The Ghost 5.7 C2+
New England's best alpine big wall.
The Ghost 5.7 C2+
At 5am my alarm rang and I rolled over to look at my phone. Fully prepared to get up, eat a hasty breakfast and drive to Franconia Notch, I read a text from Ben saying he couldn’t make it to Franconia until 8:30. Realizing I could’ve slept another hour and a half, my girlfriend and I both groaned and I crawled back into bed. The second alarm rang and I finally got moving. Despite a later start than we thought, our plan was still the same. Meet in Franconia Notch and climb The Ghost on Cannon Cliff. Named for a defined white streak in the otherwise dark rock, the Ghost takes a proud line up a daunting section of Cannon. For those of you not from the area, Cannon is New England’s largest cliff, sitting high above Franconia Notch, on the flanks of Cannon Mountain. In the White Mountains, most cliffs are only a few hundred feet high. Ranging from 600 to almost 1,000 feet tall depending on your line, Cannon stands alone as New England’s alpine big wall. Most of the climbing routes are between 5-10 pitches long, so it’s small compared to anything in Yosemite or Zion. However, while it may not be the largest wall, it packs a punch. Cannon is notorious for rockfall, challenging route finding and alpine trickery. Any route on Cannon is a serious undertaking, especially if you’re climbing routes that aren’t popular. Up to this point I’d climbed 7 different routes, and should we be successful, this would be my 8th route to the summit.
Cannon Cliff as viewed from the talus slope approach.
The Ghost climbs the center section of the wall, the tallest and least featured section. Up to this point I’ve never met anyone besides Ben who had done the route, and given how little information there was, it was daunting to think about attempting it with anyone else. There’s no trip reports, the guidebook doesn’t give you a pitch by pitch topo or a gear list, and the mountain project description didn’t have any pictures. I wasn’t sure where the route went entirely, what gear I would want, or what condition it was in. On top of that, The Ghost only goes half way up the wall, to top out, you need to link with a route called Sam’s Swan Song. While only rated 5.7, Sam’s is well known for being a route finding nightmare. Particularly the top. Stay on route and you’ll climb easily to the summit, one wrong turn and you’re stranded in an abyss of loose rock, no gear and challenging options for retreat. Luckily, I had a secret weapon for the day and that was Ben.
I met Ben in the fall of last year on instagram and we started climbing together. He helped me train for my trip to Yosemite and since then has become a mentor figure in my climbing. We’ve gone on to put up 2 first ascents, Nailing The Coffin A2, and Free Crash Pad 5.10a at Valkyrie Wall in Conway. We’ve also ticked off a few great aid routes in the Mount Washington Valley. Such as Mines Of Moria 5.5 C2, and the Mordor Wall 5.9 A3. The Ghost was a route we’d talked about for a long time, he’d done the first 5 pitches a few times and rappelled, but he got caught in a thunderstorm on the top and had to bail just shy of the summit. Either way, he knew where the route goes and could point me in the right direction for my leads. Still, I was nervous for the route we were about to take on.
We got set up in the Profile Lake parking lot, sorting gear and deciding what to bring. We ended up taking a 70m rope, 70m static haul line, a light haul bag, double rack of cams, with singles in 3-5, nuts, micros, an assortment of hooks including bat hooks, a sky hook and a cam hook. We also brought 2 beaks for hand placing, a rope protector and 23 draws. We also brought 4 liters of water and some snacks. I signed us into the the climbing register and we started up the approach. The talus was atrociously hot, and we were sweating buckets by the time we reached the base of the route. Given that we were already short on time, Ben decided it would be best if I blast up the original start instead of the Lightning Crack Variation. I would also lead the first block, all the way to pitch 4. While the original start isn’t quite as fun, I’m always a big fan of doing routes the traditional way the first time, for the sake of appreciating the history. I proceeded to make a speedy ascent of the blocky 5.7 pitch, all the way to the top of the buttress.
Me leading up the start.
I fixed the rope on the bolted belay and Ben jugged. Next came the start of the aid climbing. I broke out my aid ladders and pulled into the right arching crack. I quickly began wondering why I didn’t just bring a full rack of 0.3 inch cams and left everything else at home. Luckily as I aided across, I eventually found larger gear and I was able to stretch the two 0.3s we brought by back cleaning a few placements. When I got to the end of the crack, I saw a really blank section above, between me and the next bolt. I slotted a micro nut in the top of the crack, which I bounce tested in my aider before committing to it. Then stood up as high as I could and spied a drilled hole in the rock for a bat hook. I pulled the iron out and slotted a hook into the hole. Once I got on the bolt ladder I was cruising.
Me leading the pitch 2 bolt ladder.
Eventually Ben yelled up me “make sure you go right” I looked at the widely spaced bolts that go left, and the older relics that go right towards the belay and shuttered. I aided on old bolts until I eventually got to another blank section. In typical Ben fashion he said “it gets a little tricky there” without telling me what to do. I looked around and found an incut edge. I placed a sky hook and stood up. Desperately feeling around, I eventually found the ring of an old piton out of view and clipped it. I free climbed up to the belay ledge and linked it with pitch 3. Mid way up the old rivet ladder, I realized I was low on draws. So put all my cams on 1 carabiner and used individual carabiners on the river hangers, saving the final remaining draws for the bolts. The hanging belay was made of gnarly old cord. So I backed it up with my own. By this point I’d been on lead for an hour, and the challenging nature of the aiding combined with the hot sun was wearing on me. But I still needed to get the damn haul bag to me before I could have any water. I dragged the haul bag up the wall with a micro traction pulley and finally got to replenish my energy.
Ben jugging the rivet ladder in the famous white streak.
By the time I got the haul bag up, drank water and re-stacked the ropes, I only had time to snap a few pictures of Ben before he made it to the belay. I got back on lead to finish my block. Pitch 4, takes on a feature called The Great Overlap. Despite having the most straightforward gear on the route, starting this pitch felt oddly dangerous. You step high into your aid ladders, plug a #5 cam, and clip into it, then your feet are just dangling in free space on your ladders. I immediately felt the exposure as I moved left. Soon I got to a spot where a loose flake was just wedged in the crack. I stepped down in my ladders, reached around a corner and found another crack to avoid having to trust this feature. This made the rope run over a sharp edge. I envisioned what would happen if I pulled a piece up high and took a fall, causing my rope to come tight on this edge. I broke out the rope protector and set it up around the rope, mitigating this situation before I moved onto the crux. I tested some loose looking rock by tapping with my hand, which turned out to actually be fairly solid. I placed a #1 cam, moved left and clipped a bolt with a sigh of relief. But to my disappointment, this was not the end of my troubles. I moved into the real crux, stepping up on a fixed bashie, then moving past a flare in the crack that made no sense to me. After trying to fit damn near every piece of gear, I broke out the cam hook, which I’ve never placed before, and slotted it into the flare. I bounce tested it a few times, and it was good to go. For all I know it could’ve been a textbook cam hook, but having never used it, I was nervous the whole time. Thankfully, it held as I moved up to the fixed piton, finishing the crux section.
Entering the crux of the route.
Once I was at the belay. We decided it would be best if I belayed Ben across instead of having him jug, for the sake of not getting the rope wedged in a crack above the crux. I belayed him up and he took over for his lead on pitch 5. Mid way up his lead he realized it would be easier to free climb the top half of the pitch at 5.7ish than to aid it on thin gear, so I lowered him down to the ledge. Based on time, and the fact that my shoes were clipped to me instead of in the haul bag, I decided to switch with him, French free to his high point then finish the pitch. This went smoothly and we didn’t lose too much time. At the top of pitch 5 is a massive ledge called the Cow Pasture. It’s the only feature of its kind on this whole section of wall. We’d completed The Ghost, but we still needed to find a way to the top of this thing. We did a short pitch across the ledge to single bolt, equalized with a piton. I assumed this to be the pitch 4 belay of Sam’s Swan Song. Ben gave me a bit of direction on where the pitch goes and since I was a faster free climber, I offered to take us to the summit.
The “Cow Pasture” Ledge.
He agreed and I set off, up a hand crack, up left through an offwidth-ish thing, then pulled through a headwall to the right. After looking at the topo for a bit, I couldn’t figure out if I was in the right spot or not. I could tell Ben was sensing this might take a while, and after getting a call asking when he’d be home, he even suggested we go down. I looked around for an anchor and eventually I spied a fixed belay to my left. It was 2 rusted pitons with old cord and a rusted rap ring, and to get to it I would have to down climb a weird move. I immediately thought “hell nah”. But, now that I’d confirmed that was the belay, I knew for sure I’d correctly pulled through the headwall and the corner above me was the right way. I took it to the next ledge, a large sloping ledge you could fit a pick up truck on. This also confirmed we nailed the route finding. Ben jugged and I hauled. As soon as he got to the ledge, he said “we need to stack these ropes perfectly”. In other words, we need to move so we can’t screw up. By now it was 6:00pm so we only had 2.5 hours of daylight to burn. But the hard climbing was over and I knew the descent trail well, so we felt prepared.
Ben Jugging to the large sloping ledge
I continued up a short 5.6 pitch through a , running it all the way to a crack right before the final 5th class move. I built an alpine anchor called a swamp anchor in a perfect crack, the looked down and realized I climbed past a bolted belay, silly me. I was still on the route, and even closer to the summit, so I proceeded and set up the haul. The bag immediately got stuck, and we had to do some shenanigans involving me belaying Ben and tying him off every so often to unstuck the haul bag. At long last, both him and the bag got to me. Since Ben had tried a few times to top out the wall and never summited, it was only right that he took the last lead. I heard him shout from the top of the wall when he made it, sending radiating stoke through the notch. I followed the pitch, freeing 5.6 with approach shoes on and a haul bag on my back. I felt extra heavy as I made the last few moves, pulling through a notch to the finish ledge.
I looked around at the foreign looking landscape, strange alpine vegetation was everywhere and clusters of moss almost a foot thick. One little gully appeared to be the best line through the land of moss. I kiwi coiled the rope, adding to my training weight, and we simuled through the alien moss gully to the descent trail. The Ghost was one of the longest, wildest rides of a climb I’ve ever done, and we were both stoked as can be. Ben remarked that it was about time he got this thing done, and even brought a custom t-shirt where “The Ghost Face” was printed in the style of the North Face logo. We took some pictures with it, and exchanged gear, then made the long descent back to Profile Lake, feeling tired and hungry, yet totally fulfilled.
Limited edition merch?
Overall it was a day where I spent a lot of time on the sharp end, but I couldn’t have done it without Ben’s teaching over the last few months. Aid climbing is hard to get into, and you really need someone to show you the way. It’s not something you can just watch a few YouTube videos on. On top of that, there’s just not that many people who do it in the northeast. Im lucky to have been shown the way, and grateful that now I can pass the knowledge on and help bridge it to the next generation. Im also grateful I can help bring these old aid routes to the 21st century and document them in a way that can benefit other climbers enjoy them too. I’ve already started improving the Mountain Project page for The Ghost, which I’m hoping will inspire other climbers to go experience this route for themselves.
10 hour pushes have some perks.