North Bald Cap Ice Expedition

Keith leading the first pitch of Gold Mine

March 1-3, 2013

Heikki Ruuska, Keith Reherman, Eric Gilbertson, Aaron Yahr

Friday: Ski 7 miles in to base camp
Saturday: Climb “Where’s the Ice?” WI2, M1 to summit of North Bald Cap
Sunday: Climb “Gold Mine” WI4, ski back to car

Friday afternoon we drove up to Berlin, ME and parked the cars at the start of a snowy Success Pond Road. We skied up the road pulling sleds until mile marker 5, then skied up an unplowed old logging road southeast for another two miles. After several wrong turns in the dark we established camp around 10pm.

Saturday we got our first view of the North Bald Cap cliff. It was completely white, which looked like mostly thinly snow-covered rock, but the snow could have been covering ice. We hiked to the base of the October Sunday rock route and climbed up the snow, diagonaling left above a tree-filled dike and occasionally finding some ice to climb. We somehow managed to climb all the way to the summit on the route. According to the summit register one party had been to the summit since I last climbed it in October. To descend we bushwhacked around to the southern saddle and back to camp for a rice and curry feast.

Sunday we got an alpine start and headed for some actual ice on the right side of the cliff. We found an enormous line of thick yellow vertical ice that we’d later learn was probably “Gold Mine,” WI4. Keith led the first big step on the first pitch, then I finished leading the WI4 pitch to a nice snowy belay ledge. I then led the third pitch of WI 3+ ice to the trees at the top of the cliff.

We then bushwhacked back to camp, and skied back out, reaching the cars shortly after dark.