Winter Climbing 101 march 15

As my interest in hiking and camping grows I also look to find more to do in the winter other than just play video games. So, I started looking at classing n winter climbing and Mountaineering. Eastern Mountain Sports has a few classes of this ilk only an hour drive away in North Conway NH after a bit of debating and trying to get friends to join me (to no avail). I signed up for a class at the end of February, which, got canceled and I got bumped to a class at the beginning of March lucky for me there is still more than enough ice and snow to make the class worth it. Hell, as I write this weeks later there is still plenty of ice and snow.

The class only required me to have a backpack, proper clothing and food. The Mountaineering boots, crampons, ice axes, harnesses, and other gear are provided. The weather report was looking warm and wet but i still packed up all the winter gear suggested though I was fairly certain my down jacket and  maybe even my fleece would never leave the pack.

I got up at 5:00 to head out by 6:00 to get to the class by 8:00 I really did not want to be late, turns out I did not have to be there till 8:30 and well it only takes an hour to get there so I was an hour and a half early.

We met at the store in No. Conway and got outfitted and I met my classmate Chris, and Guide/Instructor Joe. Chris and I are both rock climbers and though my interest is more toward encountering we have similar expectations from the class. we all pile into my car and we drive off to Frankenstein Cliff.

we hike in along a railroad bed that is only used by trains in the winter. to get to an area known as a climb in the woods (or something like that I should have taken notes)

The area Joe chose has a steep slope for mountaineering style climbing and axe work and some vertical areas for full on ice climbing.

This is Joe

This is Joe telling us where to go.

We then learned how to walk in crampons to climb and rest and be stable as possible.

This is the climbing area 

Due to the fact that Chris and I are both rick climbers we already knew how to tie the knots (Joe did check our knots) and how to belay (Joe confirmed that too) we did not need that instruction so I belayed Joe as he set up the top rope. 

As Joe was setting up the top rope some other instruction groups arrived and set up 

Then using the new information I climbed up, and looked down on my crew.

Joe and I climbed that rout a couple of times and we moved over to the vertical area.

this is Chris and behind him the ice we are going to climb. 

Again Joe set a top rope repelled in and then I climbed. this time we used more technical ice axes and Joe was able to take some photos of me. 

I felt quite accomplished and it all seemed far less sketchy than I always thought ice climbing was. 

we took turns climbing and trying the different tools we had brought as well as putting in ice screws for anchors and taking out the screws.

After we had climbed around there a bit Joe gave us some instruction on self arrest and what to do in case of a slide as we moved on to another area up the tracks a bit. We came to an area with multi-pitch climbs and very blue ice and set up to just do the first pitch and then head out since we were running out of class time.

so we climbed up to dracula's cave and repelled out

 The view was quite nice

After repelling out Joe taught us a few advanced anchor techniques and we headed back.. It just started to drizzle as we headed back so our timing was perfect. 

All in all it was a great day lots of good information and good climbing I think I may want to do this again.