Mt Washington 5-12-2007

jshefftz said:

Summary:

Still lots of snow in lots of places, but many key sections could get cut off very soon. By next weekend, probably won’t be many reasonably long and readily accessible lines outside of good ol’ reliable Tux. Auto road season might not happen at all, since Airplane could disappear soon and Northeast Snowfield was already getting narrow on May 1.

Pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jshefftz/WestSideandAirplane

Details:

...Arrived at Cog base reasonably early Sat morning, but parking lot attendant was already there too. Jon didn’t want to have to pay and then also have to park lower down, so he tried an amazingly unconvincing line. Even more amazingly, it worked - kind of like “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” combined with earlier instructions to the attendant from management that must have been on a par with the guard instruction scene from Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

With forecasted temps on the cool side, concerned about delayed softening in the morning, so decided upon Oakes to start the day, and headed up the ART because of concerns about access coming out of MB. Many blowdowns on ART slowed our progress - cleared out some of them, but still going to be rough going in many places until the AMC crews come through. Oakes was good for 570 vert (or more if you really really wanted to keep going) with very nice snow.

Took Crawford to Westside to ski Airplane, all the way down almost to Spaulding. Once again, very nice snow. Talked with two solo skiers (apparently unencumbered by helmet, ice axe, crampons?), one of whom eventually joined us for our final ski descent to the cog. Saw two, maybe three skiers in Pipeline, which already had two discontinuities, at least one of which the skiers had passed.

Returning on Westside, I was very tempted to yo-yo a beautiful snowfield in the north branch of Ammo Ravine, but I didn’t because . . . well, every ski outing has to have at least one regret, right? Continued to the main/south section of AR, skied - on perfect corn, the best of the day - down and across all the way (with just one discontinuity) to where the brush and pitch pick up, then skinned up and across to the hut.

Hiked across to Monroe Brook, which had very nice snow on top, and was even decent lower down also. Managed to ski about halfway on the ART (i.e., to a little past the DOC memorial plaque), then tromped along the slush, mush, mud etc to finish off the day.

BTW, weather throughout the day was absolutely perfect. Warm enough to never need even a windshirt, but cool enough not to sweat much. Mainly completely calm with only a very light breeze in some places. Clear skies and clear visibility. All of this combined to set up the snow conditions very nicely. (Such perfect weather that I didn’t even protest when Jon asked for a rest on the benches outside Lakes hut - felt more like sitting on a park bench in town!)

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