Eighty Nine North: NE Snowfield, Great Gulf/Airplane Gully, & the Auto Road

Scott, Watson and I closed out the season with our first Slackfest outing on Sunday, May 25, 2014. We pulled up to the Auto Road entrance at 8:15 a.m. in the #3 position. Pretty quickly there was a line of at least 10 cars behind us. We were excited to capitalize on a decent weather window Sunday morning and early afternoon in an otherwise poor forecast for the long weekend.

Auto Road is a bit pricey - $36 for two, but much better than a lift ticket I suppose. And the price includes a free audio CD that might have been interesting if we weren't so terrified of careening off the narrow, guard-rail less road. Definitely the scariest part of the day.

- Driving up the Auto road, looking across Huntington towards Dodge's Drop and Hillman's -

We parked near the NE snowfield after initially taking a look out into Great Gulf from the Air Force parking lot. Well, after taking a look into the fog - we couldn't actually see the Great Gulf. After talking to a few folks, we decided to take a few runs on the snowfield first in an effort to actually see Airplane Gully before skiing it.

- Map of Great Gulf -

- Looking across Great Gulf to Airplane Gully after the fog lifted -

By 9:30 am. there were already 40+ people (including lots of kids) skiing the snowfields, it was a great scene. About 400 feet of vertical there, and what was becoming a typical Mt. Washington party atmosphere. Everyone was in good spirits, especially as the fog started to lift.

- Looking up at the snowfield -

After two runs, we made a bee-line for Airplane Gully and ended up getting first tracks. Tight and steep up top before opening up a bit towards the bottom. Watson was getting tired though and was not a happy camper by the time he made it to the bottom.

- Hiking along the rim of the Great Gulf to get to Airplane Gully -

- Looking down from the top of Airplane Gully -

- Scott and Watson watching me drop into Airplane Gully -

- Scott taking turns in Airplane Gully -

- Me taking turns in Airplane Gully -

The downside of getting first tracks is that you have to set the boot pack on the way up. Hard work, but we placed it on the right side of the trail as advised in the T4T forums and folks generally seemed pretty complimentary of our effort :-) I may be the only person who has ever asked other skiers to rate the boot pack on a scale of one to ten.

- Me, bootpacking up Airplane Gully -

After climbing out of the Great Gulf, we took a few minutes to assess the weather. Scattered clouds around 12:30 p.m., but nothing ominous. A hiker also told us he had looked at a weather radar recently and didn't see any storm clouds moving in. We took extra caution because we previously read there was a threat of thunder showers between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. (not a good time to be carrying skis around!). We decided to take one more run and then head back to the car (parked about a 30 minute hike away).

The run was a good one - under mostly sunny skies, but Scott had to turn back at the halfway point when Watson simply ran out of gas. By 2 p.m. we were heading back to the car - and still no storm clouds in sight! We couldn't believe our luck and decided to take a couple more runs on the snow fields (highlighted by a drone sighting - can never be to safe when it comes to Grey Wolf protection!) before finally calling it a season and celebrating with a Mango-rita.

- Surprisingly refreshing! -