Admin’s Trip Reports

Came back to tackle the ice climbs of Pinafore once more - this time in ~10-degree weather. This winter has been super mild, but the random flash-freezes come and go - this was one of them where the temps were below 32 for about 48+ hours, making Pinafore Run and the waterfalls in the creek mostly frozen over. The run has seen more flooding in the last year, thus at least one other waterfall has been washed away - making for 2 lost waterfalls in just 2 years here. One used to sit adjacent to the rail trail at about 6-feet tall (gone) and this other one used to be about 4-feet tall (now gone). I made the very slow ascent up to Pinafore Falls by testing and evaluating each step on the ice and rocks, which made for a slow climb up. A lot of the waterfalls were still flowing fairly heavily under the ice in the middle of the creek, with some deeper pools, so I stayed mostly on the side where I could. Made my way up each of the smaller ~5-foot ice waterfalls to reach the larger Pinafore Falls. Then I climbed Pinafore Falls for about 6 vertical feet to test the ice and take photos of the slide portion of the waterfall. Beautiful time on the ice, despite it not being fully formed. Had to go slow, but a very fun place for beginner solo ice climbing.