The Easter Weekend in The North Country...

here are some photos of the river hiking and ice climbing on the Devil Track River on a climb called Nightfall...considered by many to be the premier climb of Minnesota.  I can see why...the hike was awesome and the climb was clean.  too bad for my buddy that he was feeling too under the weather to make the commitment of climbing the entire thing to the top.  We went in with the hopes of just having a great scouting mission.  But, we ended up getting some great bouldering and climbing in.

here (left) you can see how thick the ice is away from the current...notice wulffie in the background taking it easy.  the river gorge was so beautiful.

what a beautiful climb.  with a WI 2 start leading up to a WI 3+ middle to WI 4 right side of the second pitch this climb is just great.  it's a little distorted in the photo.  the lower section is about 40 feet if you don't include the really low grade snow approach which I think is included in the total height of the climb. the middle incline is a pretty low one for about 30 feet. then the finishing vertical section is about 70 feet...hard to tell since the climb goes into the gorge for about 20 feet...you can kinda tell if you look at the vertical exposed rock on either side of the ice from the middle of the climb up to the top.  So, Wulffie and I decided that climbing the lower grade section free was in order.  after some warm up, we nibbled on the lower section to get to the middle of the climb and soak in a different perspective on life for a few minutes before we descended down. 

 Now, the descending part, that was a bit of a different experience as you can imagine.  hell, even going down stairs is tougher than going up them.

here are a few videos of our little excursion.

a taste of the climb...

a view of the climb...

until next time, Old Man Winter.