From_the_NEK
New member
Had a pretty good day considering the rain the day before. Was supposed to meet Lftgly at 9:00 at Pinkham but unfortunately I forgot the whole "Spring ahead" thing. Ian also got there later than I did due to similar circumstances. So we got started an hour late.
The hike up was already really thinned out. I didn't put my skis/skins on my feet until 2/3 of the way up to the slides. When I took the time to do this Ian kept going onto the slides. When I finally got there Ian was already half way up. We was back down by the time I had grabbed a bite to eat and taken my skins off. The snow was not very corny and the wind was gusting pretty strong. The summit was recording near 100 mph winds. This caused a lot of ice chunks to hit you in the face on the way up the gullies. Hiked up to the top of the Main Gully and the surface at the top was a barely edgable windblown sun/rain crust. It took some careful turns at the top to keep from sliding down. The lower 1/2 of the chute below the small ice fall actually started to soften up into corn for a little while with the help of some skier traffic to break up the shiney crust.
After this run Ian left. His dogs' feet had become pretty sore running around on the ice. I headed off to the little bowl on the southern end of the gulf. This had a little better aspect to the sun at this point of the day but it still hadn't softened. I found a nice run down the started really icy. However, it turned into about 4 inches of wind deposited powder that made for about 7-8 turns before it turned to ice again. I traversed back to the main gully and cut in beside the ice fall. The ski run down the hiking trail was interesting as I went a little farther than I should have with my skis on. Over all it was a decent day.
The hike up was already really thinned out. I didn't put my skis/skins on my feet until 2/3 of the way up to the slides. When I took the time to do this Ian kept going onto the slides. When I finally got there Ian was already half way up. We was back down by the time I had grabbed a bite to eat and taken my skins off. The snow was not very corny and the wind was gusting pretty strong. The summit was recording near 100 mph winds. This caused a lot of ice chunks to hit you in the face on the way up the gullies. Hiked up to the top of the Main Gully and the surface at the top was a barely edgable windblown sun/rain crust. It took some careful turns at the top to keep from sliding down. The lower 1/2 of the chute below the small ice fall actually started to soften up into corn for a little while with the help of some skier traffic to break up the shiney crust.
After this run Ian left. His dogs' feet had become pretty sore running around on the ice. I headed off to the little bowl on the southern end of the gulf. This had a little better aspect to the sun at this point of the day but it still hadn't softened. I found a nice run down the started really icy. However, it turned into about 4 inches of wind deposited powder that made for about 7-8 turns before it turned to ice again. I traversed back to the main gully and cut in beside the ice fall. The ski run down the hiking trail was interesting as I went a little farther than I should have with my skis on. Over all it was a decent day.
