Mt. Washington ICE FESTIVAL 2008

A very tardy trip report but here it is.    Thursday evening John O., Emilio Ungerfeld, and myself met at BWI airport to catch our awesomely discounted Southwest flights to Manchester, NH for a weekend of ice climbing (and hob-nobbin with climbing rockstars) in N. Conway.  We had a little trouble with a frozen door on our rental vehicle at the airport and through a little weather made it to the White Trellis Motel in about 2.5 hours.    All three of us had clinics that Friday and thanks to Vince we secured 10% discounts with IME for those clinics.  John O. participated in the Mixed Climbing clinic with Mark Synnott, Emilio had the Alpine Primer?, and I had the women's steep ice with Majka Burhardt in the Texaco climbing area.  Majka was pretty phenomenal, she had me climbing grade IV+ just by using one swing of  tool (yes what I swung was what I got) while taking out screws from strenuous positions and threw in a mixed route for extra challenge.  I only had two other women in my class.  After the clinics IME had a great apre climb party with surprisingly good food and excellent beer.  We met up with Jen Veilleux that evening and headed to the slide show and we got a presentation on New England climbing from Will Mayo.  Our very own John O. participated in the figure 4 contest (the very first contestant!).  He had great form, can't wait to see him pull that move at the crag!  We then got a very inspiring slideshow from Maxime Turgeon (climbing from Colorado to K7 to Patagonia).    Saturday morning Jen V. and Emilio headed to IME for their classes (Ice and gully climb respectively) while John and I started out an hour later, grabbing breakfast at the Blueberry Muffin cafe (decent).  We then headed to Shoestring gully, Huntington and Tuckerman ravine being out because of avalanche danger.  Fun varied climb.  We soloed up a couple WI 2 sections but spent much more time snow climbing (up to about mid-thigh level).  We finished up the route with a dry-tool pitch 5.5 chockstone chimney for more variance and hiked off the route at the top.  We started about 10 AM and finished by 5 PM, so good day and we weren't exactly booking it either.  We met up with Emilio and Jen, took showers and opted for dinner before the slideshow at a thai restaurant next to IME.  With only one waiter on staff, we basically missed the entire slide show.    Sunday morning with a snow storm looming most of the gear reps were heading out as early as they could.  Jen V. had her waterfall ice course and she got Majka as her instructor as well and raved about it afterward (one tooling up WI 4+!).  John, Emilio and I found a great place for breakfast (Peaches) and then took advantage of the 30% sales at EMS and IME before checking out and driving to Manchester.  It was a good thing we left early as I found our rental lost almost all traction going up hills in slush and snow.  However, our flights back to BWI were delayed by a couple hours because of the weather.  But regardless everything generally worked out the way it should and everyone had a great time.

 

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