Schwack to nowhere on Lafayette

Greg and I went for a little misadventure up the north branch of Walker Brook. This was before there was much snow..but, when you haven't been to the mountains for a few weeks, you need to do something.

Ah, January in NH...connecting snowpatches up the creekbed.

 Since the creekbed mostly wasn't easily passable, we spent most of our time along the forest next to the watercourse.

 We ate lunch in a little clearing. These peaceful little openings in the forest pop up as we schwack around in NH, and provide a nice spot to get some sunlight (if it's sunny) and get a glimpse of the peaks around. Not sure why they exists in some certain spots...maybe a hundred years ago, there was a little logging camp here? 

 We got a glimpse of our theoretical destination, an hourglass shaped gully on Lafayette. We were obviously wrong to think it would have snow.

We made pretty good time following little rivulets in the woods above the creek itself, until we came to a point where it descended through a sort of canyon with steep walls. We did some exxxtreme, no-fall skinning across a steep slope and flailed down onto the creekbed.

...but once in the creek, we found many downed logs in our path. Since we were running a bit low on time and we clearly weren't going to ski the upper mountain regardless, we didn't go much beyond this point. 

 Greg on the crux of the exit-schwack.

 Where we popped out. Absurd.

Jackson 3: Edelweiss, etc

Here are some images from our left few days in Jackson.

On 12/30, we drove up the Pass, dropped off into Trail Creek, and skinned up Edelweiss. It was very, very cold in the shadow of the Pass Ridge.

After the awesome powder on 25 Short, the sastrugi on the main face of Edelweiss was a real shocker.

 I could have framed Rosie silhouetted in the sun, but it was super cold and when it's below zero, you don't ask people to stand around while you set up for a photo.