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Was up in Crawford Notch again Monday, hacking away. The ice was beautiful,
the view invigorating, the flows really thick - you could screw in 10 inches
easy, so the belays were very solid. I slipped off once following, but
the screws didn't budge at all under my weight. One pitch I forgot to
clean the ice out of the screws when removing them, with the result that I
couldn't get them in on the lead, and had to switch to snargs. The snargs
pounded in easy but were much harder for the second to remove. He had to
go on tension and work both hands and use an axe as a lever to turn them at
all. I heard some choice language there. We aren't very good at this,
but we're really doing it, and I felt safe. Route 302 is a long way down.
We saw 4 or 5 other parties in the notch.
The upshot was that time really flew by, and since I was in leather boots
and we were all day in the gully, I seem to have gotten a bit numb in the
toes, and it took all Tuesday for feeling to return to them. I'm lucky
not to be frostbitten. Nature's way of telling me to go buy expensive
double mountaineering boots, I guess. My feet are at risk if I go on like
this. It's insidious, because you don't notice the danger since you're
concentrating on your belay and the wild scene.
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