Fifty After Fifty: Whitney-Gilman Ridge, Cannon Mountain

« Avant la Verte on est alpiniste, à la Verte on devient montagnard... »

— Gaston Rébuffat

Goals

I didn’t climb for twenty-five years. But fate brought me out of retirement, and the more I climb the more I seem to like it. It’s good to have something to do when it’s not snowing.

Last month I spent six days mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies. It was scary, intense, and exhilarating. But it also started me thinking about goals. I’m fifty-five years old, and have little talent as a climber. Even at age seventeen or twenty-four, I maxed out at 5.9 or below. But my goal isn’t to be good, it’s to be competent—to become a montagnard. And I want to experience the full range of climbing, on ice and snow and rock, in the high mountains and the low hills, in Colorado and Chamonix and my beloved Canada. And as I was reading about Steck and Roper’s Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, or the Los Alamos Mountaineers 100 North American Classic Climbs, I started thinking about my own list. What if I could do fifty classics, but I would get to pick, so that they might be of reasonable difficulty, and of interest to me?

I generally tried to pick routes that were considered classic by someone, but I chose freely from the LA Mountaineers, Fred Beckey’s list of favorites, and a few of my own heart’s idiosyncratic desires 🐳. And so I have a list of fifty, but I’m keeping it to myself for now, as I need to get a lot better to even consider some of the climbs.

The First Classic: Whitney-Gilman, II, 5.7

Whitney-Gilman climbs the obvious ridge. Behind it is the Black Dike, the site of New England’s most famous ice climb

I might as well start close to home, and I’ve been wanting to climb the Whitney-Gilman Ridge on Cannon Mountain ever since I heard of it. It has a striking line up a six-hundred-foot high fin of granite. It’s terrifically exposed, and steeped in history. When first climbed in 1929, it might have been the hardest route in the United States. First ascensionist Hassler Whitney was a great mathematician, making foundational contributions to manifold theory (I’m a physics grad school dropout, with more than a passing interest in mathematics). Oddly, he died on my 27th birthday.

I arranged to do the climb with one of my favorite guides, Matt Shove of Ragged Mountain Guides. I met him during a clinic at the Mt. Washington Ice Festival a few years ago, and appreciated his low-key competence, good judgment, and quiet enthusiasm. I’ve now climbed with him more than any other guide, and appreciate him more and more with every trip.

The big concern was the weather, with the remains of Hurricane Jose threatening to rain us out. But it looked good enough to try, and so I drove up early Tuesday morning under threatening, overcast skies. But bits of blue sky appeared as I got further north, and it turned out to be a good day.

I pulled into the parking lot at Profile Lake about ten seconds after Matt. Good timing! We put our stuff together and started walking down the bike path, then turned off into the woods to head up to the base. Going left around the big boulder gave us some quality Cannon Mountain bushwacking, but we re-found the climber’s trail after a few minutes. Then it was up the talus, which felt easy and stable after my mountaineering experiences on loose rock in Canada.

Gearing up at the base

The whole approach took about fifty minutes. Then we geared up at the base of the ridge, happy to have the place to ourselves.

The first few feet were “blue collar climbing,” as Matt likes to say, a widish crack in a corner. I made it up without too much trouble, although using too much strength. In some sense that set the tone for the day—short cruxes separated by easier climbing, in a spectacular setting.

I'm barely visible on the belay ledge

Looking down the ridge

Matt leading

The fourth pitch is the famous “Pipe Pitch” named after a length of pipe that was put in a hole to protect the difficult move. Climbing up the twin cracks above the belay, I was feeling really good, and floated up the section where some have had to be rescued after getting their knee stuck in a crack of just the wrong size. But soon I was standing at the pipe, with hundreds of feet of air below my heels, trying to figure out what to do. There’s a bit of a bulge, and lots of holds, but arranged in a way so they don’t help at all. There was nothing to do but try, and I got my knee on a shelf, and struggled to stand up. But it all worked!

Matt chased away the rain from Hurricane Jose by wearing the Sunshade Hoody

As always, the mountain has the last word. On the last pitch, Matt spent a lot of time figuring out how to best navigate through a section of loose rock. He even said “watch me” a few times as I was belaying, which hadn’t happened before. Things were sounding serious.

And that turned out to be by far the hardest part of the climb. I spent a long time figuring out where to go, with no positive holds, just small sections of less-steep rock. For the first time on the climb, I was really struggling, and felt lucky to get through that section without falling.

Almost done!

But there I was, approaching the top of the ridge!

Matt at the top

Happy

Cannon Mountain from the parking lot

What’s Next?

I will confess to two other climbs on the list: Mt. Washington’s Pinnacle Gully, and Moby Grape, also on Cannon Mountain. I’ll need some work to be ready for Moby Grape. It’s good to have goals, right?

Thank you, Matt, for a great day. I’m looking forward to more!