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I have been thinking about my dad a lot this past week or so. Partly because of Veterans Day, and partly just because the later years of his life were very different from mine. He was a very active man all through his mid-60's. Mostly he was a golfer, tho he also fished. He would think nothing of walking 9 holes almost every afternoon after a full day of work, and 18 on Saturday and Sunday. Strangely, once he sold his business and retired, he basically just stopped doing anything. Of course this is not how I am living my life, even in spite of the virus.
Dad lived up here with my ex and me for about 6 years. Even tho by that time he wasn't able to get around all that well, he really enjoyed taking drives in the mountains. Needless to say he never climbed or mountain biked, tho he was quite supportive of me doing all those things. He played football in college and was a fighter pilot in the Navy in WW II, flying F4U Corsairs off carriers in the South Pacific. He certainly have appreciated the pictures I took of the various places I have been in the mountains, and I have to think that as a younger man he would have enjoyed doing them himself. The following picture was taken on his graduation from flight school.
All my thoughts and love to out to those veterans past and present, but especially those of the Greatest Generation, who have served to protect and defend our country.
CLIMBING:
The weather this past week was in fact the Indian Summer that I was hoping for. Brad and I got out on Whitehorse twice this week - once on Sea Of Holes and the other on Cormier-Magness. Neither of us have climbed that much on Whitehorse recently, so it was a real gas. Last week we did Slabs Direct, so we got right back into the whole slab thing. The 2 previous times we had wanted to do Cormier-Magness it was always full up, but this time the sky was cloudy and there was hardly anyone on the whole cliff. Regardless it was so warm we climbed in t-shirts. Check out the leaves on the first pitch of Beginners! I hardly put in any gear on that pitch, but this time I did and frankly I wish I'd had a leaf blower! LOL
I gotta figure that the weather is going to close in soon, so I just have to get out every day for something. You should do the same.
ROAD STATUS:
The DOT reopened Hurricane Mt Road early this week, go figure... Gotta keep letting those mountain bikers shuttle up to all the great downhill trails. Bear Notch is still closed and will remain so. No word on Evans Notch...
MUSIC RELATED:
The gig on Saturday was fantastic. Not a huge crowd, but a good one nonetheless. This is absolutely the last one at Lenny's and I'm pretty sure there won't be anything else outside 'till the spring. :-( But I've been very happy to have the gigs I had this year.
Even tho we've just had an entire week of gorgeous 70 degree weather, the weather is changing and it's time for the White Mountain ICE Report.
As I have said before, I've been writing the Report for 22 years, since 1998. I hope you find it useful. And if you do, I'd sincerely appreciate a small donation to support what I do. As always, absolutely any amount is welcome, and you can easily go ON LINE and make your donation via PayPal. And you don't really even need a PayPal account, you can use almost any credit card. Just click the link below:
Of course you can also contribute via check or money order if you like. Please make it out to Al Hospers and send it here:
NEClimbs
92 Bow Lane
North Conway, NH 03860
The time and expense of the running and maintaining NEClimbs.com and putting out The White Mountain Report continue all year. But in the winter I put in at least 5 hours every Thursday driving up into the Notch, taking the pictures, processing them, writing the Report, posting the pix on NEClimbs and FaceBook and putting out the email newsletter Report. It's an effort... PLEASE REMEMBER, it's your contribution that makes this newsletter and the NEClimbs web site viable.
BTW You can see almost all of the Reports on NEClimbs.com archived from as far back as September of 1999! To get a sense of the popularity of the site, current traffic as of October 29 2020 on NEClimbs.com is about 126,000 UNIQUE visits a day, generating almost 2 million monthly "HITS". The White Mountain Report newsletter goes out every week to over 1,200 subscribers weekly!
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
SOME LOCAL/NATIONAL PANDEMIC THOUGHTS:
DADGUMMIT - The numbers are really climbing friends. There are now 10,415,779 confirmed cases in the US, 241,907 American citizens are dead and there are 1,287,051 reported deaths world-wide from the Corona Virus as of Thursday November 11th! YIKES... On Wednesday, New Hampshire had had 229 new cases of the virus reported, 2 new deaths and our positivity rate is up from last week.
Several days ago Carroll County was one of two in the state with only moderate Community Transmission. That has now changed to SUBSTANTIAL. In the 10 days from Nov 1-11, New Hampshire has added MORE cases than from the 58 days between March 2-April 9; which was at the height of the pandemic. The latter was mostly from nursing homes, but this is almost all from Community Transmission. All of New Hampshire is now RED, and I don’t mean politically speaking!
For you, your friends and your family’s sakes people, wear the damn mask, wash your hands, be distant. You want to get together with your friends and family, your climbing buds; you want a thanksgiving and xmas party. Hell, so do I... But if this keeps up, we won’t have any folks to hang with. This is NOT political. This is life and death folks. It’s not fake, it’s no joke.
I said this before, but it's worth repeating - you're thinking about climbing up here at Frankenstein and Cathedral Ledge or in Vermont this winter at Willoughby - right? You want an Ice Fest, even if it's a socially distanced one? Well friends let me tell you, if we don't get this under control that ain't happening. Trust me, the next step could be restricting people from New York, Massachusetts or Connecticut from coming up here for amy reason - much less to climb. Is that what you want? I didn't think so...
I find JHU's Daily COVID-19 Data in Motion report to be very informative. It shares critical data on COVID-19 from the last 24 hours in a short 1 minute animated video format.
WEAR A MASK, SANITIZE AND STAY PHYSICALLY DISTANT FRIENDS!
REMEMBER - WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
VALLEY CYCLING:
A few days ago I repeated the big ride I'd done last week with my buddy Phil. This time we started at the base of Hurricane Mt Road, cut through the woods into the condos left of Cranmore, road across the base of Cranmore, up the maintenance road on the far right, across the Cranmore Connector, left onto the Hurricane trail entrance and stayed left on the new downhill trail. We popped out on the Kandahar ski trail, went down a bit and the angled left all the way back across the middle of Cranmore back to the maintenance road. From there we went back across the base of Cranmore and followed the new machine-built trail that takes you back over to the end of Kettle Ridge and back to the water tower. It's about 10 miles and 2,000' of climbing. Needless to say I was beat. Here's a map...
http://www.neclimbs.com/wmr_pix/20201112/bike.jpg
PS I forgot to turn on Strava until I was part way up the maintenance road, so the map is missing about 1.5 miles and ~200' of climbing.
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:
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.
