How Mountain Athlete helped me have the best start to an ice season i've ever had.

Three thousand miles from home and nearly an hour from the closest town, depending on how many bighorn sheep you needed to dodge, I stare blankly at the fire hose of rushing water that is supposed to be my ice climbing route in the Shoshone National Forest’s South Fork. The warm November weather has brought comfortable climbing temperatures but having chosen a south facing aspect to climb, a relative mistake or accepted adventure (I have yet to decide), my climbing partner and I had found ourselves in the typical early season ice climbing conundrum. Having already climbed through two pitches of scrappy, western conglomerate “kitty-litter” rock, some snow slogging and a pitch of decent ice, I turn the corner to find that our ice route has turned into suspect spray ice and a technical, as I call it, aggressive uphill swim. Using what’s left of the dull point of my ice axe, I scrape out a suspect crack to my right and try not to fall into the hollow ice beneath my feet. I place not one, but three pieces of rock protection before considering moving another inch. If two lobes of the cam are on flakey, rotten rock does that still count? Or is this what they call, mental protection? Either way, this climb is beginning to show me the true meaning of Western Hospitality.

April 7, 2015Mountain Athlete, Smugglers Notch, New Hampshire, Mt. Mansfield, Mount Washington, East Coast, Ice Climbing, Climbing, Wyoming, Montana, Hyalite Canyon, Cody, TrainingComment

The Height Of Land: The Natural History Of Smugglers Notch

A colorful sunrise is a paradoxical encounter. Aerosols of anthropogenic origin enhance the red hue of a morning sky through refracting long wavelengths of light in the atmosphere (Ballantyne, 2007). These pastoral skies are in danger however as the dubious myth that pollution leads to brighter skies during dawn and dusk, will inevitably lead to a complacency in society with the abundant particulate matter altering our atmosphere. Dependent on your definition of beauty, an over abundance of airborne pollution will eventually monopolize our morning skies into a singular blazing red horizon with the loss of our natural azures and violets; of course only until they are blotched out entirely. One may witness this battle of colors in our atmosphere playing out on the shoulders of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak. Mt. Mansfield sees all in this northeastern region and has witnessed every sunrise long before their alteration by humans.

April 7, 2015Biology, Smugglers Notch, East Coast, Vermont, Mt. Mansfield, Geology, Ski, Wildlife, Conservation, Climbing Comment