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This week reminds me of a song by the Small Faces featuring Rod Stewart called Every Picture Tells A Story. I used to play it all the time in one of my bands. Well today's pictures in the Report tell a story as well. The ice is building quite well and it seems that tho there are no promises, we are likely to have a reasonable ice season. At least it's starting out pretty good, and there is definitely plenty of "water in the system". Stay tuned...
MOUNT WASHINGTON VALLEY CLIMBERS' COOPERATIVE:
The Mount Washington Valley Climbers' Cooperative is an organization working to create an accessible and inclusive space for indoor rock climbing, training, and community growth in the Mount Washington Valley. The dream is for every single local and visitor to have equal opportunity to experience love for (and excel at) climbing.
To date the group has raised $36,000 through donations from individuals and small local businesses. $13,000 of that has been raised in the past THREE WEEKS! Yeah, you read that right. Three weeks. $13,000. There are currently 175 registered lifelong members eager to purchase access passes and get to training!
The organization is currently beginning a "final push" fundraising campaign to reach our goal of $60,000. This will allow them to begin the official build-out as well as cover the costs of operating for the first year. Help to get across the finish line.
INSTANT ICE REPORT:
It's cold at night and moderate during the day so the ice is building very well. If we don't get another round of rain we should have many things climbable soon. As it is the Amphitheater isn't happening yet, but Standard Route isn't bad, Dracula has been led, Dropline is forming up fast and it looks as if Penguin might go. Yes Virginia, there will be an ice season...
As always the full set of pictures are on Facebook and NEClimbs.
HARVARD CABIN NEWS:
The Harvard Cabin on Mt Washington operating plan for the winter season has been altered due to the Pandemic. Season will run from Dec 15th through the end of March (instead of starting Dec 1st). This season's caretaker will be Erik Samia. Lodging at the cabin will be possible ONLY in tent sites No one except the caretaker will be allowed to stay within the cabin itself. Tent site fees will remain $10 per person per night, as in the past.
2020/2021 FUNDRAISER:
The 2020/20201 Fundraiser is officially over. Not that you aren't allowed to donate any more, but I will just stop hounding you all. [wry grin] The current total is 98 donors, which is great. Thank you all...
If you find the weekly Report useful or even mildly entertaining and haven't donated & still want to do so, simply use the link below.
Of course you can also contribute via check or money order if you like. Please make it out to Al Hospers and send it here:
NEClimbs
92 Bow Lane
North Conway, NH 03860
The time and expense of the running and maintaining NEClimbs.com and putting out The White Mountain Report continue all year, but I only ask for donations once. In the winter I put in at least 5 hours every Thursday driving up into the Notch, taking the pictures, processing them, writing the Report, posting the pix on NEClimbs and FaceBook and putting out the email newsletter Report. It's an effort that I do enjoy, but PLEASE REMEMBER, it's your contribution that makes this newsletter and the NEClimbs web site viable.
BTW You can see almost all of the Reports on NEClimbs.com archived from as far back as September of 1999! To get a sense of the popularity of the site, current traffic as of October 29 2020 on NEClimbs.com is about 126,000 UNIQUE visits a day, generating almost 2 million monthly "HITS". The White Mountain Report newsletter goes out every week to over 1,200 subscribers weekly!
I can't actually say that there is nothing out there that can't be climbed. That would be foolish. But for the average, or a little above average climber, that's probably correct. That said, I did hear that there is climbable ice on Parasol in Dixville Notch. Not sure how that will be after we get a foot of heavy wet snow on Saturday. Regardless, here's a few pix I took today just to document things.
Huntington Ravine
AVALANCHE
Repentance
OUT
Standard Route
OUT
Dracula
OUT
For the full current conditions report, CLICK
HERE
SOME LOCAL/NATIONAL PANDEMIC THOUGHTS:
I keep hearing people claim that this virus is no worse than the flu. WRONG!!! We have now had more deaths in New Hampshire from COVID-19 since the first of December, than from a whole year of the flu!
According to state epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan on Monday; "The number of people we see typically die from influenza during a typical entire flu season is around 40 or 50 people."
Unfortunately COVID-19 claimed the lives of 40 people in New Hampshire in just the last week.
THIS IS NOT THE FLU!
We are now in a pattern where we have more deaths each day than happened on 9/11. EVERY DAY!!!! Almost 1/2 of the world wide deaths that took place yesterday were in the US! Daily cases in New Hampshire are going up exponentially. Yesterday there were 1,006 new cases. To put things in scope... As of this morning there are 27.572 COVID cases in NH. The population town of Londonderry is 26,490!
I find JHU's Daily COVID-19 Data in Motion report to be very informative. It shares critical data on COVID-19 from the last 24 hours in a short 1 minute animated video format.
WEAR A MASK, SANITIZE AND STAY PHYSICALLY DISTANT FRIENDS!
REMEMBER - WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
VALLEY CYCLING:
Besides taking a 1.5 mile walk every morning after my coffee, but pre- breakfast, I have ridden almost every day for the past 2 weeks. Basically I'm trying to get in what I can on the 28.5+ bike before I have to break out the fat tire bike. The Valley has minimal snow, so it's been OK. Yesterday I did some riding over near Cranmore and halfway up the maintenance road. Where i stopped it was getting pretty snowy & icy so I figured that was all she wrote. It's going to be time for studded tires soon friends.
Mobile Version Of NEClimbs:
Up on one of the Mount Washington Valley's finest crags and want to know what that climb you're looking at is? Or maybe you're on your way up from Boston and want to check out the Ice Report for your upcoming weekend plans. Or more likely, you're at work just want to daydream about your next adventure. Well if you have a smart phone handy, you can get to NEClimbs from anywhere you have cell service. While it doesn't offer every single feature of the site and it's not an "app", in mobile form, it does do a whole lot and is very useful. Here is the live link to the mobile version of NEClimbs:
Check it out and if you have issues on your specific phone, please feel free to let me know.
NEClimbs & White Mountain Report On Facebook:
Join us and LIKE us on Facebook. I'll try and post interesting pix every Thursday and the latest Ice Report in the season, tho certainly not the whole Report. Here's where you can check it out:
Climbing is a very dangerous sport. You can get hurt or even kill yourself. When you go climbing, you do so of your own free will. Everything on this site is to be taken with a grain of salt. Don't blame us if you get up some totally heinous route, in over your head and fall and hurt yourself.
