Sammy the canoeing dog!

On the Charles River, Needham/Boston border along Cutler Park.

Fall and winter of 2015-16 (mostly pictures of Sammy)

Visiting Jasper, Jess, David, and Hazel in NYC!

A walk in Ridge Hill Reservation.

Sammy wearing a Sammy-hair toupee. He looks like the Donald.

Spring 2015: Skiing Mt Jefferson and King Ravine

A few weeks before Yeuhi, Alex, and I went to Jackson Hole, we did an overnight trip up to the fantastic Grey Knob cabin on Mount Adams.

 We got up to the cabin in short order, dropped our heavy gear, then headed over toward Adams via Crag Camp, which hangs over the edge of King Ravine:

Soon after we pulled up, the clouds piled in and it started raining, soon turning to thunder and lightning. We jung out at Crag Camp playing hearts. The rain soon made the telescope sitting on the table there sadly irrelevant.

Spring in Jackson Hole #7: Static Peak

Our last day of skiing in Jackson was truly a day that only New England skiers would enjoy. Our original goal was Buck, which seemed reasonable, as the mountains would be getting a decent freeze overnight. However, that didn't pan out. 

We started the day in 34 degree rain a bit before dawn. Yeuhi's photo. Note the camera is perfectly focused on a raindrop.

Here's a grouse on a rock. This bird is truly miserable. Yeuhi's photo.

Lower Stewart Draw to find the approach. We'd scoped it out a couple days before and approached in sneakers until hitting the snow line.

Spring in Jackson Hole #6: Laurel Canyon

The day after we got back from the Skillet, we slept in late and took a rest day. We did a little hike to check out the approach to Stewart Draw, for knowledge later in the week:

We hung around the Lupine Meadows trailhead for a while, gaping up at the routes on Teewinot. We saw a coyote.

We decided that Laurel Canyon looked like a good goal for our second to last day of skiing. 

Spring in Jackson Hole #5: Skiing most of the Skillet Glacier, Mt. Moran

After the abortive attempt on the previous day, we got some rest and set our alarms for a nice early wakeup at about 1:30 AM. We got up to quasi-clear skies and went about the activities of a hot breakfast. During this time, some clouds came in and out, subtly blocking our view of the stars and dropping a few rain drops. As soon as we could, we got on our skis, determined to make a go of it, as this would be our last shot before having to hike out.

Hot breakfast among the moose shit. Yeuhi hoping it won't rain again.

The blurriness of this photo is about how I felt.

Spring in Jackson Hole #4: rainy wakeup, initial excursion

The alarm clock beeped at 2 AM, but Alex and I are already awake. Unfortunately, there is a pattering noise on the fabric of his tiny mountaineering tent which does not bode well. We call out to Yeuhi, sleeping under a tarp outside.

"Yeuhi, what do you think?"
"Fuckin' RAIN!"
"Should we give it a half hour?"
"Awright"

After saying that, the rain ramped up for about 15 min, then started tapering off and by about 2:30 it was stopped. Green light, ok. We got up, recovered our food from the bear cans (and our overflow bear bag), and fired up the stove. Around this point, it started sprinkling again. We stared at the stove, waiting for our water to boil for oatmeal and coffee.

(As a side note, this campsite had more bear and moose poop than I had ever seen, it was absolutely everywhere. One literally could not swing a dead cat without reaching some. In other words, we definitely waited for the water to boil.)

Sprinkling on and off. Drink the coffee. As we are eating oatmeal, the rain gets steady. Then turns to hail. Shit. We look at each other, and decide that this is not likely to work out. We decide to can it and go back to bed.

Real great that that happened after getting the coffee into our system. We crawled back into our sleeping bags, trying not to spread the wetness from our gear around the tent. I personally didn't sleep too great after that, but eventually fell asleep, and got up well after sunup. We had breakfast, and obviously were not going high on the mountain, but we decided to skin up and see how things looked.

Morning sun on the Skillet Glacier, from our cooking area.

Alex, happy to finally be on his skis.

Spring in Jackson Hole #3: approach to Skillet Glacier

After we skied Apres Vous, we knew we had time to make it up to the National Park Visitor Center, where we could talk to a ranger and make plans for the next stage of the trip. It was a tough decision, as we got some tempting views up Avalanche Canyon, but we decided to stick with our original goal of the Skillet Glacier on Mt. Moran. The rangers gave us lots of good info about camping and skiing options in the park in general, as well as a fascinating exchange with a college-age ranger who, as we were discussing our plan to do a hiking approach to the Skillet via Bearpaw and Trapper Lakes said something like:

"Trapper Lake, oh yeah, there are tons of bears up there."
"Sounds like we should be sure to bring bear spray."
"Yeah, if you have bear spray around, yeah, you should probably bring that..."

...Never mind what he would recommend if we didn't have bear spray already...like we shouldn't move heaven and earth to get some.

Loading up in the parking lot the next morning.

Spring in Jackson #2: skunked on Apres Vous

For our second day in Jackson, we decided to head up Apres Vous peak to access the Air Force chutes, north facing couloirs into Granite Canyon. We figured they would still have reasonable snow, and there was a decent amount of snow even on the ski resort side allowing us to skin most of the way up.

Ah, ski season!

Looking up to Corbet's and the S&S. If you zoom way in maybe you can see our tracks.

Skinning up the ridge above the AV chair.

Looking across to the S-facing wall of Granite Canyon...that's the sunny side of the canyon, but there's probably plenty of snow on the shady side...right?

A view of the extremely awesome Buck Mountain, with Static in the foreground.

The knee-wrenching talus we needed to negotiate to approach the entrance was not a good sign.

We worked our way down to get a view of Mile Long. It was not impossible, but highly marginal at best. It was ugly enough that I apparently didn't even take a photo to document it. We could have skied it, but would have hit some rocks, and the snow was really mank. Considering it would commit us to a significant schlep on dirt/mud to get back to the village, we declined. We headed up and out the way we came in.

We did a little more snowpit practice for the fun of it near the ridge top.

Alex ripping excellent corn before turning right into the Crags area.

We trended rather far right, trying to just follow the snow where it would take us, but unfortunately this was a total minefield of rocks. Eventually it got too thin and we hiked on dirt back to a more consistent groomer.

Ripped it out on the last groomer, including this last little "appendix" of snow. Good to the last drop.

After we got back to the condo, we did a very quick turnaround, and headed up to the GTNP Visitor Center to get a camping permit. We got a very informative rundown from the rangers about where we'd be allowed to camp (anywhere, with permission!) . We were weighing the relative merits of going for the Skillet on Moran, vs doing something more free-form in Avalanche Canyon, but eventually settled on our Plan A of Moran. We got our permit and bear cans, and got ready to head out the next day.

Spring in Jackson Hole #1: (lower) S&S

In May, Yeuhi, Alex, and I went to Jackson Hole, with many thanks to the exceptional hospitality of Rosie's parents, who offered us the use of their home.

The 2014-15 season had not been a great one throughout the West, and actually, Jackson saw less snowfall than New Hampshire that year. The season apparently peaked for the storm where Rosie and I skied 25 Short back in December, and had been underwhelming otherwise. When we set the dates for this trip as early May, we thought we'd be pushing the early end of the typical corn season, but unfortunately a lot of warm weather had melted the snow line even higher than expected in the couple weeks ahead of our trip. However, we made the most of it and had an excellent time.

The day after arriving, we decided to go for an acclimation day in the (closed) resort. We hiked for an hour or so to hit the nearest consistent snow, at the bottom of the Thunder chair.

Woohoo, on skins.

Dress rehearsal for WY: Dodge's Drop, Lip, and Diagonal

Five days before our trip to the Tetons, Yeuhi,. Alex, and I skied a solid day on Mt Washington together. We wanted to do at least 6000 vertical feet, as this would be the vertical of some of the harder days we planned for Wyoming, such as the Skillet Glacier and Buck Mountain. So we got up early, slogged it up to Pinkham Notch, and parked way down on route 16, along with the 6000 or 7000 other people headed up the mountain that day.

We crossed over to the Sherburne for the second half of the way up. Dodge's up center, looking good.

 Crossing around over to the top of Dodge's, after going up Hillman's.

 Up close, Dodge's was in somewhat rough shape. There was plenty of snow, but the warm weather had left it cut up with deep trenches from the handful of previous skiers on that day. It seems like these last several years, the mountain goes from winter to summer, with no reliable spring period of warm days and sub-freezing nights to give the snow a good corn consistency. Anyway, I was feeling some adrenaline, even though I've skied the run at least twice before. Luckily, once I stepped into my skis, I immediately felt better and knew I could ski it. Amazing how much more comfortable one can feel once he has his skis on his feet.

Alex lookin down the barrel.

First day of spring skiing in Oakes Gulf

Skiing in Oakes Gulf...always a good time. Oakes is special because it has some steep runs, but you can get around the area by skinning rather than bootpacking. This was basically the first day of real spring condition on the Rockpile, so the corn was unfortunately rather immature.

After slogging up the Ammo Ravine trail and getting some sun at the Lakes hut, skinning up around to the summit of Monroe, Washington in the background.

Skiing in March

On Pi day, Greg, Coz, Raphael, and I skied Cardigan.

The trappings of a classic NH powder day: rain clouds, granite and water ice.

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.