Well the winter climbing season in New England is slowly drawing to a close.
Cave climbing in my local gym.
Yes you will still be able to ice climb in Maine and New Hampshire for another month or two but for me my winter climbing season is over. I started a new job just before my last trip and I will most likely be working weekends. Which puts an end to any short one-mountain trips in the White Mountains. Spring break is almost over and my next multi day trip will likely be in the warm month of May. So it is time for me to say fair well to winter and embrace the warmer side of mountaineering the warmer side being rock climbing or more likely in my case bouldering.
Now granted Connecticut is not exactly a global hub for bouldering, it is however a sport I have easy access to. Which is a very good thing for reasons I will now explain.
I have always loved being outside in the woods. As a kid my Friends and I would run all over the woods surrounding my house, building shelters, lighting fires, “rappelling down cliffs” (cliffs in quotations), and exploring off the beaten track always close to home. This was fun however I always knew that I wanted something, lets say more adventurous.
Last year I was living in a very dark place, I was alone, very sad, deeply unhealthy, sitting in a dorm room in a college I am happy to say I no longer attend. I was busy procrastinating on an English final that would in the end cause me to fail the course, looking at YouTube videos. When I came across a video of two alpinists free soloing Pinnacle Gully on Mount Washington. I was very interested the climb looked amazing and for a very lonely, depressed, broke student, their adventure was amazing. So my bored brain did a little research on the big mountain a few hundred miles north of me and I was quickly hooked. I knew that I wanted to climb Mt Washington.
So I spent the next few months reading and watching video on climbing. I even went out on a few small hikes but my sights on a winter climb were set very high. However as time went on my skills improved, along with my knowledge and I climbed Mount Washington in August a few days after my birthday.
Standing on the summit August 2014
Now I know the climb was fairly easy and any amateur could do it. Either way I was very proud of myself and standing on the summit was one of the greatest moments of my life. However now that I have climbed a few peaks in the East in the winter I have set my sights on more challenging routes and higher mountains in the West. So what is the problem?
The problem is that bigger mountains and more difficult routes are difficult to attempt on your own. I am comfortable with a fairly high level of exposure but I will never free solo anything over a class four. So I need to find a climbing partner. The only problem is my childhood friends are not exactly climbers. They are great companions on a boat or car camping trip, they are not however mountaineers. I need to find a climbing partner.
That is where my local climbing gym comes in. My hope is that if I climb in the gym and become a regular. Maybe ill meet someone who wants to climb on real rock and maybe venture off into the high alpine environments for a real adventure. So as the snow pack slowly melts away into the ground and the boulders dry ill find a climbing partner somewhere on the road.
andrewubaldi 