Adam came home from climbing last weekend with something called a Haul bag. It’s a bag used in big wall rock climbing to carry along all the things you need for a multi-day excursion. For example, you aren’t going to keep 4 days worth of water on a backpack while you are trying to cling to a millimeter wide ledge.

The bag is huge. So the first thing we had to do with it was see if the dog fit in it. Cooper’s a standard poodle, but he’s also only about 38 lbs. We put him in the bag and he fit in it entirely. We actually could probably have closed the bag up. Instead we decided to put him on Adam’s back in the bag. He didn’t like it much but he was remarkably tolerant.

And don’t worry, he got great treats for being such a good sport.

It’s brutal cold in New Hampshire today. I looked at the weather at one point and saw a windchill of -17 F. So I wanted to share some pictures from last weekend, when we spent the morning ice climbing under blue skies and relatively mild temperatures.

I hadn’t been out ice climbing since 2008. I’ve been feeling better about my fitness so I told Adam that I wanted to go. We visited an easy area of Rumney right near the parking lot.

I got my Koflach boots out, found a pair of expedition gaiters and threw on a pair of mono-pointed climbing crampons. Of course I didn’t think to check the status of the inserts in my boots so they had way too much room in them. Especially because I had run 13 miles a few days previous and had a nasty blister on my heel.

My first time up was hard. I was scared, I wasn’t sticking to the ice well and my boots felt way too big.

I was still very proud of myself for heading up. It’s a completely different sport from rock climbing.

As I climbed I gained some confidence and remembered some skills that I had been taught in previous climbing lessons.

Adam gave me some tips too. He’s been out climbing at least once a weekend since the ice season started.

The ice always feels a lot steeper than the pictures make it out to be.

The weather was warm but luckily not warm enough to get us soaked. I’ve iced climbed when there was a layer of water over the ice.

And it was warm enough that the ice was relatively soft and easy to swing our tools into.

Then of course my husband, who is a good climber thinks I could have been swinging my tools harder to make them stick better.

It’s fun to watch him climb the easy stuff. He tries to find harder ways up to get some good practice in.

I’d also like to make a shout out to the crag dog of the day. She was such a sweetheart. She came over and made herself comfortable at my side. People thought she was my dog.

And I’d like to leave you with some reminders of why the cold weather and icy conditions can be worth it.

Beautiful cascading blue ice.

Ice caves with stunning colour.

Giant slender icicles.

These are part of why I like ice climbing.

Have you ever had any desire to ice climb?

A few weekends ago my hubby took me rock climbing on this cliff. It’s a relatively big cliff called Whitehorse Ledge.  It’s one of two prominent rocks near Echo Lake State Park (where these pictures were taken). The other being called Cathedral Ledge.

He took me up a route called Beginner’s route in the Slabs. It’s a 5.5 slab route. The slab means there isn’t a lot of directly vertical sections and and most of the route relies on the friction between your shoes and the rock. This requires trusting the rubber of your soles. Also, the 5.5 rating means that it’s pretty easy.

In the thousand or so feet of climbing, that we completed in 8-10 pitches (distances between when the person leading builds an anchor and brings up the person on the other end of the rope), there were only a few sections that I felt were any difficult. And those sections were only frightening mentally.

I didn’t take any pictures while we were on the rock despite a great desire from my photographer’s eye to take several.

This is a poorly done panorama of the slabs section of Whitehorse ledge. We started on the right most side of the cliff.

Totally worth the effort too. I really love long easy routes.

Also, I was up North this weekend. It is amazing how much the foliage has bloomed in just a few weeks.

I’ve been driving to Canada a lot this summer. I used to do a lot of hiking in the White Mountains. When I see Cannon Mountain I know I’m well on my way to my destination. It’s always beautiful scenery. But when my husband sees Cannon all he sees is the cliff.

Full size here.

When my husband sees Cannon Cliff he thinks of Climbing. He’s actually climbed Cannon twice this year. He did a route called Whitney-Gilman Ridge on the South side of the cliff a few weeks ago. When it was first climbed in 1929 it was considered one of the hardest climbs in the United States.

Last week he climbed Moby Grape. A route that goes over the tallest part of the cliff.

Full size here.

Whitney-Gilman

This is the Whitney Gilman Ridge. It’s a ridge that sticks out a little from the cliff. Behind the ridge is a well known mixed climb (a combination of rock climbing and ice climbing) known as the Black Dike.

Moby Grape

This is the bottom of Moby Grape. Do you notice anything in particular?

Yep, there’s a group of climbers that can barely be seen.

Here’s an upper section of the climb.

These are the climbers I was able to pick out of the picture.

To give you a numeric idea of how tall this cliff is, it’s 1000 feet tall in places.

And these people are all climbing it in a single day.

This occasionally is where my husband can be found.

I get a little worried sometimes.  Especially when I look at the talus field under the cliff and when I think of how big the rocks that came down when the Old Man of the Mountain.
But he loves to climb, and he’s good at it. So I don’t mind that he’s one of those tiny specks crawling up the giant cliff.

And if you are driving through Franconia Notch State Park on a day with nice weather, bring a pair of binoculars. You might get to see some people practicing their passion.

There are people who believe that bringing a dog to a climbing area is a bad thing. Dogs get in the way, dogs trample the gear, dogs chew on ropes.

Maybe it’s a sign that we did something right in his socialization that our dog just finds a cool spot and lies down.  And if rope should fall on him during the rapel, well why would that be cause to move. Or rope being pulled up in a way that its rubbing against his face, well I guess the rope wants him to tilt his head slightly.

The comment we heard the most was that he doesn’t make a very good rope bag (a bag we put on the ground to protect the rope from mud and dirt). Maybe in time he will be big enough.

Sometimes I get a little behind on things I want to Blog about, especially on very eventful weekends, so I apologize that I’m blogging a week behind these events but I wanted to share.

So as we drove Southbound on 93 we managed to outrun the thunderstorms for a short while. Then my husband decided to pull over at a rest area on 93 South which is North of Tilton. I wondered who had the weak bladder. It turns out this particular rest area has some wonderful climbing Boulders.

Perhaps I should change by blog’s byline to Adventures of a climbing groupie. But I really do enjoy taking pictures of my husband and his friends climbing.

I even love scrambing up easy boulders to get a better perspective on things. Cooper usually follows me up boulders. But this one must have seemed too steep. The 16 foot leash is maxed out so I’m probably high enough to do some damage if I fell.

While I’m posting about this I should probably introduce Ben to the blog.

*Hi Ben*

Ben is our new housemate. He’s a friend of mine from back when I was a Senior in College.

He’s a 22 year old Mechanical Engineering Major who is into hiking, climbing and many other outdoorsy things. And he’s single and looking. So tell your daughters, sisters, granddaughters, neighbors…

Ben’s actually really excited about my current climbing groupie status, because it means he will finally have pictures of himself climbing.

And I am hoping that someday soon my feet will feel better and I’ll be confident climbing myself again.

I love this picture of my husband climbing a Boulder problem called the essentials in the Pawtuckaway’s Boulder Natural Climbing area. I actually climbed up the back of the boulder and was perched up there (with the dog because all dogs like to be stuck on top of a large rock with no room to run and no ability to get themselves back down) shooting pictures of him.

I just think that Adam looks catlike as he reaches for the top of the boulder. I think Audrey probably hypnotizes him as she sleeps on him every night. If you were wondering what position he had just come out of, it was a foot to finger match as shown below.

I like monkeys. I find them humourous and I love to watch them climbing all over things. So somehow I turned my husband into a Monkey.

When I met my husband he was frightened of heights. So to help him with his fear I brought him to a climbing gym.

He quickly developed a passion for the sport. Now he climbs multi-pitch climbs and talks about doing big walls.

Now no boulder is safe from his desire to climb it. Occasional structures as well. He boulders and free climbs to heights that would certainly make his mother nervous.

He’s very modest, but he’s actually quite good. Not competitive climbing good, but good enough to really enjoy a lot of routes on lead (Lead climbing is when you climb above your last piece of protection so if you fall you double your drop. Usually you want to feel confident enough in your skills that you wont fall at the level you are climbing at).

He even finds his way up trees on occasion.

Cooper has been enjoying hanging out when my husband is climbing around too.

Waimea, originally uploaded by mbarsalou.

Saturday my husband took me out climbing for the first time of the season. We went to a place in New Hampshire called Rumney Rocks. We didn’t climb the cliff above. That’s the impressive Waimea. You’d have to be a more advanced climber to do those routes. We did some of my favorites next to Jimmy Cliff, the super easy 2-pitch Clip-a-dee-doo-da and the Lady and the Tramp. After climbing my hubby decided to demonstrate how easy it was by soloing (no rope) the route. I just enjoy doing it for the practice in rope management. Of course my feet being painful still keeps me from really climbing much anyways.