Chris and I took a trip out to the Catskills to do some ice climbing on Saturday. I just got my ebay axes on Thursday so I was itching to get out and use them. We drove out Saturday morning in snow, heavy at times and got lost a little because I wasn’t paying attention to the roads. But we got there in about 3 hours.
The approach was short, but steep! Once there we were screwed because a group had taken all of the easily accessible top roping areas. Instead we had to trek through 3 feet of crusted snow to reach the top of the climb we found open. That is after we treked along the bottom to find the climb in the first place. We were there about 2 hours before we got our TR set up. I’d gotten used to leading or easily walking around to the top in rock climbing.
The rope we finally did set was good enough to get about 3 different routes on it. There were also two other parties in the same area and one let us use their rope for a fun corner climb. The snow during the drive out unfortunately turned to rain but we stayed for about 5-6 hours total and were pretty wet because of it. Next time out hopefully will have quicker set up and less rain.