Highway Climbing

Bill and I went to Portage this morning but all the climbs were pasted with snow and were pretty unmotivating. Although the highway is a little noisy and you end up in a lot of family photo albums, there is something nice about parking right next to the climbing that makes up for the aforementioned. Not that I'm always lazy, but sometimes its nice not to have to walk anywhere, but still be able to climb.

Bill leading the first pitch of Candy Land

 

Its pretty funny that there are two warning signs but Bill and I managed to stay oblivious to both of them on our way to the base of the climb. It was only on our way back to collect our packs that we saw them.....luckily we didn't have to deal with the railroad enforcers today.

 

The climb was in stellar. Bill won the rosh on the bottom pitch, and I got to lead the top to tiers in one pitch. The rope stretch made me work a little harder, but the ice was spongy plastic...For any non ice climbers that may read this, that means it was soft and squishy and super nice to climb.

 

When you don't have to walk all day you can do more climbing! Bill and I stopped at Pipe Line, and Bill once again won the rosh. We climbed the ice on the right side of this picture. It was super fun and cruiser.

Pipe Line and Blue Ribbon

 

I would have liked to climb more, and Roadside Attraction was the next logical stop, but there was another party top roping it, and about 15 cars watching them. With a lot of traffic around its kind of scary to climb it because you end up dropping rocks and ice onto cars.....so we bailed back to the house...It was a nice easy day out, and we were back before dark.