Half Day Mountaineering Skills

A great way to spend the morning is sharing something you love and are passionate about with someone who is eager to learn whatever it is and wants to share your passion. That describes today. Our guest, Bob, wanted to learn some basic mountaineering skills, but since he had a fair amount of winter hiking experience, he didn’t necessarily need our winter skills course and thus elected for our half day offering.

So much fun. A beautiful, sunny day. We decided to go to North Conway’s Cathedral Ledge where we knew parking would be available and where we wouldn’t get creamed by an avalanche. We climbed to the summit via the mostly unbroken climbers’ trail learning various crampon techniques as well as using an ice to protect from falls and to aid climbing along the way. We also broke out the rope at one point to practice using a handrail with double arm raps. Very secure! We then descended practicing methods to assist in that. This was all followed by a roll in the snow: a.k.a. self arrest training using an ice axe — Bob totally nailed this, by the way!