Repentance on Cathedral Ledge

//// Below is an account of my first time climbing Repentance on Cathedral Ledge in North Conway, NH. /////

Yesterday Jim Ewing and I climbed Repentance on Cathedral Ledge. I’d never climbed Cathedral’s most classic hard ice climb before, so it seemed a good thing to do, despite it was bone chilling cold out In hindsight, it was not a bright choice!

Racking for the climb was soooooo cold. Jim led the first two pitches as one long rope stretcher, figuring that with me being taller I would take the chockstone roof pitch. Sounded fine to me. The first half of Jim’s lead went easy enough, and even the crux moves to get established in the wide crack were OK. It was after that the situation turned grim.

There was barely any ice inside the second pitch’s wide crack, and what ice was there was mostly unconsolidated slush. It took Jim two hours to ascend the long pitch. I was wondering what was taking Jim so long, until I followed the pitch. Thank goodness it was not me up there, was all I thought.

I followed the pitch much more quickly, but it’s easy to do so when you have a top rope. Once at the belay, I racked up for the third pitch. The ice in the upper chimney was brittle and weird, with some sections of no ice at all. I was proud of my three slung icicles for pro half way up the pitch, but probably shouldn’t have been. It was mostly psychological protection.

Near the end of the pitch, the ice beneath the chockstone roof was quite low, which made the exit up left quite difficult. A strenuous hand/arm jam let me reach around the roof. An ice steinpull let me get a hook and turf shot above, and established on the belay ledge. Followng, Jim was stymied by the sequence, but ended up doing some very nice stemming to surmount the crux. The one consolation to the frozen toes and painful fingers was a booty #2 Rigid Friend :-)