Laying siege to the tower
By Phil Brown
A classic route near Chapel Pond combines technical ice climbing with alpine-style mountaineering
ice climbing
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The lure of thin ice
In 1996, the amazing Jeff Lowe climbed a futuristic ice route at Poke-O-Moonshine. No one has repeated it in 21 years. That won’t stop Matt Horner from trying. By PHIL BROWN Jeff Lowe is one of the greatest American mountaineers of his generation. A native of Utah, he has climbed all over the world…
Don Mellor Publishes New Ice-Climbing Guidebook
By Phil Brown
Don Mellor’s second edition of Blue Lines: An Adirondack Ice Climber’s Guide, published this month (just in time for this weekend’s Mountainfest), is a testament to the popularity of an erstwhile fringe sport. In Blue Lines 2, the new title, Mellor describes almost six hundred ice-climbing routes throughout the Adirondack Park. In contrast, the 1995…
Chapel Pond Canyon
By Phil Brown
By Phil Brown More than thirty years ago, Don Mellor was in a plane flying over the High Peaks region, taking photos for his rock-climbing guidebook, when he spotted a large streambed in Chapel Pond Canyon. He returned the next winter with Steve Wisenand, one of his students at Northwood School in Lake Placid. The…
Frozen Feat
How to climb an 85-foot wall of ice and keep your cool By Phil Brown More than thirty years ago, Don Mellor was in a plane flying over the High Peaks region, taking photos for his rock-climbing guidebook, when he spotted a large streambed in Chapel Pond Canyon. He returned the next winter with Steve Wisenand, one of…
Chouinard’s Gully
The Adirondack Park’s frozen cliffs offer some of the best ice climbing in the country. By Phil Brown The Adirondack Park has thousands of rock-climbing routes, many of them stellar, but it will never rival such climbing destinations as Yosemite Valley in California, New River Gorge in West Virginia, or the Shawangunks in downstate New…
OK Slip Falls
A veteran ice climber says ascending the frozen cataract is not difficult, but it is risky. By Don Mellor It was suggested to me recently that if God wanted us to climb ice, He wouldn’t have made it so slippery.
Climbing OK Slip Falls
A veteran ice climber says ascending the frozen cataract is not difficult, but it is risky. By Don Mellor It was suggested to me recently that “if God wanted us to climb ice, He wouldn’t have made it so slippery.” Theology aside, there’s probably some inverse truth here: we want to climb ice precisely because…
Ice Climbing as a Substitute for Skiing
By Phil Brown
By Phil Brown I don’t need to remind you how bad the backcountry skiing has been this year. As of this morning, the Adirondack Ski Touring Council wouldn’t even recommend skiing on the Marcy Dam Truck Trail. But it has been cold this winter, so I figured the ice climbing must be good. Just over…
The frozen steep
This is a piece about ice climbing. I’ll tell you what I know, how it’s done, when it’s done. I’ll explain all the pointy tools and where people do it. By Don Mellor