29 May 2007

Gothics North Face

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This was one of the most memorable winter mountaineering experiences I have had.
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In late winter 1985, a Bruce Springsteen song was on the radio all the time. So we called this ice climbing trip the Great "Born in the USA" Ice Tour.
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Steve Landin and I went to the Adirondack Mountains in late winter 1985 to do some ice climbing and hoped that the North Face of Gothics Mountain would be in condition to climb. It is almost 1,000 feet of bare rock that sometimes ices up in later winter with good frozen snow. It is one of the great Adirondack winter classics.
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The mountain is located up in the High Peaks region. Fast and light skiers can leave their car, ski up to the mountain's base, climb the north wall, retrieve their skis and return to the roadhead in one day. But for us, the trails were covered in hard ice, and it would be a three day expedition with two bivouacs: one day to the foot of the mountain, one to climb the face and one more to return.
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Saving weight was imperative, so many things had to be left behind. We decided to leave the tent, the snowshoes and the rope. We would carry ice boots, crampons, two hand-tools apiece, sleeping bags and pads, and a cooker and pots.
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Day One: We carried up to the foot of Gothics Mountain and bivouacked. I was horribly cold, because I had been too fanatical about light weight gear, and I took too light a sleeping bag. The few more pounds of a warmer bag would have been great. I was experimenting with a "vapor barrier liner" concept for a sleeping system. Somewhere between theory and reality, I shivered all night.
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Day Two: The climb. The first section of the North Face was terrifying verglas.
This is hard water ice only a quarter of an inch thick over solid rock. It is too thin to get in a deep axe placement, but it is hard and slick. Only one of my picks was of the newer design that would hook in at all, so I had to front-point up one-handed. I momentarily thought of chickening out and climbing instead the tree-lined slope off to the side of the face. I was extremely scared climbing this section unroped but started up anyway behind Steve. He was a much stronger climber and had hooking capability for both his picks, so he found the route, led it and set an example for me. He gave me a constant "psychological belay." One scary spot was a traverse across a small gully. Steve was anchored only by one axe placement, but he swung over a sling for me to grab. This gave me the courage to make the move across.
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The middle section of the face was beautiful. It was that deep re-consolidated frozen snow that you can run up. Crampon points and hand-tool picks sink in easily and hold. It was fun, and we made good time up this. By the time I had caught up to Steve near the top of this snow section, he had chopped two "buckets" in the snow for us to sit in and rest. In traditional alpine manner, he shared chocolate as we looked down the mountain. A snowstorm was heading straight for us from the northwest, so we did not stay long.
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The top section of the face was more grim. It was mixed with a lot of bare rock, some powder snow and a little ice. Straight up was out of the question, for it was bare rock without weaknesses. We went up diagonally to the left through mixed ground. Steve did the route-finding.
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One small traverse involved carefully placing the right crampon front-points into a small iced rock depression for a delicate temporary movement of weight-distribution. I moved like a phantom, barely breathing, with hundreds of feet of void beneath my heels. I remember thinking: The entire consciousness of the cosmos is focused on the placement of one-and-one-half crampon points on a tiny bit of crumbling ice.
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Easier ground was eventually gained with the summit ridge in sight. As we gained the ridge, the snowstorm was swirling around us, almost a white-out. We got to the summit and took some photos. The void below us that should have been the North Face was completely enveloped in blowing snow. These are the conditions that the Scots climbers enthusiastically call "full conditions."
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We blindly descended the West Ridge and got to the pass between Gothics and Mt. Saddleback (the same pass I had camped at with frozen toes in January 1976 - see blog entry "Frostbite Trip"). The snow was very heavy as we trekked down to our bivouac gear by dark. We hauled it to an ADK leanto on the trail below. We cooked a supper and tried to sleep as snow swirled around our noses.
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Day Three: It was a hellish labor to haul our packs down through thigh-deep snow. We should have brought the snowshoes! Agony and discouragement, I wanted to just lay down and die. I thought of Albert Camus' discussion of the Myth of Sisyphus. The only thing that kept me going was Marine mentality and a dose of Ayn Rand. Perhaps it was also the pathos of Springsteen's lyrics, still going through my head, "Born in the USA," that gave me some grit.
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As we finally called an end to this climbing trip and started the drive back home, guess what song greeted us on the radio? "Born in the USA... Born in the USA." It was one hell of an ice tour.
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-Zenwind.