| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-04-27 15:07:00 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Huntingtons Central Gully January 14, 2007 Alexei and Vesna We arrived to Pinkham Notch on Sat evening and found out that Harvard Cabin is overflowing with bodies and gear (we heard, booze too), so we drove further North to Gorham, dined at Crabby Jacks (decent) and stayed at a bunkhouse called Hikers Paradise (quite decent, $18 shower and all). We hiked up to Harvard Cabin early Sun morning and had a chat with the HMC crowd all heading up to ODells and Yale. By the time Alexei and I were at the ravine floor (noon-ish) there was a 6 people bee-line up ODells, my original goal, a dozen (HMC and UVM mix) at the foot of Yale, a couple up Damnation and some latecomers traversing over to North gully. It felt like Metro Rock on Thursdays... Pinnacle looked fat and empty, but too much ice for Alexei, so we were left with Central. We hurried ahead of a team of 3 from Texas with heavy packs. It was snowing hard, blowing pretty hard at some spots, quite a low visibility, but more or less ok. While we roped up, an old dude went ahead solo, declaring he had full confidence in our ability to lower him down without a harness if he had an accident. He moved pretty fast and got out of our sight in a minute. The first ice pitch was sweet but short and the rest was, quite frankly, boringpostholing up a snow slope with occasional ice patch showing through. We simul-climbed all the way, but it would have been much faster to go unroped, at least after the first ice pitch, because we had nothing to clip to rope into--we left the snow gear at home (Alexei: Shouldnt we bring a fluke or two?; Vesna: You high-altitude mountaineers cant go grocery shopping without snow gear.). Just as I warmed up on that ice pitch thinking therell be more, I went POOF into over-the-knee powder and stayed in it till the last 100m when I passed the lead over to Alexei with pleasure. I built only one anchor--that was when I was half-way up the snow slope, to protect Alexei when he got to the steep bit at the top of the ice pitch. A fluke or two would have been handy, but I had to work it out with poor rock pro, it took forever to chip ice from the rock and find a crack. Top out was windy (50-60ish mph), still snowing, and the summit was obscured by clouds, but the Alpine Garden crossover quite visible. We were below the treeline before it got dark and stopped briefly at Harvard Cabin for a snack break and to hear how the others had fared that day. ODells was perfect, Yale too, Yale Bulge too. The North, Damantion gully teams havent returned by then, but both routes looked very good, although with a lot of snow piling on. To me, Pinnacle and ODells looked the best. Vesna |