After what felt like an eternity of rain and no guiding work I had the great pleasure of climbing with Art & Carol, two close friends of a regular client and friend of mine, John Deangelis. You can see photos of John and I ice climbing earlier in this blog.

Expecting a busy cliff given the holiday weekend and break in the weather we started by driving up the auto road so a quick hike down to Upper Refuse would get us warmed up…

Since Art and Carol are out lead climbing on their own we started discussing the finer points of belay management, protecting the second considerations, etc.

After topping out we made our way to the bottom of the cliff and hiked up to Thin Air. There were a couple parties on the 2nd pitch so we decided to eat a quick lunch and then start up.

After this we realized the party on the pitch above was a party of 4. We decided not to get stuck behind them and Art and Carol both took a quick TR on the 5.8r climb, Thinner, directly below the anchor here. After rappelling we made our way to the North End of the cliff for a run on the 5.7, Kiddy Crack.

It was a great day with perfect temps, dry rock (for the most part), and great company. I knew when meeting you guys last winter that we would climb well together and I thank John for the solid recommendation. You are both a pleasure to climb and to grab a pint with! Hope to see you again soon!

Got to work with an elite military unit who were taking a 8 day intensive climbing course from us! These guys were fit, motivated, and out-going. The constant semi-positive “heckling” that occurred through-out the day really brought me back to my previous time in the service. I didn’t get too many photos, since getting 9 people up Fun House and Upper Refuse and then rapping all the way back down often takes two hands!

I would like to thank all nine of you for climbing with us but especially for your service! Godspeed with your upcoming deployments, climb safe, stay safe, and get back stateside when the mission is complete. Semper Fi.

I had the great pleasure of guiding Danielle and Danielle on Cathedral Ledge today. Two very out going young women who both work for EMS stores in Massachusetts, but had only met a month prior. The way these two got along made me think they were lifelong friends, and I really enjoyed introducing them to the aspects of multi-pitch rock climbing while we scaled Upper Refuse on Cathedral Ledge.

Thank you both for a great day, hope to see you on the cliffs soon!

Despite rock climbing last week the Mountaineering Season is not over! I had the great pleasure of guiding David and his 9 year old son Griffin up Mt. Washington today. Griffin is the youngest person I have seen climb Mt. Washington in these winter conditions and he did an incredible job! The Winter Lion’s Head route was in very rough condition and made for some challenging climbing. Slush on top of water ice with some steep wet rock. We prevailed though, and were rewarded with calm winds above tree-line and some fantastic glissading conditions. Be sure to enable High-Def on the top right of the video. Hope you enjoy the slideshow;

For my 1st guiding day of 2009’s rock season I was happy to meet Nat and his two sons Alex and Thomas for a “First Ascent” rock climbing program.

It’s about a 10 minute hike up to where we would start some basic rock climbing:

Thank you guys for a great day out… the rain held out, the climbing was good… and the Oreo’s delicious. Hope to see you back here for some more!