Driving to Pitchoff Mountain on Route 73 in early January—our first day ice climbing this winter—I took note of the sorry state of classic ice routes. Rock faces that should have been fat with ice, were not.
Roaring Brook Falls, one of the most popular moderate routes, was a stream of water surrounded by white spray ice pasted on rock. The fearsome Power Play at Chapel Pond hadn’t yet touched the ground, and Chouinard’s Gully looked more like a thread of ice than the frozen vertical highway it usually is.
For ice climbers, with their short season and fickle medium, warmer winters have hit hard.
Many days, the Rock and River Ice Report website reads like a farewell to the sport. “December of 2023 was perhaps the worst
