Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors My Old Man died.

Don't know if its made its way around the country, but the great stone face that has been a symbol of my State since time began, succumbed to the forces of mother nature and gravity.

Ain't gonna be the same going through Franconia Notch and not having the old guy looking down on me.

http://www.mutha.com/oldmanmt.html

Have seen it many times. I fly into Manchester when I visit my sister in Billerica.

Dear Ram,

In the 1970's and 1980's, my family & I lived in New Hampshire, where I taught school. At several of the schools where I worked, I directed their mountaineering & rock-climbing programs. I have climbed a number of the classic routes on Cannon Crag, which has quite a reputation for rockfall. One of these routes, Old Cannon, the original route on the face, first made in the late 1920's, formerly finished on part of the Old Man. The Old Cannon route, however, kept changing over the decades, because, like the Old Man, parts of it would fall off and a new variation would be necessary. I am very sorry that the Old Man is gone, but, with all the active frost-wedging on Cannon's boilerplate slabs, it was inevitable. I doubt that the "restoration" efforts will be feasible without huge expenditure. Also, what resulted really would not be "the real thing." Just my opinion.

Prominent mountain features falling is actually pretty common. The famed Gendarme, a pinnacle in the notch between the two peaks of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia - and really the symbol of Seneca Rocks - fell a number of years ago. Indeed, it fell the day after a party had climbed it! Similarly, out in Glacier National Park, Montana, where the rock is sedimentary and not the sturdiest, a climber made the first ascent of a huge pinnacle up on one of the peaks. He returned the next weekend to take photos of it from below. It was gone! It had fallen during the intervening week. So, that climber and his friends had to their credit not only the "first ascent," but the "only ascent!"

If you looked at the Old Man a certain way, it looked to me rather like the famous Savage logo.

Redcoat

Well, at least we still have "Indian Head" on Mt. Pemigewaset (shhhhh don't tell the ACLU, they'll make us change the name)

http://www.geocities.com/marmotamonax/Faces/labels/IndianHead.html

Its not as ornate as the Crazy Horse face in S.D., but ours is natural!

Going through the "Notch" will never be the same again. I will miss him.