The location of the wedding… to the bride and groom, congratulations!
Not your typical spring Monday. While Redline Guide Ken Hodges was teaching one student Digital Navigation — sending her husband photos of the locations she tracked — and while Redline Guide and NH JP Mike Cherim was officiating a wedding way up in Dummer, NH, Redline Guide Pat Ferland was giving the first Rock Climbing Intro course of the season.
To our digital navigation student: well done out there!
For more on the rock intro, here’s what Pat offered in his detailed report:
We had a fun day out for Intro to Rock, first of the season. After meeting at Basecamp and getting geared up we headed over to Cathedral Ledge, where we drove to the top of the cliff and headed over to the Wall of the Hurley Morning Light. A fun area ranging from 20 to 25 feet high with routes rated from 5.4-5.7. There we worked on our face climbing, crack climbing, and other techniques like hand jamming, and laying back. Also belaying and tying in was covered. After some time spent on the Wall of the Hurley Morning Light and the basic we moved over to Pine Tree Eliminate, a 5.8+. To their credit, all three students were able to complete the route after only taking a couple falls on this very challenging 5.8+. They loved the exposure!
We then headed over to the observation area on top of the Cathedral, and set up a lowered-in, climb-out, top-managed route call Lookout Crack, a painful 5.9 with bad footing. All three of students surprisingly did amazingly well on that and climbed it to the top with a little tree utilized for the first move. We had a great day, though we got to spend more time with the black flies than we wanted. All in all, a great first time out climbing for a bunch of cool guys visiting from Florida, enjoying some New Hampshire granite. –Pat
