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.

Yeuhi's photos

Some photos Yeuhi took a couple weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

Super secret NH tree skiing

A couple weeks ago, I skied this "super secret" glade in the White Mountains with Erik, Annmarie, Kevin, and Jackson the dog. I'd been there about 5 years ago but had never bothered to go back, but this turned out to be even better than I'd remembered. We weren't expecting much due to the lackluster snow year we've been having but it turned out to be a great day.

This mountain, like most in the Whites, was aggressively logged in the 19th to early 20th centuries. In what are now wilderness areas, 100 years ago there were small towns with thousands of workers. There are still networks of skid roads and railroad lines which we occasionally happen upon when bushwhacking. In some areas, like this, the logged areas have been kept open by skiers pruning some of the bushes and keeping the access routes skiable.

 This is about as open as tree skiing gets in NH.

Jackson the dog.

 

Kevin slaying it. Snow was a few inches of nice powder on edgeable crust.

Kevin and Jackson.

Ski thicketeering--rule number 1: wear eye protection.

 

Last bit of Jackson

From Whitegrass Meadow after skiing Maverick:

Go deicing truck, go!

 

Skiing the pass with Tom

On our last day in Jackson, I skied the Pass with Tom.


Woohoo, I win a prize!


Below Olympic bowl, or something.

 

 

 

Tom split-skiing on the way out to where we spotted a car, at the Trail Creek trailhead.

Maverick

Rosie and I had a good full day skiing a run called Maverick. It is a buttress just south of 25 Short (9975 ft), which we skied last January.

After a mile and a half of skinning on nearly flat ground up through the Whitegrass ranch, then following somebody's slightly convoluted track up subsidiary ridges, we finally got aligned with the shoulder of Maverick itself...




I'm riding my high speed quads.

^^It looks like I have a hat made of snow.





Getting a little elevation.
If you look at the meadow in the image below and see the white string coming from the far end---at the end of that string is where we started, and this photo is from well short of our high point. So on heavy gear, this can reasonably be called a bit of a schlep.

Rosie got a little crazy. Lucky, because without that delirious energy we wouldn't have made it to our high point.


Phelps Lake visible at right behind the treetops.

 

 

 

The descent had the best snow we skied all week.

I was there too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A milk run right down onto the Valley Trail.

Freeheel, no skins, across the Whitegrass Meadow back to the car. Maverick at center.

Prospector's Mountain, Apocalypse Couloir at center.