Elizabeth from Florida decided to take plunge into the world of climbing frozen waterfalls.  Elizabeth, an avid rock climber, spent the day with me and Tim climbing ice near the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.  The conditions were fantastic as the tempers had warmed up, but the ice was in great condition.
We started with [...]

Ed and Stephan
I climbed with Ed and Stephan today.  Ed and Stephan are from the Atlanta area and came up to do some ice climbing.  Ed has done some alpine climbing but was new to waterfall ice climbing.  Stephan had experience climbing both alpine and waterfall ice, evident by the old ice tools.  He even [...]

February 20th
I was fortunate enough to climb ice today with Michael Egues on Sam’s Knob in North Carolina.  Sam’s Knob is a long ice gully that is 1600 feet long when conditions allow.  Today was different however, more of the pitches were snow climbing as the Blue Ridge has been pelted with snow fall this [...]

Whiteside Mountain has very little ice.  Starshine is not formed at all and the face is coated with snow.  The gully routes are forming at the base and will be climbable in a day or two.  The upper pitches are doubtful thought as they are thin with icicles still forming up.
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Icicles are forming, but it [...]

Hoosier Pass
David and I went West today to climb at Hoosier Pass on Mount Lincoln.  This was located near Breckenridge at 11,300 feet.  I was concerned about the altitude, but did fine on the approach and seemed to be solid for the experience.
The climbs were up on a rock face about a 1 mile from [...]

Hurley Gully
David new of a great ice climb tucked away in the hills above Colorado Springs.  Problem was he had not climbed there since 78′!  We headed up Old Stage road trying to locate the pull off for the approach.  There was a truck along the road, but David said that the location did not [...]

I arrive 30 minutes early from the flight and David was ready to pick me up.  He was waiting just outside the Denver airport for my phone call.  This save the parking fee, David is always frugal.   We headed straight out to some climbs nearby.  The weather had been warm and the ice was melting, [...]

Saturday I was fortunate enough to climb with a friend from the DC area, John Oster.  He came down with Michael and Bryan to climb ice over the weekend.  being alpinist, they wanted to do the long gully routes, sow we headed for a 1400′ in Pisgah Forest.  I wanted to check it out as [...]

The world was cold, cold enough to freeze up John’s rock.  Phil, Jeremy and I headed there to climb the classic WI 3-4 route Dorothy H.  It was a short hike to a long bushwhack.  There is not an easy way there.  We crawled, wiggled and wormed our way up to the rock.  DH loomed [...]

Climbing guide Ed Maggart and Tim Barton and I climbed at Whiteside Mountain in Cashiers today.  The drive in revealed that Starshine was fat and in truth the biggest I have every seen it.  Things were looking good.  We decided to climb the gully pitches off the trail in an attempt to get in as [...]