[TR] Auburn Ice Canyon, Auburn MA - Various 2/18/2

[JayB]

Trip: Auburn Ice Canyon, Auburn MA - Various

 

Date: 2/18/2007

 

Trip Report:

Will add a bit more text of my own tomorrow, but this will suffice for now.

 

Short story. 40 miles from Boston, commercial trip has enduro-mega-siege-TR action in full-effect on all of the best lines on in place by the time of our arrival just after 8:00AM, but there's more than enough ice to go around and we have a good time, meet nice folks, and enjoy one of the lowest drive-time, approach-time, and elevation-gain-required to reach ice outings ever.

 

Supplemental text cross-posted from neice.com for the benefit of anyone living on the East Coast with intentions of bringing a large group into the area.

 

 

"And to anyone wishing to bring large groups for the purpose of making money (private guiding), recreation (school groups, outing clubs, etc.) into the canyon, remember that this is not New Hampshire or Maine.

 

The access to this area is more fragile than you think, especially after the emergency response to the accident a few years ago. Local crews are not equipped to handle rescues in that environment, and they would just rather not have us in there.

 

Please keep the groups SMALL, properly equipped (um, EVERYONE needs to be wearing a helmet at ALL times), and WELL-MANAGED to avoid getting injured.

 

If you don't agree with my opinion here, I don't care. I don't want someone else screwing this up for the rest of us who use better judgement when going into this local jewel of a resource.

 

Amen.

 

Meeg"

 

The Best Lines at the End of the Canyon.

 

The view of towards the rear of the Canyon:

 

 

Some of the consolation climbs away from the best routes:

 

 

Gear Notes:

Long slings helpful for anchors. Outing schedule at Rhode Island Rock Gym or local college outing clubs may be useful for crowd forecasting purposes.

 

Approach Notes:

Approach beta on neice.com

[Weekend_Climberz]

Those look sweet :tup:

 

Did you get on any of them

[Fearful_Leader]

Nice! Looks pretty fat this year, the pillar in the middle of the tunnel doesn't always touch down.

 

I used to live in Wormtown, and climb there weekdays before work to try and get more days on ice, makes for a long day.

 

I hope the access situation improves because it's a great resource for those in the area. Stay away on weekends though!

[JayB]

Those look sweet :tup:

 

Did you get on any of them

 

Spent the day dicking around on the 3ish consolation routes in the lower photos due to the aforementioned all-day group enduro-seige TR megacluster. If we'd been able to hang around for a couple of hours longer, we could have had access to those routes as well, but we had to cut the day a bit short, so if we'd been a bit more persistent the mega-cluster wouldn't have kept us off of the routes.

 

Now that we've been there, we may sneak out there on a weekday to score unfettered access to the better lines, or try to do a better job of determining when commercial/college/club outings will be present.

 

We still had a good time, and it's hard to imagine a cluster of sufficient magnitude to fully thwart someone who's willing to make do with some of the shorter lines or do some bouldering.

 

 

[ken4ord]

Hmm, never heard of that place the whole time I was out on the other coast, looks like a pretty good place to play.