Ice... not snow...

I managed to get out on two ice climbing trips in the last couple weeks. Pretty rad.

The first was up to a place called Pitchoff. It's a really fun little cliff where you can do lots of top-roping. We setup a couple of ropes and just had fun in the sunny weather.



That thar's the climbs. We're ready to rumble.

Vesna challenged us to try this pretty easy climb without ice axes... she went for it successfully and Pat followed.



There was also a mixed route (involves both rock and ice climbing) that Vesna and Pat managed to climb. It was pretty freaking hard looking and burly.



I enjoyed not destroying myself on the mixed stuff and enjoyed the good ice that we found at Pitchoff as compared to Cohoes. I feel like my climbing is getting better and this makes me pretty happy.

I was going to post about the other climbing... but I skied all day today and am pretty exhausted, I think I'll fall asleep instead. Goodnight.

Walking in the Woods with Big Sticks on My Feet

As a downhill skier, I've never really gotten the cross-country thing. I mean, why go slowly in the flats when you can haul on mountains?

This past weekend, I decided to give cross country skiing a proper attempt. I joined a crew of ROCers up to Prospect Mountain which is a genuine cross country area with grooming crews, etc. I must say, it was reasonably fun and my impression of the sport has improved.



We did a couple of different trails and even checked out a black diamond (shudder) trail. I am amazed at how little control there is on the downhill. I missed edges. But some of the moderate downhills and flats were fun to crank out the speed on.

A lot of us were first time skiers and we all managed to line up for a demolition derby style crash. This was truly epic.



Can't you feel the carnage? Noice.

Skiing Wednesday....

Was pretty great. I don't have class and the weather was calling for lots of snow north of Troy. Mike Chu was down for some skiing and we snagged some cheap tickets to Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. I'd been wanting to checkout Gore for quite a while and they were supposed to get 6-10" of snow... noice!

Mike and I both had a great day. It seemed that we never stopped making fresh powder turns until it started snoraining around 1. We skied in the trees pretty much all day which was just great. We grabbed some lunch and did a couple more turns in the soaking wet snorain and then rolled home... Stellar day!



Gore had all kinds of little cliffs like this. Just the perfect size for me to work on and get better at huckin'. Lots of fun and soft landings.




Mike Chu laying it down in the woods....


Good weekend too! More to follow...

Drinking Tea and Climbing Mountains

Last week I struggled with a random version of the sniffles / cold dealy. I think I overworked myself with joy while watching the Giants win the Superbowl. I discovered the mass amounts of tea left in our apartment from the people who lived here before and discovered how convenient our tea kettle is. Mmm...

After ice climbing two weekends ago, the same group plus Jeff minus Vesna and Pat headed to the high peaks to climb Algonquin the second highest peak in New York State.



The trail passed by this rock formation on the way up. It was eery because of how black and white it looked (that picture is color).

The last half mile-ish before the summit is in the high alpine. You instantly go from hiking in snowy woods to harsh tree-less icy fun land.



There we are on the summit. Isn't the visibility awesome? The way up and down in the high alpine was pretty close to white-out conditions. There are big cairns (piles of rocks) to guide you up and down so it's sort of like connect the dots.



We did substantial butt-sliding on the way down. This was a very fun way to get down the mountain quickly...

Snow tonight! Woot!

Another Weekend....

And there was more climbing... we saw a bunch of rain/sleet last week so I wasn't all that enticed to go out skiing. Instead, we figured the wintery mix weather might have helped form some ice... right....

The plan was to climb at Plotterkill Falls. Upon hiking down to the stream that eventually becomes the Falls, the large amounts of water flowing was very disgruntling. The way streams work mean this water was probably... yup pouring over the ice on the falls. This climbing would have been QUITE unpleasant.

We rallied back to the cars and made a stop at Cohoes. It was amazing how much of that ice had actually dissapeared from last week... what's the deal?! For some reason, a different line had sort of come in, and we ended up climbing it:



Doesn't that look sketchy? The crux is right below where Pat is in this picture. That chandelier like thing isn't very solid and we destroyed quite a bit of ice there....

The ice was also covered in flowing water (although less than Plotterkill) and if it wasn't relatively warm, it would have been pretty freezing. Regardless, fun times and even a bit of a harder climb than last week, so good stuff.

Ice Climbing Cohoes

Last Friday, Pat, Mike, Jackie, and myself discovered that we all got out of class early enough to head outside for some quality ice climbing. The Cohoes area is situated right underneath Cohoes Falls which sort of create some big walls which develop ice when it's nice and cold. The ice was in but there's definitely room for more there... hopefully the cold weather keeps it growing! Pat took all these pictures (my camera is destroyed):



Mike getting up there. This was the route we climbed all day, there may have been another spot that could have had enough ice but we didn't have time to check it out.



Pat showing some belaying steeze with Cohoes Falls in the background.




I was supposed to take pictures of Jackie (Pat's girlfriend) when he was belaying. I found this highly entertaining.

Have a good weekend!