Nate arrived at the bottom and looked at his watch. 4:40PM. We had 1 hour until it was dark. He looked at me and said, “what do you think about finishing up in the dark?” I grabbed my headlamp, threw on my puffy and belay mitts while Nate grabbed a couple extra screws and jumped on the ice again!
An hour later or so Nate yelled down that he needed 10 more feet of rope to make the belay. I was sitting there warm in my parka thinking, “ok, I guess I’ll start climbing then!” I got about 15 feet up and immediately relieved myself on the wet part climb. I didn’t want to go on the rope while belaying and this was a number 1 emergency. The yank on my harness told me I was on belay and without changing my mitts or removing my parka I headed up. The handles I made swing surprisingly well with mitts on! I thought it would have been impossible but it was great! I took my gloves off to clip gear to my harness and remove screws as the sun and temp dropped. At one instance when I tried to pull my shell’s hood off my helmet I came face to face with battery pack for my lamp. I got it back on avoiding a true climb in the dark. I arrived at the lip and Nate commented how I “looked like Steve House.” If only my girlfriend would compliment me like that! The obligatory summit shot never occurred as I ran out of memory so I rapped our cables and rung out my pack that had gotten into the path of some water diverted above! We threw our gear in our packs and walked out turning off the lamps and going by moonlight. It was beautiful walking through the forest with snow heavy branches and the moon casting our shadows on the ground. A mile later we were at the car, the safe and successful end to the climbing on the trip and the start of the drive back to our families.

On the way home we spent a cold bivy in the car once on the side of the highway at about midnight, and again in Marathon in a parking lot waiting to fill up with fuel. The ride home is always so long but we made it, albeit slowly due to traffic and poor roads.

There is no doubt that this was a great trip, the finale being a moonlit climb on some excellent Nipigon ice and then the serene walk out. I still have some unfinished business up in T-Bay and some day I’ll go back and get on Alpine Outing. Maybe it will be with Blake (who I bailed with the first time!) which is probably the way it should be. Thanks to Nate for taking care of things for me, being safe, and being able to share this trip!!!