Mt Lowell via the Chute – Ice Climb

Eric Gilbertson and Elliott Fray

At the base of the route

Jan 21, 2013

10-miles hiking
2 miles bushwacking
2 pitches climbing WI2-3
14 hrs

Mt Lowell is a super-remote mountain on the edge of the pemi wilderness close to the better-known Mt Carrigain. There’s no trail to the summit, but it has a large set of cliffs facing west to Carrigain Notch, which are not visible from any road. The most prominent feature of the cliffs is a long chute on the southern edge that extends almost to the summit.

In May 2012 I climbed the chute as a rock climb with John and Nadine, but the route was extremely wet and the rock very loose. But if it were winter it might be all frozen together and make for a perfect ice climb, I remember thinking at the time.

The crux ice pitches

Elliott and I decided to venture into the wilderness to test this theory. We started hiking up the Sawyer Pond road at 5:44am Monday morning. It was cold enough that we were hiking in down jackets for the first 30 minutes.

The trail was well-packed most of the way, from all the Mt Carrigain traffic, but we eventually had to break out the snowshoes once our trial diverged from the popular signal ridge trail. By 9:15am we reached Carrigain Notch and spied our objective through the trees. It was impossible to tell if the chute was filled with ice or snow, but we did notice a half dozen other long ice climbs on the Lowell cliffs to the north.

We soon plunged into the woods and bushwacked to the base of the chute. Once in the chute we took out our climbing ice axes and crampons and soloed up until the first big ice bulge. Below the bulge the snow had separated so that it looked like a mini bergschrund. That’s pretty rare in our glacier-lacking new-england mountains.

I racked up and led the first pitch, which was probably WI2 with mostly snow but a few ice bulges. I belayed Elliott

The route (viewed from Carrigain)

up and was treated to mostly ice on the second pitch. It was a little steeper, with the easiest line probably WI2+, and harder variations.

At the top we dropped the ropes and easily bushwacked to the top in about 15 minutes. According to the summit register one other party had bushwacked up there a few weeks ago, and the previous party was in November. Only one other person had ice-climbed the chute since the register began in 2007, so I suspect we were the second ones to ever ice climb it.

We bushwacked back to the ropes, and started rappelling back down the chute. We used a bomber tree at the top as an anchor, and then managed to find a set of smaller trees to sling halfway down the gully for the second rappel.

We downclimbed the rest of the chute, reaching the trail just at sunset, and quickly hustled back to the car. We got back at 7:45pm, making for a solid 14hr day, and earning a victory feast down in North Conway.