salida
New member
71 days since I last skied.
Steve beat me to it!
Plan was to hike ammi, to the summit of Mt. Washington, stop in at the OBS and ski some of the auto road. Left Cog base at 10 AM and made very good time to the base of the slab work on the ammi. ABout 3 inches of snow at the bottom. The slabs had turned to solid ice, and we carefully made our way up them without crampons. Took a long time, and we were the only ones on the trail by this point, the waterfall ice turned everyone else away. Finally, made it to Lakes around noon. It was blowing something fierce. Checking the obs data logger it was sustained above 70 gusting to close to a 100 during this time. We continued onwards sans crampons (we only had one pair for the two of us). We made it half-way up the crawford path from Lakes to the summit, and the wind was blowing us down. Snow depth here was hard to tell, but some drifts were at least 4-5 feet deep. Our skis acted like sails and we just didn't have the gumption to keep going. Retreated back to lakes, and put cramps on. Since we only had one pair, we both put one on each. I know cheap ass college kids can only afford one pair of cramps... Coming down the ice was not as difficult as expected and we made good time down the mountain once we got below tree line and out of the wind.
Damn it though, we still hadn't gotten to ski and we'd just lugged our stuff up nearly 4000 vertical feet. Son of a. Got off the trail by 230.
____________
Being a little peeved, we hopped in the car and on the road to cannon we went. Pulled up to the base around 3, and started skinning up the mountain. There were tracks on the front face (paulies) but nothing on the back side. Skinned to the top, took about an hour and 20 minutes. OK snow, about 6 inches at the top and 3 at the bottom. Made for interesting skiing. But hell, its skiing anyways!
Truely a very long strenuous day, but damn October 21st on the east coast, can't deny that!
This picture pretty much tells the complete story:
http://porter.haney.googlepages.com/IMG_1559.jpg
-Porter
Steve beat me to it!
Plan was to hike ammi, to the summit of Mt. Washington, stop in at the OBS and ski some of the auto road. Left Cog base at 10 AM and made very good time to the base of the slab work on the ammi. ABout 3 inches of snow at the bottom. The slabs had turned to solid ice, and we carefully made our way up them without crampons. Took a long time, and we were the only ones on the trail by this point, the waterfall ice turned everyone else away. Finally, made it to Lakes around noon. It was blowing something fierce. Checking the obs data logger it was sustained above 70 gusting to close to a 100 during this time. We continued onwards sans crampons (we only had one pair for the two of us). We made it half-way up the crawford path from Lakes to the summit, and the wind was blowing us down. Snow depth here was hard to tell, but some drifts were at least 4-5 feet deep. Our skis acted like sails and we just didn't have the gumption to keep going. Retreated back to lakes, and put cramps on. Since we only had one pair, we both put one on each. I know cheap ass college kids can only afford one pair of cramps... Coming down the ice was not as difficult as expected and we made good time down the mountain once we got below tree line and out of the wind.
Damn it though, we still hadn't gotten to ski and we'd just lugged our stuff up nearly 4000 vertical feet. Son of a. Got off the trail by 230.
____________
Being a little peeved, we hopped in the car and on the road to cannon we went. Pulled up to the base around 3, and started skinning up the mountain. There were tracks on the front face (paulies) but nothing on the back side. Skinned to the top, took about an hour and 20 minutes. OK snow, about 6 inches at the top and 3 at the bottom. Made for interesting skiing. But hell, its skiing anyways!
Truely a very long strenuous day, but damn October 21st on the east coast, can't deny that!
This picture pretty much tells the complete story:
http://porter.haney.googlepages.com/IMG_1559.jpg
-Porter
