Winter in New Hampshire

Christmas cookies! Mom was getting exasperated and Karen and me for making dinosaurs and such and not Christmas-y shaped ones.

New Years Day - sledding down the Pack Monadnock Auto Road. Ben, Kaija, and Andy taking shelter from the vicious winds in the summit lean-to.

Michelle and Andy riding back from the mountain in Ben's truck, after much careening off trail, nearly hitting dogs, snowmobiles, and/or eachother's sleds.

Icefishing with my family. Here, Dad sets a tip-up in a hole we drilled (with a hand auger too, thank you, we don't have a motorized one)

Fish! All of us with the first yellow perch of the day.

And, before leaving New Hampshire, we did a winter hike up Mt. Washington. Andy hikes along the Lions Head ridge in 30-40 mph winds (windy most places, quite balmy for Washington).


Me and Matt at the summit. It took us a while to find the actual summit once we reached to top, as it was so foggy we could barely see cairn to cairn.

Prophesy Wall

We drove north of town to the Prophesy Wall, a 200 foot sandstone cliff, to break in my new climbing rope - hooray!

Sandstone is so soft it can be scary to climb on - flakes you use as handholds feel like they could be pulled right off the rock. Because of the height of the wall, most of the climbs are done in two or three pitches, stopping at ledges partway up to belay your partner. (I'm only about three feet off the ground in this picture, we couldn't get any pictures while actually climbing the wall, as belaying is somewhat more important than picture taking).


At the end of the climb, on top of the wall, we can look out and see the basalt cones of extinct volcanoes dotting the valley. And also the setting sun, so it's time to get down before dark...


Matt rappelling off the second belay ledge on the way down. Rappelling is very fun, as you are just hanging on the rope and controlling your descent by braking the rope with a belay device on your harness. Except that out here, there invariably seems to be a holly tree with spiky leaves at the bottom of most crags, and its hard to avoid them.

We really need to time our climbing excursions better, this is the second time we've walked out from this climb in the dark. But the late hour does make for lovely sunsets.