wbr
05-15-2001, 04:46 PM
Wednesday - May 9
Headed north out of NJ. Doug and PJ in PJ's truck, John and me in John's car. Drove up to Connecticut and picked up Frank. Drove north. While on I-91, notice car pulling up along right side, there's lettering on the front quarter panel: STATE TROO - "Uh John, how fast are you going?" We get the hairy eyeball, but apparently he's after bigger game and leaves us alone. We arrive without further incident in Pinkham Notch at 4:30 in the morning.
Thursday - May 10
Get our gear together, which of course involves hurry up and wait. I seem to have the only pack under 75 lbs. Yeah, mine only weighs 60 lbs. Beautiful morning, glad we only wasted 2 hours sleeping. Frank's pack is Army surplus, down to the dagger strapped to the side, looks really uncomfortable. Doug's got a bruise covering his left hip and thigh, the result of a high-speed encounter with a rock at Killington last weekend. John's pack already had a pin snap. We start up the Tucks trail. PJ and I get ahead of the rest and make it to HoJo's in 1 hour 48 minutes, not bad. We ditch our packs and kick back in the sun looking up at the bowl until everybody shows up. We bring our stuff to lean-to 2, unload enough to go skiing, take a nap, rig some parachute cord to hang our food where the squirrels and chipmunks can't get to it, take another nap, get up and go skiing.
We decide to hit the Lower Snowfields as it's an easy hike and the terrain is mellow by Tuck's standards (about a 38-degree pitch - yes, the optimum angle for an avalanche slope). The hike up Hillman's is fine except for my skis cracking me in the head every other step. Putting on my helmet won't stop the skis from hitting me, but it doesn't hurt anymore. We stop to admire the avalanche debris at the base of Hillman's. Looks like a couple of large bulldozers ran down the slope - impressive, and although the snowpack is very stable, it's a reminder to stay alert. We get to the junction and seeing as I got there first, I put on my skis and glide into the top of the Lower Snowfields.
I can see HoJo's, Hermit Lake, the right side of Tucks and the valley below. What I can't see is the Lower Snowfield I'm about to ski. As I come over the top of the snowfield, it falls away below me to reveal a blanket of smooth corn. Tele turns are intense on a couple of inches of corn snow. It's silky, different from powder but just as much fun. I ski down along the right edge, there's this crevasse visible in the middle, get down to the bottom and wait for everyone else. We're all happy, but tired and ready for dinner. So, now how do we get out of here? John and Frank head to the left while Doug, Paul and I cut across to the right. We bushwhack and posthole for a while, making no progress, but the pine trees smell good. Eventually we come across a set of ski tracks and a set of boot prints going through the woods. Figuring it's John and Frank, we follow them. We cross through the brush, the Cutler River and a secondary stream. From the tracks, it's apparent that John never takes his skis off. Eventually we meet up at HoJo's and then back to lean-to 2.
After a meal based on "pull-starts", these are ready-to-eat meals that have a string hanging out of the bag. You pull the string, which activates a heating element, wait about 20 minutes and then eat. We then walked up to HoJo's, had a few ****tails and watched the sunset over the bowl. Good day.
Friday - May 11
After waking up to the sun blazing into our eyes, this guy walks by the lean-to and asks if we've seen the silver fox. We all look at PJ because around 10:00 last night, he said that a big silver fox walked up to the lean-to, looked in at us and then left. No one else saw it so we figured it was the scotch talking. After a leisurely breakfast, we decided to go to the summit of Mt. Washington, ski the Upper Snowfields and then down into the bowl by a route TBD. The HoJo's caretaker recommended going up the Left Gully and then traversing across to the Upper Snowfields. However, this other guy said that the Right Gully was snow filled ¾'s of the way and then there was a trail to get onto. The Left Gully route would've taken a long time, so we opted to go up the Right Gully. I led the way, easy going as there was already a boot trail to follow. Almost ¾ of the way up, we ran into an ice bulge on the right side of a rock which had undermined snow below and to the left. Doug was further down and yelled up that he had spotted a trail and was going to take that up. We eventually crawled up and over the ice bulge and quickly realized that the remaining snow above us was very undermined and weak. We moved to the right side of the gully and I spotted what appeared to be a trail. I started up and (after knocking only 1 rock down toward Frank) was quickly up to the Lion's Head trail. Doug came over and then the rest of the group reached us. We relaxed for a while, drank water, ate Twizzlers (yeah Frank!) and enjoyed a spectacular view across the top of the headwall across to Boot Spur. Off to our right was the Crawford Path looking like something from the Himalayas due to the bare rock and treeless ridge it runs across.
We also began thinking about what our descent would be after skiing the Upper Snowfields. Our climb up the Right Gully had revealed large and scary crevasses cutting across the Headwall, the Lip and the Sluice. This realistically left us a choice of the Chute (really freakin' steep with a snow river running down the middle of it), the Left Gully (a long walk to get to from above the Headwall) or back over to the Right Gully. We decided to wait and see how it looked from up on high.
We then took the Lion's Head trail to where it meets the Tuckerman Ravine trail, then hiked up to the Upper Snowfields. Due to the time, it was after 2:30, we decided to skip going to the summit of Mt. Washington and just ski down. Heading to the summit would've had us skiing down the bowl in the shadows of the late afternoon - not a good idea.
The Upper Snowfields were creamy smooth snow, not corn, but very nice skiing. We all got together to figure out how to descend into the bowl. There was a crevasse cutting across above the Headwall leading into what looked like a thin entrance to the Chute. John volunteered to check it out. He skied down and into the top of the Chute, then turned and waved his arms to indicate that it was OK. I then followed. I cut high to the right and then down toward the Lip to maximize vertical, then I went hard right to get into the traverse to the Chute. At this point I couldn't see over the Headwall, I couldn't see the Lunch Rocks or John for that matter. I skirted around what was a nasty looking crevasse and ducked down into the Chute.
This required a left jump turn that left me facing straight down the Headwall, before a sharp right (which caused my right elbow to brush the snow) into the Chute where John was waiting. There was just enough room on the ledge we were standing on for both of us. I now got a real good look at the snow rivers running down the middle of the Chute. It turns out there are 3. 2 of 'em were small, maybe 1 foot or so wide and 1 foot deep, flanking the main snow river. The main one however, was about 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep, bisecting the Chute on an angle. This meant having to cross this bad boy at least once on the way down. My pulse settled down to a point where I couldn't hear my heart pounding and I was laughing because that run was so freakin' steep it was actually funny.
John and I decided to get going as we didn't want to be standing on the ledge when the next person came into the Chute. John went first. Watching the sloughs he set off allowed me to figure out where I wanted to make my turns. Random thoughts included: Definitely don't want to get my skis caught underneath the cascading snow; gotta remember to keep my uphill pole facing straight up so it doesn't hit the slope and knock me off balance; don't fall cause that would really suck; this is going to be fun. After John stopped in a safe zone down below, I sideslipped off the ledge and made my first jump turn to the left. I made a bunch of consecutive jump turns down the right side of the couloir. My turns were all parallels, no way was I dropping my knee at this point as a fall would've sent me straight into the rock wall which forms the right side of the hour-glass part of the Chute, and then I crossed the main snow river. There was snow just pouring down around me, making this steady hissing sound that was pretty cool. Each turn dropped me down about 4-5 vertical feet. I crossed over the main snow river 2 more times, skied out below the hourglass, hopped over a crevasse, then made tele turns down the bowl to the rock where John was waiting. The snow in the bowl was more like cream cheese than mashed potatoes. We hung out on the rock in the sun and watched PJ work his way down the Chute. He skis down to join us. No sign of Doug or Frank though. PJ thinks they were going to hike around to the Left Gully. That ought to take them a while.
So no ****, there we are, hanging out in the sun on a big rock. We were loving life, eating pepperoni and cheese, occasionally watching some snowboarders who had built a jump on the floor of the ravine to our right. Out of nowhere, there's this loud crack and suddenly a wall of snow 2 feet high with assorted ice chunks in it is rushing down the middle of the bowl. Everybody is yelling "Avalanche" and the snowboarders at the jump are hauling out of the way. We're watching the slide, which is ripping along. It looks like it'll clear us by about 50 feet when this block of ice the size of a coffee table flies out of the middle of the slide and starts cart wheeling straight at us. I watch it for a heartbeat, then jump off the big rock we're sitting on and run behind it to hide. I peer over the top and watch as the ice block slows down, then comes to a stop about 15 feet above us. You can see the ice block in the picture where PJ is holding the beer can in his mouth. It's behind his left arm just above his elbow. It's bigger than it appears in the picture and was downright scary as it bounded end-over-end toward us.
PJ and I then hike up and get a short run in the Bowl. As we're approaching the spot where we'll put our skis on, we look back and see Doug and Frank on the other side of the floor by the Lunch Rocks. It turns out that they decided to go down the same way we came up, via the Right Gully. We ski down and join up with them. We then headed back down to the lean-to where John packed and headed out to go to Killington. The rest of us had dinner, watched the sunset from HoJo's and then crashed. All in all, it was a great day.
Saturday - May 12
Woke up to the sun shining in our eyes, looks like another bluebird day, although we know there's a front coming in this afternoon. We eat breakfast and decide to ski corn on the Lower Snowfields. We know there aren't any bumps, just steep and smooth. This will also allow us to avoid the circus that forms in the bowl on the weekends. We're filtering water (again, damn we stayed hydrated over the last few days) out of the Cutler River when these 2 guys walk up beside us. The first guy picks his way across the rocks, almost falling in. As the second guys puts his foot out, I say "Hey buddy, over there." and point to my left at the bridge 25 feet away. He looks at me, looks at the bridge, looks at the water, looks at his friend and then walks away toward the bridge. I don't want these guys in front of me.
We head up Hillman's Highway, take a scenic detour to climb and ski the lower 3rd of Cathedral Gully, then head up to the Lower Snowfield junction. We're the only ones in there (this other guy was going to ski it with us, but we told him he would have to climb out and he bailed to Hillman's). We ski down and rack up about 700 feet of beautiful corn. PJ has a great run I wish we'd gotten on video, it was that nice. We climb back up and do it again. We decide to call it a day, head on down, pack and beat the crowd down to Pinkham Notch. The exit from the Lower Snowfields is much more graceful today, as we now know how to pick up the trail out. Another great day of skiing.
We pack up and split. Somehow, our packs feel even heavier than they did on the way up. Doug and Frank take off and are out of sight almost immediately. PJ and I have a slower pace. Just above the big Cutler River crossing, I slip on wet ice and land on my pack. I'm stuck like a turtle and can't get up, just thrash from side to side. I'm not hurt, so it's pretty funny. PJ and this other guy have just helped me up when a girl slips on the same ice patch and her skis smash PJ in the side of the head (ouch!). We schlep our way down, get rained on and finally make it to the trucks.
After packing the gear, we head up to Gorham and grab a couple of motel rooms. Freshly showered, we head to Gypsy's Restaurant and have the Prime Rib special. No one orders rice as the side dish - we've seen enough freeze-dried/rehydrated rice to last us a while.
Sunday - May 13
We drive south. It's interesting to watch the air temp from 45 to 73 as we head home. This was a great trip, warm and sunny with good snow coverage and no food lost to the local rodent population. Hopefully next year will have the same weather with more snow.
Headed north out of NJ. Doug and PJ in PJ's truck, John and me in John's car. Drove up to Connecticut and picked up Frank. Drove north. While on I-91, notice car pulling up along right side, there's lettering on the front quarter panel: STATE TROO - "Uh John, how fast are you going?" We get the hairy eyeball, but apparently he's after bigger game and leaves us alone. We arrive without further incident in Pinkham Notch at 4:30 in the morning.
Thursday - May 10
Get our gear together, which of course involves hurry up and wait. I seem to have the only pack under 75 lbs. Yeah, mine only weighs 60 lbs. Beautiful morning, glad we only wasted 2 hours sleeping. Frank's pack is Army surplus, down to the dagger strapped to the side, looks really uncomfortable. Doug's got a bruise covering his left hip and thigh, the result of a high-speed encounter with a rock at Killington last weekend. John's pack already had a pin snap. We start up the Tucks trail. PJ and I get ahead of the rest and make it to HoJo's in 1 hour 48 minutes, not bad. We ditch our packs and kick back in the sun looking up at the bowl until everybody shows up. We bring our stuff to lean-to 2, unload enough to go skiing, take a nap, rig some parachute cord to hang our food where the squirrels and chipmunks can't get to it, take another nap, get up and go skiing.
We decide to hit the Lower Snowfields as it's an easy hike and the terrain is mellow by Tuck's standards (about a 38-degree pitch - yes, the optimum angle for an avalanche slope). The hike up Hillman's is fine except for my skis cracking me in the head every other step. Putting on my helmet won't stop the skis from hitting me, but it doesn't hurt anymore. We stop to admire the avalanche debris at the base of Hillman's. Looks like a couple of large bulldozers ran down the slope - impressive, and although the snowpack is very stable, it's a reminder to stay alert. We get to the junction and seeing as I got there first, I put on my skis and glide into the top of the Lower Snowfields.
I can see HoJo's, Hermit Lake, the right side of Tucks and the valley below. What I can't see is the Lower Snowfield I'm about to ski. As I come over the top of the snowfield, it falls away below me to reveal a blanket of smooth corn. Tele turns are intense on a couple of inches of corn snow. It's silky, different from powder but just as much fun. I ski down along the right edge, there's this crevasse visible in the middle, get down to the bottom and wait for everyone else. We're all happy, but tired and ready for dinner. So, now how do we get out of here? John and Frank head to the left while Doug, Paul and I cut across to the right. We bushwhack and posthole for a while, making no progress, but the pine trees smell good. Eventually we come across a set of ski tracks and a set of boot prints going through the woods. Figuring it's John and Frank, we follow them. We cross through the brush, the Cutler River and a secondary stream. From the tracks, it's apparent that John never takes his skis off. Eventually we meet up at HoJo's and then back to lean-to 2.
After a meal based on "pull-starts", these are ready-to-eat meals that have a string hanging out of the bag. You pull the string, which activates a heating element, wait about 20 minutes and then eat. We then walked up to HoJo's, had a few ****tails and watched the sunset over the bowl. Good day.
Friday - May 11
After waking up to the sun blazing into our eyes, this guy walks by the lean-to and asks if we've seen the silver fox. We all look at PJ because around 10:00 last night, he said that a big silver fox walked up to the lean-to, looked in at us and then left. No one else saw it so we figured it was the scotch talking. After a leisurely breakfast, we decided to go to the summit of Mt. Washington, ski the Upper Snowfields and then down into the bowl by a route TBD. The HoJo's caretaker recommended going up the Left Gully and then traversing across to the Upper Snowfields. However, this other guy said that the Right Gully was snow filled ¾'s of the way and then there was a trail to get onto. The Left Gully route would've taken a long time, so we opted to go up the Right Gully. I led the way, easy going as there was already a boot trail to follow. Almost ¾ of the way up, we ran into an ice bulge on the right side of a rock which had undermined snow below and to the left. Doug was further down and yelled up that he had spotted a trail and was going to take that up. We eventually crawled up and over the ice bulge and quickly realized that the remaining snow above us was very undermined and weak. We moved to the right side of the gully and I spotted what appeared to be a trail. I started up and (after knocking only 1 rock down toward Frank) was quickly up to the Lion's Head trail. Doug came over and then the rest of the group reached us. We relaxed for a while, drank water, ate Twizzlers (yeah Frank!) and enjoyed a spectacular view across the top of the headwall across to Boot Spur. Off to our right was the Crawford Path looking like something from the Himalayas due to the bare rock and treeless ridge it runs across.
We also began thinking about what our descent would be after skiing the Upper Snowfields. Our climb up the Right Gully had revealed large and scary crevasses cutting across the Headwall, the Lip and the Sluice. This realistically left us a choice of the Chute (really freakin' steep with a snow river running down the middle of it), the Left Gully (a long walk to get to from above the Headwall) or back over to the Right Gully. We decided to wait and see how it looked from up on high.
We then took the Lion's Head trail to where it meets the Tuckerman Ravine trail, then hiked up to the Upper Snowfields. Due to the time, it was after 2:30, we decided to skip going to the summit of Mt. Washington and just ski down. Heading to the summit would've had us skiing down the bowl in the shadows of the late afternoon - not a good idea.
The Upper Snowfields were creamy smooth snow, not corn, but very nice skiing. We all got together to figure out how to descend into the bowl. There was a crevasse cutting across above the Headwall leading into what looked like a thin entrance to the Chute. John volunteered to check it out. He skied down and into the top of the Chute, then turned and waved his arms to indicate that it was OK. I then followed. I cut high to the right and then down toward the Lip to maximize vertical, then I went hard right to get into the traverse to the Chute. At this point I couldn't see over the Headwall, I couldn't see the Lunch Rocks or John for that matter. I skirted around what was a nasty looking crevasse and ducked down into the Chute.
This required a left jump turn that left me facing straight down the Headwall, before a sharp right (which caused my right elbow to brush the snow) into the Chute where John was waiting. There was just enough room on the ledge we were standing on for both of us. I now got a real good look at the snow rivers running down the middle of the Chute. It turns out there are 3. 2 of 'em were small, maybe 1 foot or so wide and 1 foot deep, flanking the main snow river. The main one however, was about 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep, bisecting the Chute on an angle. This meant having to cross this bad boy at least once on the way down. My pulse settled down to a point where I couldn't hear my heart pounding and I was laughing because that run was so freakin' steep it was actually funny.
John and I decided to get going as we didn't want to be standing on the ledge when the next person came into the Chute. John went first. Watching the sloughs he set off allowed me to figure out where I wanted to make my turns. Random thoughts included: Definitely don't want to get my skis caught underneath the cascading snow; gotta remember to keep my uphill pole facing straight up so it doesn't hit the slope and knock me off balance; don't fall cause that would really suck; this is going to be fun. After John stopped in a safe zone down below, I sideslipped off the ledge and made my first jump turn to the left. I made a bunch of consecutive jump turns down the right side of the couloir. My turns were all parallels, no way was I dropping my knee at this point as a fall would've sent me straight into the rock wall which forms the right side of the hour-glass part of the Chute, and then I crossed the main snow river. There was snow just pouring down around me, making this steady hissing sound that was pretty cool. Each turn dropped me down about 4-5 vertical feet. I crossed over the main snow river 2 more times, skied out below the hourglass, hopped over a crevasse, then made tele turns down the bowl to the rock where John was waiting. The snow in the bowl was more like cream cheese than mashed potatoes. We hung out on the rock in the sun and watched PJ work his way down the Chute. He skis down to join us. No sign of Doug or Frank though. PJ thinks they were going to hike around to the Left Gully. That ought to take them a while.
So no ****, there we are, hanging out in the sun on a big rock. We were loving life, eating pepperoni and cheese, occasionally watching some snowboarders who had built a jump on the floor of the ravine to our right. Out of nowhere, there's this loud crack and suddenly a wall of snow 2 feet high with assorted ice chunks in it is rushing down the middle of the bowl. Everybody is yelling "Avalanche" and the snowboarders at the jump are hauling out of the way. We're watching the slide, which is ripping along. It looks like it'll clear us by about 50 feet when this block of ice the size of a coffee table flies out of the middle of the slide and starts cart wheeling straight at us. I watch it for a heartbeat, then jump off the big rock we're sitting on and run behind it to hide. I peer over the top and watch as the ice block slows down, then comes to a stop about 15 feet above us. You can see the ice block in the picture where PJ is holding the beer can in his mouth. It's behind his left arm just above his elbow. It's bigger than it appears in the picture and was downright scary as it bounded end-over-end toward us.
PJ and I then hike up and get a short run in the Bowl. As we're approaching the spot where we'll put our skis on, we look back and see Doug and Frank on the other side of the floor by the Lunch Rocks. It turns out that they decided to go down the same way we came up, via the Right Gully. We ski down and join up with them. We then headed back down to the lean-to where John packed and headed out to go to Killington. The rest of us had dinner, watched the sunset from HoJo's and then crashed. All in all, it was a great day.
Saturday - May 12
Woke up to the sun shining in our eyes, looks like another bluebird day, although we know there's a front coming in this afternoon. We eat breakfast and decide to ski corn on the Lower Snowfields. We know there aren't any bumps, just steep and smooth. This will also allow us to avoid the circus that forms in the bowl on the weekends. We're filtering water (again, damn we stayed hydrated over the last few days) out of the Cutler River when these 2 guys walk up beside us. The first guy picks his way across the rocks, almost falling in. As the second guys puts his foot out, I say "Hey buddy, over there." and point to my left at the bridge 25 feet away. He looks at me, looks at the bridge, looks at the water, looks at his friend and then walks away toward the bridge. I don't want these guys in front of me.
We head up Hillman's Highway, take a scenic detour to climb and ski the lower 3rd of Cathedral Gully, then head up to the Lower Snowfield junction. We're the only ones in there (this other guy was going to ski it with us, but we told him he would have to climb out and he bailed to Hillman's). We ski down and rack up about 700 feet of beautiful corn. PJ has a great run I wish we'd gotten on video, it was that nice. We climb back up and do it again. We decide to call it a day, head on down, pack and beat the crowd down to Pinkham Notch. The exit from the Lower Snowfields is much more graceful today, as we now know how to pick up the trail out. Another great day of skiing.
We pack up and split. Somehow, our packs feel even heavier than they did on the way up. Doug and Frank take off and are out of sight almost immediately. PJ and I have a slower pace. Just above the big Cutler River crossing, I slip on wet ice and land on my pack. I'm stuck like a turtle and can't get up, just thrash from side to side. I'm not hurt, so it's pretty funny. PJ and this other guy have just helped me up when a girl slips on the same ice patch and her skis smash PJ in the side of the head (ouch!). We schlep our way down, get rained on and finally make it to the trucks.
After packing the gear, we head up to Gorham and grab a couple of motel rooms. Freshly showered, we head to Gypsy's Restaurant and have the Prime Rib special. No one orders rice as the side dish - we've seen enough freeze-dried/rehydrated rice to last us a while.
Sunday - May 13
We drive south. It's interesting to watch the air temp from 45 to 73 as we head home. This was a great trip, warm and sunny with good snow coverage and no food lost to the local rodent population. Hopefully next year will have the same weather with more snow.