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Oakes Gulf, 3-24-2007

lftgly

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Aug 8, 2005
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Franconia, NH
Saturday, March 24, 2007 started out with blue skies and temps hovering just below freezing in the valleys, with a forecast of clouds moving in sometime afternoon.

We headed for Oakes Gulf, hoping that southern exposures would get enough morning sun to soften up by mid day, before the clouds moved in. There was a foot of snow on the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail between Marshfield Station and the Gem Pool.

We skied part way up Monroe Brook. The brook had good snow coverage and only a few open water holes. But by 10AM, nothing had softened up on the northwest side of the mountain. The snow was hard frozen granular, not quite bullet-proof, but not easy to skin up. There were 2 descending skier tracks frozen in the snow from a recent warm day, probably earlier in the week.

IMG_1322sMonroeBrook.jpg


Where we reached a viewpoint looking up at the main gully, it was glistening in the morning sun. We came prepared with crampons to climb steep snow, but this morning, ascending Monroe Brook looked more like a technical ice climb. So we went back down to Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail, and skied almost all the way to the Gem Pool, then hiked to Lakes from there.

When we arrived at the col, we found little or no snow between Lakes and Monroe Brook.
It would require a long hike across fragile alpine terrain to locate the top of the gullies.

IMG_1330sLakesTowardMonroeBrook.jpg


After a lunch break at Lakes, we hiked across the col on Crawford Path toward Oakes Gulf. The snowfield on the eastern slope of Monroe is shrinking fast.

IMG_1333sMonroeCrawfordPath.jpg


After a long, steep hike carrying skis up Ammonoosuc Ravine, Dee took a long look across Oakes Gulf towards Boote Spur and started laughing hysterically. "There's no snow!", she said.

IMG_1335sOakesGulfBooteSpur.jpg


There is certainly a lot less snow than this time last year (see my gallery of March 30, 2006), but there's still a week or two of good skiing left in Oakes. We hiked carefully around Mr. Robinson's neighborhood to the headwall, dropped our packs and put on our skis at the top of the snowfield.

IMG_1338sOakesGulfDeeSki.jpg


Ahh, but there was snow, and it had softened up quite nicely!

IMG_1343sOakesGulfDeeSki.jpg


Our first run was about 450' vertical feet, threading through a few trees to link a few patches of snow together.

IMG_1348sOakesGulfDeeSki.jpg


Then we skinned back up the headwall most of the way, and boot packed to the top.

IMG_1350sOakesGulfDeeHeadwall.jpg


Our second run was down the steeper gully that runs down along the Dry River Trail.

IMG_1357sOakesGulfDeeSkiHeadwall.jpg


From what we could see, it looked like both Double Barrel and the central ('airplane'?) gully were quite skiable.

IMG_1360sOakesGulfDeeSkiViewTwdsDoubleBarrel.jpg


The clouds moved in as predicted, and the snow started to set up quickly. We skinned back to Crawford Path, hiked back to Lakes and down the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail. We put on our skis below the Gem Pool, and were able to ski the rest of the way to the Cog.
 

BLESS

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Dec 3, 2005
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Rhody
what ski area Is that in the background of pic 10?



Coll report, btw.
 

lftgly

New member
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Aug 8, 2005
Messages
35
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Franconia, NH
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