Dodge's Drop II: Doug's Drop

Later this evening I'll get pics posted and a full workup of the event, hopefully w/ comments from the PM and Doug. Here's the short version:

I replaced my 8yr old Kong Bonati crampons with Black Diamond Saber-Tooth step-ins. I realized saturday when I tried to sharpen my Kongs that I had busted a tooth of one, bent a tooth on the other, busted a rivet on one, bend the extender bar on both, chipped a tooth, dulled all the points down to butter-knife dullness and frayed the straps down to threads. I'm not even going to keep them as spares. Because they were my first crampons I may hang them in the MuthaZ "Awarded Senior Status in the Hall Of Limited Efficacy" or ASSHOLE. Due to a rockin' 25% off sale at the NorthFace shop in Lincoln, I also picked up two Black Diamond Rage tools (low-end, all purpose, all-terrain hammer axes). Today I got to test drive my new crampons and ice tools.

The route: Dodge's Drop again. The ice dam was bigger than last week and posed a bit of a logistical hurdle... but not for MR. ICE TOOL AND NEW SHARP CRAMPONS!! The PM and Doug did a masterful job of scrambling over that w/ their alpine axes.

Then, there was the tippy top. As you've seen in the pics from previous trips (and you'll see again when we post our pics from Lion's Head), this trail starts off at a mere 15deg slope, then kicks it up to 20, 30, 40, 50 and I'm quite sure at the tippy top, we had about 15 vertical feet of at least 75deg pitch. It was c-r-a-z-y. Because I had the two tools, I chose the more challenging route, but the "less challenging" route was fucking c-r-a-z-y! It's not like it had rungs. I almost couldn't watch the other guys pop over the top because the closest I could get to the edge all I could see was Doug's head and empty space down to Pinkham Notch.

The weather on top? Ummm, maybe 30F w/ 2mph winds, gusting to 10? Of course the summit had its own story to tell, maybe a little windier - but not by much.

A great time was had by all and of course we missed all who could not attend, especially afterwards when we got drunk and rowdy and the PM punched a horse. You'll hear more when we get the pics posted.

UPDATE 4/1/07, 10:45pm
My pics are posted - waiting for PM's later this week. See link at left (for 070401) or click on title of this post. The picture included with this post is Dodge's Drop gully as seen from Lion's Head. The gully is the one ascending up the center of the image to the highest point. It descends down to Hillman's Highway, which from this perspective cuts diagonally across the screen and is best identified visually in the middle-ish left side by the thin, nearly-straight black line of bare rock.

UPDATE 4/4/07, 9:25am]
Website updated w/ the PM's Pics. See links on left or Click Here.