North Shore Ice Trip!

I have been wanting to get up to the North Shore to do some ice climbing and finally I had the day to do it. Aaron from Oregon came with to give it a try. Our first stop was Stoney Point. Just to look. The ice was like sparkling fragile blue gems all piled up and shining in the misty morning sun...beautiful! At Daves house he told us that Devil Track was really in and fantastic but since we just had a day trip we decided to head to Manitou. There we had a gorgeous hike in but didn't find a good route to climb. The main route was there but pretty complicated. We talked it over and decided to go to Gooseberry Falls. There was ice...and tourists. We set up on the lower falls on a vertical route and climbed. Aaron was a natural at ice climbing and did great. Dave climbed like he'd been doing it for 20 years...oh wait he has been doing ice for 20. I had fun up until we tried the edge of the curtain. Dave did it first and we could tell there was a fissure 3/4 the way up the ice. Chunks wanted to fall off. I did the second assent and kindly cleared all the loose chunky ice from the route. One off the helmet, one on my left thigh and my right thigh took the biggest peice of ice. The other 900 peices either missed or did no harm. Aaron had a relatively clean route up. We then decided to move the rope to the climb on river left. When we got there we could see the base wasn't as solid as it should be and was a delicate peice of nature's art work. We didn't climb it and headed back to Dave's to do some river skiing on the Stewart. It's the best time of the year to scout rapids. We stood right on Plumers Crack as Dave described the line. I'd like to do some more river skiing next Saturday if things work out. I have this urge to start buying rose bushes so I'm thinking spring is right on the edge. We'll see what the week brings for weather. What a great day!!