Don't Leave Good Snow to Find Good Snow

April 21, 2010, Wednesday, Spring break.

From The Lifted Stem

An OK window for the weather and an ok day to grab a car and leave it in the Cog lot for the day. Highest and best use I say. Grab a cell phone from a kid still a lump in the bed; some reassurance that i won't perish alone in a spring snow squall without being able to tell my family where I hid the car keys. It would better if the lump came along... oh well.

A fair weather hiker doesn't plan well. Today at 5 AM, the weather looks good but who you gonna call for backup at this hour? Even the dog can't go, she's got a limp. I've traveled in the mountains by myself a lot. Usually it's pleasant traveling at my own pace in familiar terrain with good weather. Today's forecast of clouding up with an afternoon chance of flurries on the summits is manageable. The temps should be well above freezing all day on the southerly aspects. Mid day cloudstacks with gray underbellies did move in ahead of a ten minute snowburst, enough weather to make me thankful for all the clothing I had crammed into my pack.

I might have left the tele gear behind. The light set-up is a pleasure for touring, and ok on a reasonable descent, but I'd be throwing myself down some steep, alpine chute in manky snow to get home. That worked thirty years ago on three pins, but the thought of it gave me the willies today.

There were two other parties skinning up the Ammonoosok trail. Two guys who had just crawled out of their Vermont car when I arrived. Together, we looked up high at the snowfields, finishing off cold coffee and pulling together odds and ends we might need for the day. Another guy showed up a bit later, traveling solo. The solo guy left the path early to climb up Monroe Brook. I leapfrogged most of the way with the Vermont guys. One of them chattered incessantly like a guide on a tour bus. The other was cheerful and well enough equipped, but looked as though he might be in unfamiliar territory.

From The Lifted Stem

I took their picture, they took mine and went on ahead and up the first gully we came to, zig-zagging a difficult skin track. I had enough of the skin track and kicked a booter the rest of the way where I could get about half of my foot into the softening snow.

From The Lifted Stem

Wasn't long before they fell in behind me. Thankfully crampons can stay in the pack. This gully might be an ok ski back into the ravine except last Saturday's heavy, deep snowfall had avalanched and filled the choke with football sized chunks the sun hadn't yet penetrated.

From The Lifted Stem

I envision a brilliant snowfield hanging just below the summit of Mt. Monroe. It would be south-facing, already soft, and out of the breeze. So topping out, I shuffled off toward the top of Monroe Brook and circled southerly around Monroe until I was looking out through Oakes Gulf and the Dry River valley. Trees were already in full bud down there. Ironically most of the Mount Washington drownings have been in the Dry River.

From The Lifted Stem

Oakes from Mt. Monroe

No snowfield, no way out, except backtrack, so with my skis still on, I lowered myself over a ledgey drop, then picked through boulders to the Crawford Path and over to Lakes. First four turns of the day, were into the little basin of ponds just above the hut. There were my new friends having lunch, bundled up in the lee of the hut alongside a huge snowdrift. I glossed over the time away by describing my tour around Monroe as an Oakes Gulf recon, leaving out the part about the dead-end. Calling it a tour sounded good.

Almost two hours ago, I had left good snow to find snow and still hadn't done any skiing. Bad move. Now I had to get back to the car to pick up my wife at the office, so I began the ski out.

The plan was to ski out Monroe Brook, a beautiful, northwest facing gully I'd been in a couple of times before. Today, all the big chutes I'd seen were full of avi crap so I assumed the same for M.B. and stayed right of the main gully as long as I could. I twice lapped the snowfields that funnel into the drainage before dropping into a really fun chute through shoulder high evergreens. The fun eventually ended at impenetrable firs after a 750' descent. ##@^#@. Rather than climb back out, I decided to bushwhack my way over to what was left of the gully, popping out unseen right behind the two guys from lakes. I told 'em I'd found a nice, little chute in there, leaving out the part about the dead-end. Very nice. Hmmm.

From The Lifted Stem

Good ski out the hiking trail to the new p-lot cut off.