04-05-01 Tuckerman Ravine
We crashed at Joe Dodge lodge the night before - and got kicked out of the library for gambling. Spent a while in the "RathSkleller" basement room playing piano and guitar and loosing money to the LRC game.
7:03 am up
Got up, and got some breakfast.
7:33 am krista susan steve
KmRnSkier found us eating breakfast and we met her crew.
I asked at the front desk and the lean-to's were *NOT* full yet. I guess golf season has hit. Good!
8:01 am bladegirl, Ski&Ride, Plummet
Picked up the BladeFam and Ski&Ride on the radio and we met up on the steps at pinkham.
m@ 25
My lightest pack ever, and let me tell you - it made ALL the difference. I didn't bring my skis becuase my shoulder was still in pain from JayDay, and I had Nick in the backpack the day before for about 2 hrs and it hurt a lot. Turns out, the baby backpack has no waist support, and the hiking backpack does and my shoulder was fine all day. There was much talk of me borrowing someone's skiis, but I was having fun tubing and doing video and pix.
KmRnSkier+Crew hit the trail first, and we didn't see them again until the bowl.
8:20 am hike
I had a wicked easy time on the hike. There were a few pacthes of snow before the last big bridge, and then a few inches of snow/ice from there to HoJo's. The rest was nice easy rocky trail not slippery at all.
9:10 am break.
I think the initial order of hiking was M@+crew, BladeFam, Ski&Ride+Plummet... but everyone passed everyone else about 10 times. We took break together right before the big bridge, but lots of little breaks in between, and every time we stopped everyone passed us, and then we passed them a little later. So we all had the same pace, but different break times.
Here's the most innovative use of a T4T shirt - keeping the sun off your neck!
9:37 am small bridge
9:50 am bridge
10:25 am hojo
HoJo's was not at all as packed as I thought it'd be. We were able to secure a picnic table on the deck.
Here's the obligatory bowl shot - so much blue sky! Met up with Rider.Steve here. He was all smiles. He scored a major big big first day to the ravine.
I had just bought a water filter planning on staying overnight - and was happy that we needed it today. We drank all our water on the way to HoJo's and filtered a whole bunch more when we got there. The filter is a huge success. It's the Katadyn Hiker model - I saw 3 other people using the same model. And my stomach feels fine today after probably a gallon of water through it.
11:10 am hike
The trail up to HoJO's was a lot easier than I've ever seen it. It was mostly dry the entire way. It's still the steepest part of the hike, but without the snow it's a stairmaster event.
Here's SkiAndRide taking a siesta
Here is the picture with the most T4T'ers in it, at the 1st air Cache at the base of the bowl:
Hit the bowl a little before noon, and for the first time the Rangers were forcing people to listen to the advice. I think this is good.
I always stop to listen to them, but today the advice was probably such that they wanted to make sure everyone got it. Basically: Avoid stuff below the falling ice. That means LUNCH ROCKS. So about 9/10 of the crowd was on hikers left of the bowl in what I call the "Lunch Shrubs." There was a piece of ice under the waterfall that I was SURE was going to fall, but it never did.
My friends had gone over to the lunch rocks, so I went over there to chat, but I was spending the whole time watching that big chunk of ice under the waterfal, so I said, "See you over on the shrubs... I ain't staying here" and they agreed and we all headed up to the top of the shrubs, not too far below the chute.]
Ran into KmRn's crew on the way over, and was just in time to get video of her first run. She was about as happy as a person could be after that run. MAJOR perma grin!
12:34 pm tube
I inflated my tube and took a couple runs just outside the shrubs. I was concerned becuase I got soaking wet, but I was dry by the time I got back to our pearch. Everyone headed in kinda different directions for skiing... bladeFam to the left gulley, KmRn+Crew up towards the center headwall, and Ski&Ride and Rider.Steve headed to the base of the chute. I kinda hung out and took video of everyone and negaotiead my way into a shot of WildTurkey. Here's some advice on radios: If you want great picutres or video of yourself riding the ravine - get a radio. KmRn did like 4 runs, and I only got like 5 turns of the first run - got the entire NakedSkier run (hint: He was on our channel) - and got SkiAndRider and Rider.Steve a lot as well.
Plummet also had no skis, and she got adopted by another group without skis as they moved into the spot SkiAndRide was in before. She didn't seem to mind at all. They were nice folks, like everyone you meet up there. Here's her new fam:
My friends Chris+Ray started down and ran into Suzy just coming into the Bowl. We were way high on the shrubs, so I headed down to hang with her+crew at the base of the lunch rocks.
From the left: Karen, Suzy, Mallory
It was Lego's first time in the bowl, and she had a ball chasing other dogs and snowballs.
Funny thing, the biggest cheer (aside from NakedGuy) was for the dogs chasing their owners down the ravine.
Mallory and Karen took my tube and tried to see who could get the highest GPS confirmed speed. Karen won, so I think mallory has to clean to dog poop in the yard or something:
Suzy said some guy was almost giving them a hard time for showing up late, something about, "You really should have been here earlier." Then when we were hanging at HoJo's on the way down I met a nice couple and they said some guy was doing the same thing to them. What is up with that?
Seeing as we're into bug picutres around here of late, here's a bug we found in the snow about 10 ft from the lunch rocks:
Sliped and Slid a bit on the hike down, not too bad though - it was dry from the big bridge down.
Had a ApresRavine dinner at the RedParka that couldn't be beat, and the people at the table behind us were talking about being in the ravine, and the naked skier, and the showed me pictures of him. HA!
I'll try to find some time to put together the movies this week. I used the entire battery so it's gonna require a lot of editing! Gotta decided excatly how much editing for a certain part of the film... maybe two versions..
M@
day.
Naked Guy 2004.
. How was his run? 
and 
Linear Mode
