Lafayette Brook

Back in February, Ben, Yeuhi, and I skied a run which doesn't see ski track too often. Maybe for good reason. We skied Lafayette Brook, due NE off the summit of Mt. Lafayette. It was a run I'd had in mind for some time, and on this day the avalanche conditions had us wary of most other aspects except NE so we decided to give it a go...top-down....in low visibility conditions.

Humpin' it up the Greenleaf trail. Yeuhi's photo.


Yeuhi's photo.

Yeuhi's photo.

Up to Greenleaf hut.

Ben's icy hair. Ben's photo. Wow, for once I wasn't the only one carrying a camera!

It's a beautiful day for skiing in New Hampshire!!

Aaa, skinning over rocks in a whiteout. Why am I always with Ben and Yeuhi in these conditions?

Dis ees fun, ya? Enjoying the summit of Lafayette. Yeuhi's photo.

After hiking down talus off the summit into the Lafayette Brook drainage, we finally came to something which looked skiable. Bounced off some rocks at first but soon it got better.

A little thickety and tight.

Yeuhi's photo.

Yeuhi forcing a path. We are deranged.

Ben smiling because he's not in a thicket.

For a long time we alternated between skiing short, fun spurts of turns in very nice powder, and downhill bushwhacking through walls of brush ("Over there, I think I see a light area!"). After a while, we broke out into the main throat of the drainage and were able to link turns in really good snow.

Yeuhi reaping his rewards.

Descending past a branch in the gully. We came from the right...uh, not the main branch...

A video Ben took:

Yeuhi's photo.

Ben's photo.

We descended through areas with long, consistently deep snow, as well as sections where we snagged rocks, and areas of six inches of low density snow on water ice. In some stretches, the watercourse became a playground of massive snow covered boulders we strung together, and we skimmed over their tops and jumped over the canyons between them. The angle was petering out and we were dealing with more and more blowdowns over the brook. Ben saw on his GPS that we were at our closest point to our hiking trail ascent route, less than a couple hundred meters away. Since the brook was threatening to become extremely difficult to follow, we decided to schwack up to the trail and ski back to the car that way, rather than follow the watercourse back to 93.

This schwack began ok, with widely spaced trees which would have made for some good skiing, actually. Then Ben's climbing skin came unglued and he had to spend a while cursing at that problem. As we approached the trail, the passing became really difficult. Basically absurdly difficult...we were pulling on spruce branches, crawling with all our limbs, shimmying up tree trunks...the last hundred feet to the trail was an exhausting wallow which took about 35 minutes. It doesn't have to be fun...to be fun.  ?

On project pemi, a trip with Ben and Yeuhi which included another segment of some of the worst bushwhacking I've done, we thought up a new means of off season training for these kinds of trips. The Schwackercizer...it would consist of an old nordic track pulled from a junkyard, propped up at a 25 degree angle and 10 degrees banked, which would deliver random changes in resistance without warning. External arms would whack the user in the face with spruce branches, and there'd be a means of dumping snow down the user's neck. Also, you'd set it up in your driveway and use it during cold rain.

We eventually attained the trail, caught our breath, and Jake-braked it back down to the highway.

A type-II fun day.