Mount Washington, Cannon, NH 10-21-06

salida

salida

New member
71 days since I last skied.

Steve beat me to it!

Plan was to hike ammi, to the summit of Mt. Washington, stop in at the OBS and ski some of the auto road. Left Cog base at 10 AM and made very good time to the base of the slab work on the ammi. ABout 3 inches of snow at the bottom. The slabs had turned to solid ice, and we carefully made our way up them without crampons. Took a long time, and we were the only ones on the trail by this point, the waterfall ice turned everyone else away. Finally, made it to Lakes around noon. It was blowing something fierce. Checking the obs data logger it was sustained above 70 gusting to close to a 100 during this time. We continued onwards sans crampons (we only had one pair for the two of us). We made it half-way up the crawford path from Lakes to the summit, and the wind was blowing us down. Snow depth here was hard to tell, but some drifts were at least 4-5 feet deep. Our skis acted like sails and we just didn't have the gumption to keep going. Retreated back to lakes, and put cramps on. Since we only had one pair, we both put one on each. I know cheap ass college kids can only afford one pair of cramps... Coming down the ice was not as difficult as expected and we made good time down the mountain once we got below tree line and out of the wind.

Damn it though, we still hadn't gotten to ski and we'd just lugged our stuff up nearly 4000 vertical feet. Son of a. Got off the trail by 230.

____________

Being a little peeved, we hopped in the car and on the road to cannon we went. Pulled up to the base around 3, and started skinning up the mountain. There were tracks on the front face (paulies) but nothing on the back side. Skinned to the top, took about an hour and 20 minutes. OK snow, about 6 inches at the top and 3 at the bottom. Made for interesting skiing. But hell, its skiing anyways!

Truely a very long strenuous day, but damn October 21st on the east coast, can't deny that!

This picture pretty much tells the complete story:

http://porter.haney.googlepages.com/IMG_1559.jpg

-Porter
 
Myself in an iceflow decent:

iceflowdecent.jpg


Upper Cannon Ski:

uppdercannon.jpg


Ski By:

blackandwhiteskiby.jpg


Turns (sort of):

blackandwhiteski.jpg
 
Tony Crocker":2hlxvlxs said:
A true testimonial to eastern fanaticism. I don't know anybody who would do this.
Click to expand...
Tony, with all due respect, that is a testioninal only to fanaticism. Geographical location is irrelevent as until I saw Porter's Trip Report, I didn't know anybody who would do this either!!! Talk about a suffer fest! Nice turns, Porter. I hope your vertical hiked to vertical skied ratio improves real soon!

:lol:

:o
 
definately need a few more feet to make it worth it up there. cannon would've been a better choice. i was up on sunday. beautiful day to be outside. in that respect, it was worth it. the "turns" on the other hand..... :roll:

i found snow in two places: the top of dodges and the top of left gully. niether of them were recommended by my own concience. not worth the effort and not worth my life. not this early. so i ventured into the bowl to try and hope for a good pocket sitting somewhere. i figured it snowed the day/evening before with super high winds (100mph+) so there must've been deposit sitting somewhere. i kept my fingers crossed that i would find enough. not really, but i did slide. i took a total of 4-5 turns. pretty much, slide and then stop. very gaper like. not any room to get speed and not room for error unless i wanted to take a swim in the creek or eat a rock.

cannon (6-7" give or take by the looks of things. grass still showing) and bretton woods had snow when i drove by in the am. melted mostly off wildcat.
 
hamdog":8w1cjnej said:
definately need a few more feet to make it worth it up there. cannon would've been a better choice. i was up on sunday. beautiful day to be outside. in that respect, it was worth it. the "turns" on the other hand..... :roll:

i found snow in two places: the top of dodges and the top of left gully. niether of them were recommended by my own concience. not worth the effort and not worth my life. not this early. so i ventured into the bowl to try and hope for a good pocket sitting somewhere. i figured it snowed the day/evening before with super high winds (100mph+) so there must've been deposit sitting somewhere. i kept my fingers crossed that i would find enough. not really, but i did slide. i took a total of 4-5 turns. pretty much, slide and then stop. very gaper like. not any room to get speed and not room for error unless i wanted to take a swim in the creek or eat a rock.

cannon (6-7" give or take by the looks of things. grass still showing) and bretton woods had snow when i drove by in the am. melted mostly off wildcat.
Click to expand...


Where were your tracks anyway? I was the teenager who asked you right after hojo's if there were anything actually skiable up there. I tried to look all around but couldn't find any skid turns or anything.
 
hamdog":2w9yves7 said:
i kept my fingers crossed that i would find enough. not really, but i did slide. i took a total of 4-5 turns. pretty much, slide and then stop. very gaper like. not any room to get speed and not room for error unless i wanted to take a swim in the creek or eat a rock.
Click to expand...

Cool Hamdog, Happy you made it out. :P

Tony Crocker":2w9yves7 said:
A true testimonial to eastern fanaticism. I don't know anybody who would do this.
Click to expand...

That is what I call hardcore to the max. :-k
 
Where were your tracks anyway?
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awf170: to lookers right of The Chute runout zone. i didn't want to get too close to the headwall cause there weren't any pockets over there and ice was falling in places which you were probably witness to. my "turns" really shouldn't be anything to write about. they sucked! it was more like a go straight for 10' and turn, repeat... i think i linked two "turns". :roll: too mellow of a slope to get any speed. just not enough up there yet.

if it snow's more this week i'm heading straight to cannon this weekend though. i just can't justify another 6hrs (round trip) of driving for two linked "turns", plus the 4hr hike. next time i head up washington, i plan on skinning it. :idea:

Pat: yes! it was a beautful day and nice to get the old legs burnin again. it's gonna be a long winter if i don't. hopefully it will be anyways. bring the SNOOOOW!!!!!!
 
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