Saturday Night I get a call from my buddy Noah at school. We'd been planning on skiing the bit of fresh snow at stowe on sunday. Seeing Noah's name on caller ID i get a sinking feeling - surely he wants to bail, maybe he's got work to do or something.
Nope.
His voice is excited when he picks up. "Dude- check out mtwashington.org. The Great Gulf might be skiable!" I waste no time finding the picture in question. The plan for an epic day starts to form in my mind...
530am - I've been in bed for about 3 1/2 hours and I want to kill my alarm clock. My eyes are heavy and now I'm feeling kinda silly walking out into the Hanover pre-dawn air with an ice axe on my pack and skis in hand. We meet in the parking lot - Noah, Tom, and Noah's friend Kye. It's too early, but I'm excited.
We start up the Jewel trail sometime before 9. It's an absolutely beautiful day out - almost no clouds, sunny skies, and nice and chilly. There's a dusting of snow at the base of the cog railway, and ice on the trail in the woods. As we climb higher on the trail, there's more and more snow on the ground, finally covering up the treacherous ice. Every time our skis brush the branches we get a nice load of wet snow on our heads. The early season ice makes cool patterns with the frozen grass on the side of the trail. And we're about to ski Mt. Washington in November.
It gets a little colder once we get up above treeline, but it's not too bad- probably lower teens or single digits, with a bit of wind. Soon we're standing on the ridge just south of Mt. Clay, looking toward the Great Gulf. There are a lot of rocks, and not a whole lot of skiable-looking lines, but we're optimistic still. Noah and I scope out potential lines from a rock:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192338
The first two gullys we find are no-gos - too little coverage, bad visibility, and a lot of rocks. The third one looks marginally skiable though, although we can't see very far down it, and it looks as though it might cliff out or rock out. Over lunch we debate whether to ski it or not. There's really no question in our minds though...
Since we can't see much of the line and it's early season conditions, we decide to set and anchor and ski on belay. I've never done this before, so it was a good learning experience... We also tested the snow a bit for stability, but despite signs of wind-loading it seemed very solid. Noah and I donned our harnesses, slung a rock, and started down.
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192554
Noah skiing while I belay
The line ended up being great, with soft, if slightly windblown, snow and nice narrow, steep turns. I was not expecting to get this kind of gully skiing in november!
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192656
Me skiing
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192656
more me skiing
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192656
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192656
The climb back up.
After that, we decided to hike higher up toward the summit and see what else presented itself. After a while, we got to what I believe is the top of Airplane Gully, which was much wider, better covered, and over all less sketchy to ski. We decided not to use the rope here, and got some truly awesome turns, eventually skiing about 1/3-1/2 way down to the bottom of the gulf.
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192884
Noah skiing the top of the Gully
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192884
Resting part of the way down
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192884
Noah and I scout the next bit of skiing. We didn't get much lower than here - it got too rocky to ski further...
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1195192884
Noah topping out with more gear than is strictly necessary :rolleyes2
more pictures in part 2...
