November 15th 2014: Aussie Rappelling in Princeton

This morning, I had an Aussie rappelling class with some friends with North Ridge Mountain Guides at the Crow Hill Ledges in the Leominster State Forest, the area being located in the town of Westminster. I had given my friends, who were coming from the Boston area, rough directions to find the parking lot closest to the ledges, not knowing if it was the right parking lot. Thankfully it was, and all my friends managed to make it on time as well, give or take a few minutes. One of my friends also brought along his dog, and it had a great time all day, even though it was freezing at times.

We then hiked for a bit to the ledges,

where we started setting up by putting on sit harnesses

and had a short briefing on how to do normal rappelling.

After one of the guides ran up the cliff to throw down ropes,

some of us climbed up the treacherous route ourselves,

and the drop from the top was pretty scary. After setting up the ropes properly,it was time to rappell!!

In my opinion, it was actually pretty easy to go down the regular way, considering I have done waterfall rappelling before. It was very strenuous on my lower back though.


After getting down, it was time to climb back up again, this time for aussie rappelling.

One has to put on a full body harness for this, and we are attached from the back.

Going down facing the ground was a little more daunting,

but knowing that I was supported, with the stress being centered on my chest, made it much less scary, and as long as I kept leaning out and putting the weight on the soles of my feet against the cliff wall, I was fine and did not fall at all, although it felt slippery at times.

After everyone had had their go at it, it was time to go, but before the trek back to the cars, my friends decided to go check out a cave right next to where we climbed, where there was a box left by someone a long time ago with a notebook for people to write in. Pretty cool stuff.

After getting back to our cars, we decided to head nearby to the Five Guys in Leominster, where instead of getting a burger, I decided to get the Bacon Cheese Dog with all sorts of sauces,

Equally delicious, if not better than the famed burger itself.

After leaving the group, I still had some time, so I headed to Janet's Chili Dogs, a hot dog stand in Fitchburg,

where I used my deal to get 2 bags of chips, 2 cans of soda and 4 Regular Dogs.

They were alright I guess, though nothing compared to Five Guys.

With that, I called it a day, as I had an appointment with a friend to watch movies at home. I was definitely a fun experience aussie rappelling though.