in Berwick Maine. As many have said much better than I could; Greg was one of those people that was your friend as soon as you met him. He was a bike mechanic, ski tuner, landscaper, rider, skier, chef and general all-around good guy. He worked on my bikes many times, and he always did a great job. Greg was the salt of the earth, a true Valley boy, and the number of people he touched over his 51 too-short years is many. RIP my friend.
Everything in the woods is in good shape right now. If you ride the MTB, I suggest that you just get out there on the trails & do it. Some of the roads that are closed in winter are still not open yet, like Bear Notch, tho I haven’t heard about Evans Notch or the Franconia Bike Path. That means it’s a pretty good time to ride on the road, except for the actual Memorial Day weekend. Enjoy…
I’m going to raise the BugCON rating to a 3 because people are hammering so much on me about it, not because I’ve experienced it myself. I was climbing on Whitehorse on Wednesday and they were minimal, have ridden my MTB most days and not been bothered very much at all and was working in my veggie garden this week and didn’t need to wear bug dope. However, lots of folks are saying that they are getting eaten up so I’ll split the difference. It’s supposed to have a hard frost tonight, so maybe that will knock the bugs back! One can always hope...
Up on one of the Mount Washington Valley's finest crags and want to know what that climb you're looking at is? Or maybe you're on your way up from Boston and want to check out the Ice Report for your upcoming weekend plans. Or more likely, you're at work just want to daydream about your next adventure. Well if you have a smart phone handy, you can get to NEClimbs from anywhere you have cell service. While it doesn't offer every single feature of the site and it's not an "app", in mobile form, it does do a whole lot and is very useful. Here is the live link to the mobile version of NEClimbs:
http://www.neclimbs.com/mobile
Check it out and if you have issues on your specific phone, please feel free to let me know.
Join us and LIKE us on Facebook. I'll try and post interesting pix every Thursday and the latest Ice Report in the season, tho certainly not the whole Report. Here's where you can check it out:
http://www.facebook.com/NEClimbs/
Remember - climb hard, ride the steep stuff, stay safe and above all BE NICE,
Al Hospers
The White Mountain Report
North Conway, New Hampshire
| If you don't let go, you can't fall off ! |
| Jerry Moffat |
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