Cathedral Ledge North Conway
— — the cliff the valley leans against.
Not only on a wall.
“A wall of White Mountain granite rising about 700 feet over the floor of the Mount Washington Valley. Climbers know the routes by name; everyone else takes the auto road to the rim and looks east toward the village and the Saco. The light arrives there first in the morning and leaves last in the afternoon. Quiet up top, mostly. from the studio
Cathedral Ledge North Conway, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cathedral Ledge is a cliff of biotite granite on the western edge of the Mount Washington Valley in Bartlett, New Hampshire. The summit sits at about 1,150 feet and rises roughly 700 feet above Echo Lake, the small kettle pond at its base. A paved auto road reaches the top from spring through fall, and the ledge is part of Echo Lake State Park, managed by the State of New Hampshire. The village of North Conway is two miles east across the valley floor.
The cliff is one of the most established rock-climbing walls in the eastern United States. Generations of climbers have traced routes up the face since the 1930s, with classics like Thin Air and Recompense well documented in the American Alpine guidebooks. The granite is coarse-grained and weathers in long vertical sheets, which is what gives the wall its plumb-line look from the floor of the valley. The Mountaineers and the AMC keep current beta on conditions.
The auto road to the summit opens after mud season, usually mid-May, and closes for snow around mid-November. Hours run roughly 9 a.m. to sunset, with a small day-use fee for non-residents at the Echo Lake gatehouse. The view from the rim looks east to Mount Kearsarge North and, on clear days, north toward the Presidential Range. There is no food on the ledge; North Conway, two miles down the hill, has the diners.