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2.05.08
Ice, Ice Baby
As ice climbers rejoice at this cold, wet winter, the White
Mountain Report keeps them updated on New England’s best climbs.
by
Dan Mathers
 Skiers
and snowboarders aren’t the only ones celebrating this winter’s cold
temps and mucho snow. After a few years of dry, warm winters, New
England ice climbers like Al Hospers are giddily scaling the region’s
biggest icicles.
“I don’t know if I
would say it is a banner year,” says Hospers, “but it’s certainly been a
whole lot better than the past couple of years.”
Hospers publishes the
e-mail newsletter
The White
Mountain Report. The report, part of the New England climbers site
NEClimbs.com, is like the bible
for local ice climbers, filled with need-to-know info on scaling ice
flows in the Whites. He started publishing the report shortly after he
moved from the Boston area up to North Conway, New Hampshire, in 1997.
He used to get tons of e-mails from people asking what the climbing
conditions were like there. He’d send out e-mails, which would be
forwarded to other climbers, and soon he had a mailing list of 100
people. He officially started the report about a year later, and now he
has nearly 1,000 subscribers.
Pretty much
everything in the report is from Hospers, and the amount of info in it
is a testament to the amount of climbing he does, especially in the
winter. For some of the more remote climbs that he can’t get to as often
—
like Lake Willoughby or climbs on Cannon
— he
has associates who fill him in on the conditions. The report gets
published each Thursday. That way, says Hospers, people know what’s
happening for the upcoming weekend, instead of relying of reports that
are a week old.
Ice climbing has
grown in popularity over the last few years. And the North Conway region
has been at the center of the sport in New England, with great climbing
areas like Mount Washington Valley, Crawford Notch, Lake Willoughby and
Mount Washington all nearby. While the sport might seem exceptionally
dangerous to outsiders —
you know, the idea of falling or having a giant ice cube squash you
—
Hospers says it is relatively safe . . . if you know what you’re doing.
“I don’t know the
exact statistics, but it is certainly less dangerous overall than riding
a bike,” says Hospers. “Sure, bad thing can and do happen. However, the
episodes are pretty rare and are almost always due to user error rather
than random, unforeseeable events.”
When deciding whether
to tackle a particular ice flow, Hospers considers a mix of tangible and
intangible things: wetness and thickness of the ice; how much the sun is
on it; how well it is bonded to the rock; the ambient air temperature.
“If I don’t like what I see, or just have a bad feeling, I simply won’t
do that particular climb,” he says.
For people who like
the idea of being in the Whites and scaling ice flows with names like
Dracula and Snot Rocket, Hospers says ice climbing isn’t too difficult
to learn.
“It’s not too bad if
you have reasonable balance and aren’t afraid of heights,” says Hospers.
“I think it’s a lot easier than golf.”
Al Hospers is a
rock and ice guide for International Mountain Climbing School in North
Conway, NH and professional musician. Since 1997 he has lived in a house
500 yards from the base of Cathedral ledge with his wife, son, dog and
cat.
Photo: Climber
Brad White scales Black Pudding on Humphrey's Ledge in Mount Washington
Valley, New Hampshire. (Al Hospers Photo)
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