Organ Mountain Ice

Does anyone out there know of good ice routes in the organs? With the freeze thaw that is about to start occuring it could be prime for mixed conditions.

Nick,

The short answer would be I don't know, but I have been up in the Organs through the winter/spring months and never seen any ice enough to climb on. The Organs don't seem to have enough natural water or precip most winters to form much in the way of ice. There might be something in some shady areas, particularly on the east side of the range which gets less sun on average than the west, but it wouldn't be worth a trip by itself. Of course, if you're down here anyways for the rock routes, maybe it would be worth exploring for.

That is what I have noticed to, however a few years back i saw ice smears all the way down the sugarloaf, and with the latest relatively large snows, I was curious about lines like boyers chute ith the freeze thaw??? Anyone?

I don't know if I'd call it "good", but I've climbed a smear in a gully on the north side of the Citadel. It was in a year (2001?) where the Organs had some snow, followed by rain, and then several REALLY cold days. I'll find some pictures. I've also seen climbable ice on the east side of the Needle/Little Squaretop, though it looked like it could fall down at any time.
I've always thought that the place to hunt for ice is in the greater Cloudcroft/Ruidoso area. I bet there's some there somewhere. If you climb any Organs ice PM me, I love the hunt for wierd ice climbing (spent three years in College hunting for ice climbing in Arizona).

For the past week I thought this thread was about "Oregon" mountain ice...duh.

Paddy McIlvoy wrote:I don't know if I'd call it "good", but I've climbed a smear in a gully on the north side of the Citadel. It was in a year (2001?) where the Organs had some snow, followed by rain, and then several REALLY cold days. I'll find some pictures. I've also seen climbable ice on the east side of the Needle/Little Squaretop, though it looked like it could fall down at any time. I've always thought that the place to hunt for ice is in the greater Cloudcroft/Ruidoso area. I bet there's some there somewhere. If you climb any Organs ice PM me, I love the hunt for wierd ice climbing (spent three years in College hunting for ice climbing in Arizona).

Long ago I saw a lot of ice, probably in boyer's chute. It looked great from the road but I did not get up to it and see it up close.

I slide off some ice on sugar loaf long long ago but it was only about 1-2 inches thick and would not have been fun to climb.

The best bet in my mind is the seep at the bottom of gertch that probably forms up pretty regularly because it is completely shaded 24 hours a day. It is right at the last repel on the descent. I looked at the approach to gertch during thanksgiving and it has complete reverted to its natural state (cats claws galore).

You'd have to be lucky in terms of moisture and cold. But if I were asked to go find some, I'd look in a steep gully to the right of the trail to sugarloaf (near the slabby descent gully from Sugarloaf). Just a hunch, nothing more.

There isn't any ice there now but I found this while looking through some pictures from last year. Looks like a big slab of ice. It's on the eastside of the sugarloaf. I guess if it staid cold enough while this was there, one could climb it.