Up Huckleberry Mountain
26th January 2008
by Jay Harrison
I'm currently overloaded with stuff to do, particularly school studies. So I've put the Norway account aside for awhile, and will be posting shorter articles on the few trips I'm able to sneak away for when cabin fever gets too strong to deny. I hope to cover another Norway segment before the end of February '08 and post a brief description of an ice climb with some friends on SuperBowl Sunday.
The following trip took place on a really dull-light day. Please excuse the bland photos.
I had an entire Saturday at my disposal; the first in a long while. With gas prices being what they are, I couldn't travel far from home, but I wanted to see something a bit different than my back yard; so I headed north a short distance to Crane's northern neighbor, Huckleberry Mountain. I've always wanted to walk the ridge, and I've always wanted to find a casual ice route up the cliffs; so I figured to try pocketing both goals in one expedition.
I parked the car at on Hudson Street just east of Paintbed Road, and walked upward along the road leading past private homes and cabins to the trail proper. I donned snowshoes from here, walking awhile on the trail until it swung away from the cliffs of Huckleberry. I cut off from it then, crossed the brook, and wandered up toward the rampart, very close to where the cliffs turn from facing west to southwest.
For awhile, I walked among a few big boulders, scoping out potential lines for a future visit; but without much delay I worked up to the proper base of the cliff. I believe I came out just left of Desperate Passage, but I wasn't sure; it truly has been too long since my last visit here. Several potential lines to the north had suggested themselves, but a narrow thread of easy-looking ice wound down at the point where I came up to the cliff. It looked pretty easy, so I stomped out a platform, switched from snowshoes to crampons, and pulled out the ice tools.
Just as Johnsburg's noon whistle rang out, I began climbing. At first, the going was quite easy. the ice narrowed through a short, steep groove but held up well past this at a lower angle. However, the groove steepened to a short vertical corner with an iceless sod ramp above. This was a bit tricky. Fortunately, the sod held up well as I stemmed up with my feet and flung my axes at the rubbish, searching for solid placements.
After this, a narrow alley led easily up to a pedastal where I could relax awhile and take in the view. Gore Mountain stood only a few miles off, dominated the scene. It was otherwise too cloudy, the light too dull to be photogenic.
The gully led gently up leftward. I ascended with little difficulty, although the slant of my route put me directly above a long vertical drop. Falling wasn’t likely, but neither was it thinkable; so I had to step carefully despite the easy terrain. At the top of this pitch, a large pine stump blocked the exit. It was hollow, old, and unsound; but big enough that I had to clamber over it to gain ground. Fortunately, it was well-frozen to the ground.
After this, a short stretch of woods gave respite from the exposure. However, my way above was a steep, wide open patch of snow, rock, and ice with narrow strips of weed indicating vegetated crack lines. I climbed this, using thin, rotten ice for my left tool and frozen choss in a weed strip for my right one. Near the steepest part, the ice on my left became very thin, underlain by blank stone; so I resorted to choss-chopping up the narrow brush line with both tools.
The ice above led directly to a small overhang, festooned with a ragged, frozen curtain that was completely uninviting on solo. I opted to move left again, around the rock wall creating the obstacle. I thought I would find an easier way there, but as I turned the bend I found another short headwall, steep and dry. It would be a serious endeavor to go straight up. Once again, a short traverse left appeared to offer an escape. Perhaps I could jog that way and jog back right a few meters higher.
The traverse was easy, but led to a dead end. A thirty foot wall overhung the end of my traverse, and what I had taken for an easy ramp leading back right was an iceless rock slab guarded by a ten foot face. Heading diagonally leftward looked feasible. The terrain angle was trivial, offering a gentle slope around the wall looming above me. However, it would require walking close to the lip of the cliff below, on snow-covered verglas. I scouted around for other possibilities before choosing this as the best option at hand. This too went without difficulty, though once again I had to carefully gauge my movements on otherwise mindless terrain.
Coming around the bend, two options presented themselves. A short headwall blocked my way, with a steep gully directly above, while left of a blank stretch of rock between them, a tendril of ice covered the rock leading down to a small platform with two small trees. Below the gully was a long slide to the vertical drop. The ice was steeper but appeared to offer a safety net. I fiddled with it for awhile, climbing up over a vertical step to see how it would go. The ice vanished above, leaving nothing but blank rock slab. I scratched my tools ineffectively overhead without finding any purchase for awhile before finally retreating downward.
It was the gully then. The start was little more than a snow-slog, but it steepened to a narrow corner with one vertical spot blocking an easy brush line to the top. I stemmed my way through this, clawing one tool into the soft crud above and clutching spirea stems with my other hand, since there was no ice for my tool. Safely ensconced in the brush line, I pulled my way up to its end, and tiptoed through another thin stretch using branches from a tree above me to get over this last difficulty. I was finally on the summit ridge.
I stowed crampons and tools, ate a bit, then began wandering along the ridge. Wind had created a series of drift belts perpendicular to my path, so the walking varied between ankle- and knee-deep snow. After awhile I moved away from the edge to escape the variable snow depth. It was easier to negotiate my way among the trees in the woods. For quite awhile, I followed a deer track to work through the denser portions. In a short while, I spied an unnatural opening to my left, and headed over to investigate. A large, level opening, perhaps a hundred meters wide by two or three hundred long, had been cut here. At first, I worried that this was private land and someone intended to build a big mountaintop mansion, but after awhile I realized this was probably a helipad used by firefighters seven or eight years ago. A flagged trail led off from the end of this clearing in my direction, so I followed it. In short order, I could see scorch marks on trees, charred trunks, and other sure signs of that fire.
The conflagration burned a large portion of Huckleberry’s summit trees. The damage began shortly east of the mountain’s turning point (near my ascent route) and from there, continued all the way along the ridge until I came down onto the private log roads above Crystal Brook. The trail petered at the main burned-over area; and from here onward dead trees, poplar whippets, and briars made the going almost impossible at times. I moved back to near the ridge to escape the worst of the mess, and once again began following tracks to work my way eastward. These skirted a narrow gap between the destruction and the cliffs, at times too far down the slope to be safe, other times meandering through the wreckage in places I couldn’t follow.
Finally they wound out onto a knob with a clear look below and around. I stopped to take a few pictures, since Crane Mountain was now fully in view. I happened to look at the tracks here, and realized I wasn’t following a deer but a coyote. This worried me some; while one presents no hazard to a grown man, I know the valley below holds a large pack of them. I pulled one tool off my pack and carried it the rest of the way, just in case.
I won’t go into details about the rest of the trip. Suffice to say that negotiating the burned region was arduous at best, took much longer than I had planned, and finally ended on the private ATV trails that lead to Johnsburg Road. Once off the mountainside, the walk is both dull and technically off-limits; public-only options would require descending back into the height-of-land between the Crystal and Paintbed Brook watersheds. I’ve done that bit before, so instead I snuck cross-lots, plodding through dusk to the road and calling for a lift from there. I returned to my car at about 5pm, so the entire walk took about six hours.
