Everyone talks about how awesome shoestring was, well, damnit, i'm going after it. I ignored the fact that it rained and was 60-70 F all week. i knew thursday night was cold and friday would hover around the freezing temps. everyone at work was getting sick, courtney to my left was sick all week, d, to my right was out sick wed and thursday. i was starting to feel like crap on thursday and was really worried about the weekend. by the time thursday night came i knew i was f'ed. i went to bed at 8pm, took a nyquil, 2 melatonin and a naproxin. i woke up at 6am and could barely open my throat. i called in sick, but i couldn't fall back asleep. i just laid in bed moaning like wuss for 2-3 hours.
i had plans for a few weeks to climb with becca and a 2nd partner, but one after another the 2nd partners bailed. by the time it was friday i was too sick, and too tired to try and find a 3rd. i figured i wasn't feeling great anyways, so climbing in 2 would be faster. i generally drive up friday night, but figured it would be nice to go to bed early, in my own bed and get a late start sat morning if i felt better. shoestring is short anyways, i knew i needed the fresh air. i spent most of friday doing everything to recover, i made chicken noodle soup, i stayed warm, i drank tons of fluids. sat morning was rough, i was achy and congested, but we made the drive up. we got to shoestring and there was no ice... well, there was ice, just not something worth climbing. so we headed to willard, which looked pretty fat.
becca and i soloed the bottom section, which had more ice than i had ever seen, it was quite fun. prob wi2- stuff. i knew there were people on LHMW, so i decided to check out lower hitchcock, a climb i vowed to never do again. when i got to the base of the climb, i noticed a v-thread, i'm guessing someone decided to either rap off, or bail off. regardless, it looked pretty good so i called becca up and i went for it. super easy wi2 climbing lead to the rock section. the first time i was on it, i had no idea where i was going and went straight up the middle, it was scary and i had no pro the whole way up. with beta, i realized that i was supposed to go left, which i did this time. i tried traversing back onto the face, but the climb was so bone dry my tools wouldn't latch onto anything. i decided to downclimb and work my way up the left. a few tool sinks in the left and some hands on climbing got me up. of course, becca made it look super easy. she put her tools away and just climbed it bare handed...
we had some lunch and decided to get on east face slab south, a climb that i somehow have never been on. i recall aaron saying that he had to bushwack really far back to find a decent tree to anchor, and since we only had a 70 meter rope, i decided to just look around and see what i could find. luckily, i found a tree with rap rings on it. i brought becca up and decided that i should rap first in case the rope didn't reach. glad i did, they were about 15 feet off, even with rope stretch. i built an anchor on some stupid thin ice and let her rap off of that while i down climbed. a bit spicy, a lot of fun. next we hit upper hitchcock, it's a fun little calf burner and the upper headwall was in super candled conditions. really fun easy climbing, if you're ok with going the whole way without pro. i get up, anchor in and bring becca up.
it had been a few years since i've done upper hitch, i forgot that the walk off goes by the summit, it was nice to catch a decent view. we met a local who was on a hike after working at bretton woods, she was pretty happy to get up with some daylight left. from there it was a straight shot to the trellis to unload gear to dry. we opted for delaneys hole in the wall, got lucky and scored bar seating, ate all the things, then i just crashed. took a sudafed, a couple of melatonin and simply prayed i would sleep 10 hours and feel awesome the next morning. alarm rang at 6:30, i was so confused (yay drugs), i reset it for 7, then again at 7:30. after some bitching and moaning to myself i was able to pull myself out of bed, get packed really quick and head the bagels plus. bumped into the capitan and jake, so weird seeing her in NH, without 10 other news team members and 2 vans. i was going to yell out "news team, assemble" but it was like 8:30am and i didn't want the locals to hate me. by the time we got to the parking lot, it was 10 am. becca had to be back in RI by 5, 6 latest. figured we would do a single climb and call it a day. i thought of standard to penguin, or dracula. there were 3 parties on standard, so i opted for dracula. by the time i hiked up to the base, the leader was at least 8 or 9 screws and starting the stemming section of the climb. it took him roughly another 30 minutes to finish that section. they took a pretty cool line, center to right. i figured i would just go left, but i really wanted to dry dracula right, so i opted to wait for them to finish. all in all, it takes about 90 minutes. apparently these guys were "swinging" leads on dracula, in the sense that they couldn't do the crux, get lowered, switch off and let the other guy TR up to try it. one of them took a fall at the crux as well. people need to realize ice climbing is not rock climbing, if you're placing 12+ screws to get up dracula, and taking pretty much aiding up the climb, you probably shouldn't be on it... but who am i to say. i got really cold, but figured we had to get moving. i wanted to take their line, but not use their holds, so i moved a bit right. i got about 30 feet up and my hands started to barf since my gloves got wet (on another note, is dracula ever friggan dry?). i threw in a screw, clipped in and hung for 2-3 minutes. i hastily started out too soon as my hands were not done barfing, put in a 2nd screw and hung on that, only to hear the ice crack once i weighted it, fired in another screw to the left, moved over, clipped that and decided to just wait until i was done barfing before i moved again. few minutes go by, my hands are done barfing and i was able to move again. i make my way up to the last 3rd of the climb fire in a screw try to warm my hands up before i work up the last section. the stemming made it really easy i fired in another screw before pulling the top out only to realize that i wanted to go left, so i down climb a bit, traverse over and climb rock that was covered in a thin layer of ice, covered by a thicker layer of snow. i bring becca up, she also gets the barfies on the first 3rd, and just hangs to shake out and warm up. after that, she fires up the climb quite easily.
drying your gear, and drying your gear quickly is important. this is my getup, what is yours?
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