Bagged a summit, took a nap (six de mayo, 2007)

coolest thing ever? I think so

I picked Doogie up and we headed over to MIT, where we met up with Toma and Ali (as in Mohammed Ali). We were headed to Monroe Brook and Oakes Gulf again but this time we decided to take it a bit easier. It was 6am not 4 and the ride up consisted, mostly of plans to paddle white water next weekend rather than sleeping, as was the case 2 weeks before.

boney

The plans were made for a sweet trip to paddle next weekend and all of a sudden we realized that we were going skiing and needed to get out of summer mode and back into skiing mode (obviously not our boots those were in walk mode!)

not bad but not 2 weeks ago

The scene at the base of the cog had changed dramatically since two weeks ago when Igor declared,"this looks like Alaska!" The snow had receded about 100 yards into the trail and we decided it would be best for our skins to keep them off the pine needle infested snow which, of course, meant we would have to boot pack it up the whole way.

AT boots rock

By 'whole way', we had originally assumed that would mean to the top of the skiable section of Monroe but as we reached that section and assessed the kevlar esc snow we decided to head over to Oakes (our original plan was to ski Monroe all day). As we approached Oakes the summit of Monroe called out to us "bag my summit!" or something like that, I can't remember exactly! So we did and unlike last trip, where we put down three huge runs, on Oakes before we ate, we stayed on top of Monroe for a while and decided that the views and wind protection demanded that we eat at the summit.

summit, in shorts

After lunch, we hiked back down to the snow and skied three runs on Oakes. These were three different runs from our first visit and I imagine that we could find 30 more over there (not this season though, the route from Monroe Brook is almost out, FYI). The snow was corned up but maybe not the best we've ever seen so we decided to head back over to Monroe and try to harvest that corn.

no comment

As I dropped into the top of the Brook and landed on the type of snow I would have appreciated back when I raced, we all decided that rather than hike up again, to face the ice we would take a nap near the bottom and wait for it to setup.

Big Mountain

This was the nicest nap I've ever taken. 3 or 4 groups passed by and from what I could tell, they all starred at us with envy. An hour later we woke up and booted up, for our last run. The snow was better but not great and we were happy to be headed back to the car.

oli

"We're dogging on a great day" Ali said to me "it's true but in comparison to last time…I'm not sure we can ever come back, we spoiled ourselves." This was a cynical view, because Ali was right, it was a great day and Oakes is truly big mountain skiing on par with some of the skiing I've done out west.

lookin good