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There are a lot of things that happen every year to make you aware that Spring is well on the way. Longer days and generally warmer temps of course go without saying. (But there, I said it.) The change over to Daylight Savings Time is another. That one is always a bit annoying to me, and it's even annoying this year because of how early it happened. Hey, I was just getting used to it being light early in the morning and now it's still pretty dark when I like to get up. I guess that our congress just can't please everyone...
There are lots of other things that point to Spring. Here's a the list I came up with, in no particular order other than how I thought about it:
1) The ice is punky.
2) The snow has started to slough off Whitehorse in big thundering sheets.
3) There is mud everywhere, and it get tracked into the house & car.
4) I start to see a little water seepage in my basement.
5) There are lady bugs and big black flies in the house.
6) I see little black bugs in the breezeway and occasionally mosquitoes too!
7) The road crews are out clearing the snow away from the culverts.
8) The soft snow sticks to your crampons, even with "bot plates" installed.
9) Climbing the ice trade routes is like walking up a ladder.
10) It's great time to be up in the ravines.
11) It's hard to wait for the ice & snow on top of my favorite rock crag to melt before I can climb there.
12) There are interesting drips and drools that you almost never see, forming and disappearing almost before your eyes.
I would imagine that there are more, but those are the ones I can think of.
Ice Conditions Report:
Selected Ice Conditions effective March 21, 2024
I can't actually say that there is nothing out there that can't be climbed. That would be foolish. But for the average, or a little above average climber, that's probably correct. That said, I did hear that there is climbable ice on Parasol in Dixville Notch. Not sure how that will be after we get a foot of heavy wet snow on Saturday. Regardless, here's a few pix I took today just to document things.
Huntington Ravine
AVALANCHE
Repentance
OUT
Standard Route
OUT
Dracula
OUT
For the full current conditions report, CLICK
HERE
One note and I'll probably mention this a couple of times until we have a couple of days of warm rain... There is still a lot of ice & slush on the cliffs. Some of it is visible and some is hidden in the cracks & crevices. This is everywhere, even on very sunny crags like Humphry's. If you are going out to climb rock, be aware of what's above you. And remember, dark places like Standard Route on Cathedral hold ice until surprisingly late in the Spring and there will be snow on the upper slabs of Whitehorse for quite a while. Better safe...
Lost & Found:
If you were climbing Hitchcock Gully & found a pair of ice tools, please let me know. They would have been in the snow behind the rappel tree at the top of the rock pitch. Reward is offered!
Mobile Version Of NEClimbs:
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:
Check it out and if you have issues on your specific phone, please feel free to let me know.
NEClimbs & White Mountain Report On Facebook:
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:
Remember - climb hard, ride the steep stuff, stay safe and above all BE NICE,
Al Hospers
The White Mountain Report
North Conway, New Hampshire
All ice is dangerous. Grade 4 pillars are pumpy. Grade 5 pillars are pumpy and dangerous. Except for certain rare days of triple-high biorythms and favorable planetary alignments, grade 6 is beyond reach.
Climbing is a very dangerous sport. You can get hurt or even kill yourself. When you go climbing, you do so of your own free will. Everything on this site is to be taken with a grain of salt. Don't blame us if you get up some totally heinous route, in over your head and fall and hurt yourself.
