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October 6, 2016
Hi Folks,
For the past several years wearing any kind of tight-ish shoes on my left foot was painful. That includes bike, climbing, hiking and ice boots. Understand that I gave up wearing skin-tight rock and bike shoes MANY years ago, so we’re really talking about shoes that fit fairly normally. I would get this pain near the nail on the outside of my big toe. I took to wearing sandals around the house and very sloppy running shoes for the most part. Let’s just say that kicking ice in boots in the winter was, shall we say, “annoying”.
I’m sure that if you’ve ever had an ingrown toenail, you will recognize what I’m talking about. It kind of creeps up on you, until one day you realize it’s impacting many things that you do. A couple of years ago I went to our friendly local podiatrist who looked at my toe and pronounced it a “classic ingrown toenail”. He said that he could remove it, describing the procedure as minor surgery. Ever since having my back worked on in the mid-70’s, I have this aversion to anyone coming near me with a knife so I put it off. However, about 1000 miles into riding the mountain bike this year I found myself getting pretty annoyed with my foot. Not to mention how it felt after a day of edging on thin face climbs. So, a couple of weeks ago, with some amount of trepidation, I called him up and made an appointment for Tuesday to get this dealt with.
As is the case with many things like this, I had overblown it in my head. I went in the office, they cleaned and then chilled the toe, injected it with lidocaine for the pain, put on a little tourniquet to keep it from bleeding and cut the offending side of the nail out! I didn’t feel anything except some pressure as he cut it out - needless to say I didn’t watch! He put some kind of chemical down in the root which he said would keep it from growing back, and we were done. he showed me the nail he removed and it was surprising how deeply it had grown down inside the toe. He said he was surprised that I had been able to climb and ride as much as I do, considering how it was.
I asked how long I was going to be unable to do do the stuff I do and was surprised when he responded with a laconic “24 hours, if you feel OK.” I felt good so yesterday, Wednesday, I decided to go for a ride with Phil O up Town Hall Road in Intervale. We’ve done this ride many times and depending on how much you want to do it can vary from 12 to 20 miles. If you do the basic ride, it’s a nice ride on dirt and logging roads that gives you about 1,100’ of easy elevation gain in 6.2 miles. You pass the Mountain Pond trailhead and continue up past a couple of gates and a now-dry stream crossing to the Mt Eastman trailhead. The views are nice and the leaves right now are changing nicely. I’ve done this ride many times at all times of year, including in the winter, and it never disappoints. It’s a snowmobile trail in the winter, so it’s a great ride on the fat tire bike or cross country skis.
NOTE for visiting climbers! Town Hall Road has many pulloffs and camping areas that are great for spring through fall. If you are looking for a free place to camp while in the area, this is a great option. As always please clean up after yourselves and be careful with campfires.
I was very happy that there was really no pain in the toe to speak of, during or after my ride. WOO WOO!! This made me feel very confident. Brad and the Perez’s had asked me about going back up to Mt Forist today, and this gave me optimism about taking them up on their offer. I picked up Brad at the shop at 9:15 and met the Perez’s at the White Mountain Cafe up there around 10. As you can well imagine the roads were crowded with leaf peepers, and with good reason - the Notch is at peak color right now. Interestingly enough, when we got to the parking area at Madigan Street there were already 2 other cars there. However we didn’t see anyone when we walked up to the cliff.
As is often the case, Brad had a plan to do the DLM Memorial Route, a 6 pitch route that is about 20’ left of Madigan. It’s the furthest left route in Matt Bowman’s little guide pamphlet. While rated 5.7 by the FA party, I feel it’s more like 5.8. Tho there are other places on the climb that are runout, IMO the most dangerous bit is getting to the first gear placement and bolt above that. That said there are a couple of other places where the bolts are very widely spaced. Like some other routes put up by this group, the bolt placement is somewhat inconsistent. On some pitches there are tons of bolts, on others of about the same grade or harder, there are less. Of course your mileage may vary, but this is the opinion of myself and several friends.
The climbing on pitches 1-4 is fairly typical Mt Forist climbing, basically slab with lots of features and lots of mica. The upper 2 pitches is on rock that is actually quite unusual; dark, sweeping, smooth rock, with small undulating features requiring more delicate friction technique. It has a decided Whitehorse feel to it, tho the rock has somewhat more texture. The last pitch is almost a full 30 meters, with the crescendo finish up a headwall (5.7) past 3 bolts. The rappel anchor is somewhat hidden, 2 bolts on a rock up and left of the pine trees where you belay your second.
The Perez’s followed us up the route on their own 70 meter rope, occasionally sharing the anchor with us. At the top we each did 2 raps with our own ropes, down to the anchor at the top of P 4, just below the blueberry ledge. Then we combined our 2 70’s, allowing us to get to the ground in 2 long rappels. While we all found this to be a rewarding climb, we all agreed that although it’s rated 5.7, it’s probably 5.7, and probably isn’t a climb for your garden variety 5.7 leader. You can do the whole climb with an assortment of small to medium cams, the largest being the green Camelot, and slings/draws. You absolutely need at least double 60’s or a 70 meter rope to get off. Put knots in the ends as there were several places where there was only a few feet of rope left at the anchor!
When we got down there was another party of 3 packing up. It was Larry K, a mutual friend, and 2 of his friends. All in all it was lots of fun, with good friends on a spectacular day. In many ways it doesn’t get a whole lot better than this. Here are some pictures:
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/foliage_1.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/foliage_2.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/foliage_3.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/MtForist_1.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/MtForist_2.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/MtForist_3.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/MtForist_4.jpg
Other than the occasional mosquito, there aren’t any bugs out there.
I rode the annual Bike 4 Books to support the North Conway Library on Saturday with a crew that I ride with most Friday’s. This year it wasn’t a circum-valley excursion as has been for years, staying exclusively on the East side of North Conway. We only rode 14 miles, about half of the possible riding for the day, but it was a nice ride in the woods with compatible people. Although the morning started out with a little drizzle, it mostly cleared off before noon and whatever rain we got had little to no effect on the trails. All in all it was a good ride for a great cause.
As I mentioned last week, there has been a bunch of work done on the Red Tail Trail that runs up alongside Hurricane Mountain Road. The new berms at the bottom are looking very good and there are some entertaining humps for those into that sort of thing. Kudos to NEMBA for their efforts.
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/Bike_1.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/Bike_2.jpg
At around 4pm, as we were coming back up Rt 16 from climbing at Mt Forist in Berlin, an ambulance and fire truck passed us going up the hill. As we drove up toward Pinkham we saw smoke on the mountain. We stopped at the Great Glen house and looked with the binoculars and could see a car fully engulfed and cars backed up along the traverse. I hope that people are OK and the fire does not get into the woods up there.
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/CarFire_1.jpg
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20161006/CarFire_2.jpg
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
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