awf170
New member
Another great day. Not as good as last weekend, but still sick. I'll just copy Jumpturn's TR from T4T since he gave a pretty good write-up and some great pics. I'll put up my pics up later.
jumpturn said:AWF170 and I hiked the Cog up to Airplane (2 hrs) again today. We took a long run down it and found the conditions turned hard below the dogleg, even though they were pretty nice up top. No matter. It's a great run! Airplane has lost lots of snow: 2' since Wednesday!
Despite ample sun, our other objectives in the GG were prevented from softening up by wind and the temperatures around 30º. So we repeated the traverse of the West face to get to Monroe Brook. Snow levels were much lower than last weekend and we had to remove our skis twice for short carries to reach the central couloir. Interesting threading of talus -- including some fairly large and eerie blocks. The Central couloir was still eminently skiable, but, after passing one discontinuity with a turf jump, we had to remove skis once to cross a rock slab. The next section involved fly over some seriously undermined snow and skirting some crevasses. The skinning back up towards Lake of the Clouds went well except at the end, where we encountered some thick but short bushwhacking because the snow level had dropped 3-4' since last Sunday.
A bunch of people were yo-yoing Monroe Brook, which boasted great snow conditions. We skied into it via some interesting tree chutes, and then, booted up to the top and skied the whole run. There is probably now 2/3 mile of walking to reach the road.
Airplane skis top to bottom now, but rocks are sprouting and skiing around them is getting more technical. It's narrower now than Pipeline on Wednesday! Airplane probably won't last too much longer. Hit it quick.
Monroe Brook should last a while as there seems to be tons of snow there.
The snow pack has locked up in the past two days with the low temperatures, and we heard little running water. However, there is lots of undermined snow. Beware.
The Cog is irritating skiers again with a $5 fee for parking, which means they really want skiers to file complaints with the Forrest Service about their piles of ancient junk above tree line. Make sure you carpool so as to minimize their take and make them realize it is not worth paying someone to collect the fee. You can leave cars in the Forrest Service hiker parking down the road ($3 or an annual sticker), or in Bretton Woods proper (free).
AWF170 dropping into Airplane, May 13, 2007
Steve ripping up Airplane on slalom skis, May 13, 2007
John executing a jump turn on upper Airplane, May 13, 2007
John digging the corn on upper Airplane, May 13, 2007
Great Gulf Trail, May 13, 2007
East Face of Mounts Clay and Jefferson, May 13, 2007
AWF170 smokin' the Central Couloir on the West Face, May 13, 2007
AWF170 cruising Monroe Brook, May 13, 2007