Gothics is the 10th highest peak in the Park, coming in at 4,736 feet. To get to the North Face you start at the Garden in Keene. Hike 3.1 miles to John's Brook Lodge and then head towards the Ore bed trail. After another 3 miles or so you come to an expansive rock slide area. Up this for a while and you are at the base of the huge rocky face. After that it's only a mere 1,100 foot alpine route, a hard ski down, and 6 miles back to the car.
This is a photo of the North Face in fatter conditions than we climbed it in. We went up the left side of the huge face and then skied down the long slide on the left. Photo by Randy Staver
Matt and I met our buddy Dustin and took off from the Garden at close to 7:30. We made it to the Ore bed lean-to by 10 and by noonish we were at the base. It was a little ambiguous as to where the "base" actually was because we were doing a lot of steep deep snow travel -- which, by the way, is very tiresome. With no exaggeration I would say the the snow was easily shoulder deep at times. At some points we were able to tip-toe across the top of the snow and others we were literally digging our way up the mountain.
When it became obvious to dawn our crampons, ice tools and harnesses we did so, short-roping and simul-climbing our way up the snow fields. There wasn't much in the way of actually ice, so we were mostly trying to find snow that was deep, but not too deep. Knee deep was ideal, but, again, we ranged from bare rock to shoulder deep stuff. Clumps of of sod, moss and frozen earth became our 'terra firma' as this was some of the few "solid" ice tool placements. Hooking shrubby trees was also useful and slung trees was our only protection.
Within a hundred feet of the true summit, we decided to back down. It was starting to get dark and we were making painfully slow time. The snow was so deep that we could barely move a few feet in ten minutes. On top of that, we were extremely worn, starting to get cold, running out of food and dampness and dismay were setting in. We didn't know exactly where we were or where we were going, but we turned around and followed our trail back for a while.
Upon some deliberation, we decided to go down a reasonably pitched slide that we were 80% sure was the True North Slide. Dustin was on snow shoes and he started down first. Matt and I put our skis on and ventured down. The top was a little bit icy, but after that it was deep deep powder with decent terrain. A couple of sections were very enjoyable, and others were frustrating. I was so tired that I couldn't turn that well in the deep powder which resulted in lots and lots of falling. About half way down we put our headlamps on and in the process my headlamp somehow hit my helmet and popped open. I lost a battery. Luckily Matt had an extra, but unfortunately I dropped that one in the snow too. All in the name of adventure! But after some time we skied to the bottom of the slide and started to hike back to the Ore bed.
After about an hour of hard hiking down a snow filled drainage with occasional boot-through-ice-into-stream mishaps we hit the hard-pack trail. Three more hours of hiking got us back to the car. Car to car total time being 13 hours.
Today hurts.
