| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-03-12 01:46:51 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Backcountry Skiing: Greeley Pond Slide March 10, 2007 Chris, Greg, Pat, Cim, Josh, Drew Stayed tuned for a video trip report, coming to a MITOC server near you! Trip Report Him: "So, I have to ask--how did you find this place?" Us: "Satellite imagery." Him: "????? Where are you guys from?" Us: "MIT" Him: "Ah. I get it." As Dan Walker might say, this trip was the SuperFun option. We wanted to ski something on the absurd side of things, and using that metric, we did well. We talked about doing the North Tripyramid Slide, but then Pat and Greg said, "Hey, there might be some stuff on the Osceolas, too." Enter Google Earth. The slide off the main peak looked like a serious 'schwack, so we opted for the slide that headed down into Greeley Pond. Pat read somewhere that someone had skied that line before. Apparently it had some ice in it. We can handle ice. We're New England backcountry skiers. So, 6 guys, 4 on tele, 2 on AT gear, take off. We head across the pond (quacking), and then do a short 'schwack through the woods to get to the base of the gulley. What???? There were other tracks!! I guess we weren't that far off the beaten path afterall. Out comes the ice axe and crampons. Pretty soon, we're seeing some ice. Serious ice. We mark the snow, so we know not to fly over it blindly. Up up....then, we see ice cliffs. Oh yeah. This would be a fun day. We kept going up. Over the ice, onto the wind slab, then more ice.....kinda reminded me of the trip I did last year with Dan, Christiaan and Polly up the Ammonusuc River. Except that on that trip we had technical tools. And ropes. And we wouldn't be skiing down. Other than that....yeah, pretty similar. We stopped and grabbed a lunch break, and decided to dig a snow pit to assess snow stability, since we could tell while hiking that the snow had changed on us here. Look at the video. The look on our faces was priceless. I've never seen a block release so easily before. The first two we cut failed before we even finished making the cuts. We were discussing the nature of the instability when suddenly we heard thrashing above us. It was the party above us, descending. I was scared as crap, having just seen the super sketchy pit test. We saw one huge gorrilla turn, and the pack held. It actually held surprisingly well, but I was still nervous. The first guy claimed to have not made a linked turn yet, as the snow really was grabby and manky. Plus, just above where he was, the slide narrowed considerably. The second guy then dropped in. We chatted a bit--nice guys. Apparently, one of them had been skiing this for several years and had never seen another party on it (I think the ice cliffs may have had something to do with this). This is where the intro quote comes from :) They head down, making gorilla turns the whole way. We headed up to look at the slope, saw that it was narrowing and that the snow didn't look super stable (although much more stable than our pit), so we decided to call it and head down, about 500' from the summit. I went first, to get video of the others. Yeah....VERY grabby snow. My tele-fu had all but disappeared. This wasn't survival skiing, but grace and finese weren't part of the equation, either. The words of Josh would prove prophetic: "This is going to turn into a huck clinic." So, the hucking started....one ice cliff after another. There was discussion of how tele skiers land drops differently than fixed-heelers. Both Drew and I were skiers that have always been comfortable keeping our skis actually on the snow, but we soon saw th folly of our ways. You see, there were some mandatory hucks. At least the snow was deep! The skiing was...umm....difficult. Heavy, manky snow. Apparently they get some of this near Mt. Hood, because Cim actually managed to look good in it, while many of us were getting manhandled. The "crux" of the whole run was a single ~15 ft water fall. Greg tried to skirt it through the woods (worse route). I was first in line to take my skis off and downclimb. Josh and Cim, however, wanted to go for it. Go for it they did---holy crap. I was most impressed. The rest of the run down was a lot of fun--small bulges, ledges, and mazes of windbuff, open water, and clear water ice. See Cim discuss the conditions. It actually reminded me of creeking in a kayak. Actually, we were in a creek come to think of it.... It was hilarious when we got to the last ice patch that we had drawn lines in front of so that we'd be careful. I think by that point we all just blasted through it. We reached the base too soon. We were trying to move fast, though, because there was a chance of rain and it looked like it was moving in. We cruised back down to the cars after a little horsing around. Wow. What a fun trip. Given how crappy the conditions were, I can't believe how much fun we all had. Drew and I even got over our fear of flying! Memorable Quotes/Moments 6 white boys, 3 cars. We all listened to Jurassic 5 on the way up. Independantly. Holy Crap for Crap! --all of us "Gnar gnar......gnar gnar gnar gnar." -Josh "If this were out west, this whole side of the mountain would be open, sunny, and the road would head right to the base." --Cim Gnar? --Josh See Josh's take on this over at his Blog. Click to view Pat's photos. |