Bob and I had discussed an early wake up the night before about an hour or more before the showdown in our hostel room. He had wanted to wake up at 0600. I was hoping for a little bit later wake up call. Despite my subtle protests we decided on a 0600 wake up. To my surprise I awoke around 0700 still plenty tired and sore from the day before. We quickly packed and headed to a local diner in
New Paltz for breakfast. With New Paltz being a quick jaunt off of I-87, we were quickly on the road heading for the Catskills Mountains. Our destination which we had discussed over breakfast was to be Stoney Clove located near
Phoenicia, NY off of NY 214. Although a very quick drive, once we got off of the interstate, the drive up 28 and onto 214 became quite scenic. NY Rt 28 skirts the western border of
Catskills Park which, much like the rest of the area at this time of year, was speckled yet covered in some spots with snow. Ice flows of all shapes and sizes lined several parts of the road:
When we drove through Phoenicia and turned on to Rt 214 we could notice a large cloud dumping snow on the exact area on which we were to be climbing. I'm not sure how Bob was feeling but I was ecstatic about the enjoyable misery of postholing through powder on the side of a mountain to climb some ice.
The drive from New Paltz to
Notch Lake where we were to park took about an hour. We were hiking well before 0900. Despite it snowing and howling, once in the tree line it wasn't bad at all. Albeit steep, the hike was relatively easy. There wasn't as much snow as we had though on the hill side and there was already a trail blazed by various other parties that had visited the ice over the course of the winter.
Still hurting from the day before I passed the reins to Bob who led the first climbs of the day. The ice was rock solid and full of pockets thanks to a solid season of climbing. The sound of Bob's and my tools sinking in the ice was quickly absorbed by the falling snow. What most people don't know about snow is that the normally hollow structure of snow flakes is what makes snow falling so peaceful to us. Each individual flake does its part to absorb all the white noise we don't usually notice and take for granted. When said noise is not there, we're left with the peace and tranquility that snowfall and snowy landscapes usually bring with them. After a few hours of climbing, the skies attempted to clear and did so succesfully a few times.
I followed Bob for most of the day. My arm was screaming but I didn't let it stop me from climbing. The ice had been used so much over the winter that I spent most of my time hooking versus actually swinging my tools. There were several climbing areas at the top of the particular mountain we had hiked. We started off at an area called
Sun Wall which proved to be a very easy WI2/3 in rating. We moved up the valley to an area called
The Playground which ended up being a little bit more difficult than Sun Wall. We kept moving our way across the slope and up the valley until we started to get tired and the skies darkened again. The climbs had two things in common that worked against us the entire day: 1) topping out of the climbs required negotiating almost 5 feet of muddy grass and tree roots. Every climb, which we later found out this to be notorious of Catskills ice climbs, the ice ended just short of the top which led to very interesting finishes of the climbs. 2) Each sections of ice were separated by a deceivingly long and almost alpine traverse through thigh-deep snow. Enter the postholing. A couple times we thought about belaying each other in between the climbs only to sack up and pray we didn't fall in the end. The mountain side was even steeper in between the climbs and being 800 feet above the base made for a long glissade (slide) through a bunch of trees that didn't look at all fun to hit.
The last climb of the day ended up being a two pitch climb due to an incredibly steep hike (70 degrees!) up a snowy/ice slope to another mini-ampitheatre of ice Bob and I decided to forgo climbing. It was nearly 4 PM, it was getting late, and Bob had a Jets game to watch shortly. We decided to rap off a tree back to the base of the climb in order to start down climbing back to 214.
After an hour and a half of scraping my crampons on shitty ice and rock or down climbing small sections of vertical ice, we finally made it down to 214 about 3/4 of a mile up the valley from Bob's car. Tired and sore, we packed up and headed back to Phoenicia to get dinner and watch the game. We left by 2000 and drove back to New Paltz where we spent the rest of the evening hanging our rope, outerwear, and climbing gear in order to let it dry only to pass out by 2200.
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