iceclimber
New member
That's right. We got the first climb in the dack's for the season! Left ALbany at 2:30 am Saturday Nov 11th. At 4:20Am or so, we were in the Stewarts in Keene praying to god that the gas pumps were on, as my truck had been on low fuel since exit 30 off the northway! There weren't open till 5:30, so we had a couple choices.. 1) put all our gear on and hopefully not freeze wating 1+hr for them to open up, OR 2) chance getting the truck to Lake Placid some 10+ miles away..... I chose #2 Smiley
Even with all the elevation gain through cascase pass, we eneded up at the gas station in Lake Placid, and I got the nice girl who was in early to turn on the pumps!
What a start to the day!
Anyway, we go to the toll house on Whiteface and started up. Conditions at the toll house were pretty fallish. Snow snow scattered about, but mostly just COLD!
After about 1 mile walking up, you get to around 2800ft and thats when the road was all snow. There were plenty of x-country tracks the whole way up. We brought our snowshoes, but didn't need them. We followed truck tires pretty much the whole way up the 5 miles. Once we go to the couple of switchbacks near the top, we were getting tired, but the former ice at lower elevations on the road gave us good hope!
Right after where the hiker's trail intersects the road is where the climbs were. There were plenty of options, as we walked up and scanned all the possible routes. It was windy as all heck right there tho, so I quickly ran back and up the hikers trail to setup a TR on the frozen mass of trees above. One thing to note: if others are planning on doing so, bring plenty of long webbing, as the frozen trees are sometimes far back, and nonetheless you need to setup 3 or 4 equalized anchor points as they are not much alone. I used 3 trees and 1 cam into a rock above to equalize our TR.
On our way down we used our snowshoes to keep footing while others on skis made their way up. What a great day!
Climbers - Pics up on http://adkclimbs.com
Even with all the elevation gain through cascase pass, we eneded up at the gas station in Lake Placid, and I got the nice girl who was in early to turn on the pumps!
What a start to the day!
Anyway, we go to the toll house on Whiteface and started up. Conditions at the toll house were pretty fallish. Snow snow scattered about, but mostly just COLD!
After about 1 mile walking up, you get to around 2800ft and thats when the road was all snow. There were plenty of x-country tracks the whole way up. We brought our snowshoes, but didn't need them. We followed truck tires pretty much the whole way up the 5 miles. Once we go to the couple of switchbacks near the top, we were getting tired, but the former ice at lower elevations on the road gave us good hope!
Right after where the hiker's trail intersects the road is where the climbs were. There were plenty of options, as we walked up and scanned all the possible routes. It was windy as all heck right there tho, so I quickly ran back and up the hikers trail to setup a TR on the frozen mass of trees above. One thing to note: if others are planning on doing so, bring plenty of long webbing, as the frozen trees are sometimes far back, and nonetheless you need to setup 3 or 4 equalized anchor points as they are not much alone. I used 3 trees and 1 cam into a rock above to equalize our TR.
On our way down we used our snowshoes to keep footing while others on skis made their way up. What a great day!
Climbers - Pics up on http://adkclimbs.com
