-5 in Crawford Notch, NH

Sunday I made the drive over to New Hampshire, specifically to Crawford Notch State Park.  Home to some excellent ice climbing including the famous Frankenstein Cliffs and countless moderate alpine routes.  My chosen route was Willey's Slide, a 4-6 pitch (depending on how much snow is at the base) WI2 ice climb.  Overall this climb is very easy and not very steep, but when it is -5 F without the windchill, everything becomes infinitely more challenging.  Unfortunately Isaac was unable to climb on this day, so I enlisted a climbing partner off of NEice.com, the east coast equivalent of the renowned cascadeclimbers.com.  The approach was a quick jaunt (15 min) straight up hill to the slide.  The first two "pitches" were easily dispatched by merely walking up them.  We roped up at the base of the first "steep" section of ice.  The climbing was easy and fun, though quite brittle.  We swapped leads and were at the top rather quickly.  A great day out on an easy, but incredibly fun ice route.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it was REALLY cold all day long (according to NOAA, wind chills at Crawford Notch were past -21 F today).

Looking towards Mt. Willard (Cinema Gully is the left trending gully)

Mt. Webster

Almost there!

Me leading the 3rd pitch

I didn't realize I was smiling because I couldn't feel my face

Halfway up Willey's Slide