Mats Roing
New member
Ice tool wielding crew:
cbcbd (Doug)
Skimom
Gillian
Mats
Our plans for the mighty Blue Hills fell through after our careully selected guide decided to recover from a tough Saturday. Also the sixth member of the team, Chomp, didn't want to risk life and limb in the Blue Hills without a professional guide.
After some deliberations over coffee and breakfast it was decided to try some ice climbing in the Hammond Pond, MA area. An urban legend says that occasionally a seasonal steep glacier develops in that area during the winter. So we headed out for a quest of this glacier. We parked our cars at the Chestnut Hill Mall parking lot off route 9 and geared up. Another car showed up and the driver pulled out a rope and he also had snow shoes ready in his car in case needed. No idea who it was.
Shortly after heading into the woods we passed under the mighty headwall by Hammond Pond. One climber was seting up a toprope, but we didn't need rope since we decided to head up a less than vertical gully to the right. It was a narrow passage between the rocks but after remembering that SherpaJohn says that we can accomplish mighty things we made our way up those 8 verical feet and came up on a high plateau. We meandered around in awe and found some remnants of an ancient Danish viking settlement in form of a green Carlsberg beer bottle. Strange things hanging from strings in the trees made us think of "The Blair Witch Project". But we pushed on fearless through the woods. After passing a memorial cross where a fellow climber must have fallen from the cliffs above, we took a safer left route and made it to the summit where strange symbols were painted on three rocks on an unamed summit. One rock was flat and probably used for sacrifices to the gods. It also worked well for pushups.
We pushed on with our quest for the ice climbing area although no success so far......after getting slightly lost and a few tricky class 3 moves we figured we had gone in a circle.....oh boy....confusing forest this is (yoda voice)....
We pulled out our compass and decided to go straight south.....and we came upon another summit Then we went eastwards and downhill. Some climbers were bouldering in an area with the rock pockmarked with chalk. After watching some climbers fall a few times ono their pads cbcbd and I couldn't resist the urge to taste the rock ourselves......of course it started raining and we continued our hike. Suddenly the parking lot was straight ahead of us......and right behind the cars we saw an immense snow ridge rising way up in the sky.......maybe 20 feet! We deemed this to be an old glacier since the top was covered with rocks and gravel. It was mighty steep on the sides and cbcbd pulled his leashless tools out of his car and the party began
I had the honor to start out and picked a wicked hard PLI (Parking Lot Ice) grade 2+ route up the north butress. The ice was in great shape and after some acrobatic maneouvers made it over the lip and felt a great relief when heading up towards the main ridge. This was not the highest point so I had to go southward 50 feet or so for the main summit. Breathing was a bit harder here since considerably higher up than the parking lot.
Next up was Doug who spotted a good route on the South Butress. It had a steep overhang but Doug trianed on overhangs in Trollville a couple of weeks ago and he seemed to have mastered the tecnique. He also made it all the way to the main summit and didn't look as tired as I was (must have been that I already packed the trail)
Dani picked the Central Colouir between the North and South Butress. There were some difficult ice caves to overcome but Dani swung the tools like there was no tomorrow and made it look easy.....kind of like Mark Synnott did two weeks earlier. After posing on the main Summit she took the Great Gulf route down and joined us a bit later on the east side of the ridge.
Gillian, now fully recovered from her ankle injury, decided to do a first ascent of the North Face of this massif. She did it in a very "un-Irish" way and walked straight up the steep frozen water. She now had the challenge of having to taverse the entire 100 foot ridge. We were cheering her on as much as we could praying she won't contract HAPE or fall down the Great Gulf on the other side (the U-shape of the ridge made it look like the great Gulf actually).
Satisfied with our four first ascents of the day we called it a day.
Stay tuned for photos and videos of the hard climbing......
Mats
cbcbd (Doug)
Skimom
Gillian
Mats
Our plans for the mighty Blue Hills fell through after our careully selected guide decided to recover from a tough Saturday. Also the sixth member of the team, Chomp, didn't want to risk life and limb in the Blue Hills without a professional guide.
After some deliberations over coffee and breakfast it was decided to try some ice climbing in the Hammond Pond, MA area. An urban legend says that occasionally a seasonal steep glacier develops in that area during the winter. So we headed out for a quest of this glacier. We parked our cars at the Chestnut Hill Mall parking lot off route 9 and geared up. Another car showed up and the driver pulled out a rope and he also had snow shoes ready in his car in case needed. No idea who it was.
Shortly after heading into the woods we passed under the mighty headwall by Hammond Pond. One climber was seting up a toprope, but we didn't need rope since we decided to head up a less than vertical gully to the right. It was a narrow passage between the rocks but after remembering that SherpaJohn says that we can accomplish mighty things we made our way up those 8 verical feet and came up on a high plateau. We meandered around in awe and found some remnants of an ancient Danish viking settlement in form of a green Carlsberg beer bottle. Strange things hanging from strings in the trees made us think of "The Blair Witch Project". But we pushed on fearless through the woods. After passing a memorial cross where a fellow climber must have fallen from the cliffs above, we took a safer left route and made it to the summit where strange symbols were painted on three rocks on an unamed summit. One rock was flat and probably used for sacrifices to the gods. It also worked well for pushups.
We pushed on with our quest for the ice climbing area although no success so far......after getting slightly lost and a few tricky class 3 moves we figured we had gone in a circle.....oh boy....confusing forest this is (yoda voice)....
We pulled out our compass and decided to go straight south.....and we came upon another summit Then we went eastwards and downhill. Some climbers were bouldering in an area with the rock pockmarked with chalk. After watching some climbers fall a few times ono their pads cbcbd and I couldn't resist the urge to taste the rock ourselves......of course it started raining and we continued our hike. Suddenly the parking lot was straight ahead of us......and right behind the cars we saw an immense snow ridge rising way up in the sky.......maybe 20 feet! We deemed this to be an old glacier since the top was covered with rocks and gravel. It was mighty steep on the sides and cbcbd pulled his leashless tools out of his car and the party began
I had the honor to start out and picked a wicked hard PLI (Parking Lot Ice) grade 2+ route up the north butress. The ice was in great shape and after some acrobatic maneouvers made it over the lip and felt a great relief when heading up towards the main ridge. This was not the highest point so I had to go southward 50 feet or so for the main summit. Breathing was a bit harder here since considerably higher up than the parking lot.
Next up was Doug who spotted a good route on the South Butress. It had a steep overhang but Doug trianed on overhangs in Trollville a couple of weeks ago and he seemed to have mastered the tecnique. He also made it all the way to the main summit and didn't look as tired as I was (must have been that I already packed the trail)
Dani picked the Central Colouir between the North and South Butress. There were some difficult ice caves to overcome but Dani swung the tools like there was no tomorrow and made it look easy.....kind of like Mark Synnott did two weeks earlier. After posing on the main Summit she took the Great Gulf route down and joined us a bit later on the east side of the ridge.
Gillian, now fully recovered from her ankle injury, decided to do a first ascent of the North Face of this massif. She did it in a very "un-Irish" way and walked straight up the steep frozen water. She now had the challenge of having to taverse the entire 100 foot ridge. We were cheering her on as much as we could praying she won't contract HAPE or fall down the Great Gulf on the other side (the U-shape of the ridge made it look like the great Gulf actually).
Satisfied with our four first ascents of the day we called it a day.
Stay tuned for photos and videos of the hard climbing......
Mats
