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Pitch darkness at 5:45, a quarter moon with surrounding stars on a warmish morning with the light breeze whispering in the trees. My morning walk is always a tiny sliver of normalcy, in what seems to be an increasingly insane world!
There is often a big difference between the Valley and Crawford Notch, and today was a perfect example. When I left the house at 8:30 it was 31 degrees and sunny. I was dressed for winter, but not overly so. But when I got to Bartlett the temperature started dropping - 30, 26, 21, 18 and all the way down to just above 14 at the Dry River Campground at 9 AM, with a howling wind - pretty crazy! It was hard to get good pictures of stuff in the upper Notch with the blowing snow and the wind buffeting me as I tried to shoot without a tripod. [wry grin] I was hoping to take a run up Standard, but there were already 2 parties in the cave at that time and more walking in, so I decided I would do it another day. That's one good thing about living up here...I can go when I want.
I did get out on Sunday with Matty Bowman. We both had been eyeing Welcome To Machine over the past week, and after he spotted an Instagram post by Peter Doucette of he and Majka doing it and Dropline the day before, we made plans. There was a party on it when we got there but we waited and got on it fairly quickly. I've led it 3 times over the years, so it was great that Matt got on it. It's a classic that hasn't formed very often over the past 5+ years, so right now it's something to grab.
Thanks to Ryan Howes for the great pic of me following Matty. Gotta love that iPhonePro.
Ice Conditions Report:
Selected Ice Conditions effective February 19, 2026
Just as you would expect following Ice Fest AND a week of truly balmy temps, going to be upper 30's today, the ice can be a mixed bag. I saw someone post about how things are terrible. But digging into it, I realized they were talking about places like the North End that are very well used. It probably gets the most use of all. There are only a few places that have really easy access to moderate climbing and where you can set up a bunch of top-ropes. So that's not unexpected. And of course the climbs that are getting a lot of full sun are getting somewhat punked-out. On my way back from Wolfeboro mid-afternoon a few days ago I took a look at Rainbow Slabs which look as if they are getting pretty funky. And I watched a hunk of the bottom of Way In The Wilderness fall down! IMO it's really the time to start paying attention to what you're walking underneath, any time of the day. Enjoy this weather, but keep paying attention...
Huntington Ravine
numerous options
Repentance
iffy
Standard Route
GREAT conditions
Dracula
IN & very fat
For the full current conditions report, CLICK
HERE
As always the full set of pictures are on Facebook and NEClimbs.
SOME LOCAL/NATIONAL PANDEMIC THOUGHTS:
There's so much going on, I'm just going to leave you with the current statistics, which are IMNSHO horrible, and this picture:
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:
There is now snow on the trails so things have definitely changed. Places where I was happily riding the 27.5+, aren't passable on that bike. It's not icy, but it was time to get out the fat tire bike and put on the studded tires. I was wondering about the East Side trails so I did the shakedown ride on Tuesday over behind Walmart. I rode out the fire road out and Cheater back. It was just packed from people walking, so it wasn't great. Then I did the road that parallels the RR tracks toward Puddin' Pond. Some snow machines had been there so it's pretty good. Looking down the tracks I could see many large trees on the tracks! I don't know when that happened, but it's going to be a problem for the snow machines this winter. I checked out Bear Notch today and the snow machines are up there now so that should get packed out quickly. They aren't on Sawyer River Road, so that's going to be a while. I am looking forward to some fun riding this winter.
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.
