| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2005-01-30 18:24:07 UTC-0500 |
| Description |
New Page 1 Winter School 2005: Mount Washington (Via Lion-Head Winter Route) January 29, 2005 Trip Participants: Bilal Zia (Fearless Leader), Christiaan Adams (Fearless Leader), Dan Walker (Fearless Leader), Tomas Izo, Lidiya V, Polina Anikeeva, Kevin Neville, Sam Holster, William Hawkins TRIP REPORT (by Bilal Zia) this is going to be a long f***ing drive, I thought to myself as we started north on 93 Friday afternoon (Jan 28). The road was packed with cars and it seemed everyone took off early from work in Boston (so what else is new!). Kevin and Tomas were riding with me, and after a 4 hour journey, albeit we werent in a real rush, we stopped at IME in North Conway; the other groups started later than us and were going to meet us for dinner in the city. After talking Kevin out of buying a 10 year old Scarpa Inverno boot from the consignment store which I thought was way over-priced, we walked across the street to EMS where he bought the same boot, only brand-new, for a mere $15 more! Soon Sam, Dan, and William joined us at EMS, while Christiaan along with Lidiya and Polly were still stuck in traffic and soon decided to have dinner in Manchester instead. After eating a hearty dinner ourselves at Elvios (yeah the North Conway one is MUCH better than the one in Lincoln) and a brief run-around Rt.16 as we searched desperately for the Intervale turn-off, we got to the cabin. While I was having trouble tuning to any radio channel in North Conway, Sam and his car-mates were treating themselves to quality red-neck talk radio (96.3 FM I think) did you know that you can now for a limited time only buy a specially packaged vampire (?) CD for a mere $34. Yeah its expensive, but according to red-neck Johnny, thats cuz we dont make many of em Go figure. It didnt take long for the last group to join us at Intervale Some immediately went to bed, while others thought of inventive ways to insulate their hydration system (yours truly see the trip pics for visual evidence of my cool invention.. and it works!), and others still thought it would be kinda cool to sharpen crampons inside the cabin at mid-night! (hint: long-hair long-beard pokes electrodes into rats for a living ) Alarms went off at 4:30 Saturday morning, though many of us were already up, apparently too excited to sleep. We quickly packed up, piled into cars, and drove to the nearby Dunkin Donuts, a perennial MTIOC pre-trip breakfast stop. It was dark inside and the doors were locked at 5:15 AM, so we waited till 5:30, when the shop was due to open After a brief encounter with an enraged DD employee who burst out of the store and insisted that we park parallel instead of perpendicular to the curb because we were in some incomprehensible sense blocking traffic at 5:30AM when there were only 3 cars in the lot that holds 50 we finally got to have our breakfast and fill up hot water in our bottles. Little did we know that we were about to be treated to 30 minutes of quality celebrity-approved video commercials for get this Yoga Booty Ballet, the latest rage in Hollywood We wondered in awe how come no one had ever thought of this ingenious plan before.. Combining yoga and dance with your rear-end.. it just has to work! It is especially useful for those hard-to-reach areas around your thighs and butt. And for a very special introductory price, you can get a special hand-crafted squishy ball that..umm..errr.. makes you thin. Call their toll-free number and your greeting is thanks for making a booty call just pure genius! So after very brief consultation, we decided to forego MITOCs plans to acquire avalanche beacons, and instead invest in squishy balls for all MITOC members. After a highly entertaining and motivational breakfast, we finally reached Pinkham Notch at 6:15ish and quickly packed up and headed up the Tuckerman Ravine trail. The summit forecast for the day was a high of 10 degrees (F), winds 35-55 mph, gusting to 70mh, with bright sunshine for Washington, a great day! No wonder there were a gazillion cars parked in the lot and several groups starting out alongside us at the trail-head. The trail was fairly packed down so we set a reasonable pace, and soon stopped at the Sherburne turnoff for some arrest practice. After practicing for a bit, we set off on trail again. Lidiya started having trouble with her mouse-boots (they were slipping a lot on the snow) so we all decided to stop and put on crampons. Soon we were at the fire-road turnoff and the steep Lions Head winter route. Here we whipped out the ice-axes and methodically made our way up the steep slopes The trail was fairly icy because of lack of snow, so a fall could potentially have been fatal (hard to arrest on ice!).. so we deliberately slowed the pace down a bit and made sure our crampons were planted firmly in the ice before shifting weight onto them. As the trees vanished, the wind picked up and started whipping us around a bit. We scrambled up to Lions head where there was some shelter in the rocks and we stopped for a few snacks. Here, I relieved Lidiya of her thermarest and strapped it loosely on my pack (loosely because there were no spare buckles left!). Soon I realized how the wind can really play around with you. With a large exposed surface area on the mat, the wind jostled me around a few times, which was kinda cool.. If I were to guess, the gusts were no more than 50mph, though, so we were quite fortunate to have such great weather. The views from above-treeline were tremendous.. we could see for miles and miles all around and the panorama was breath-taking. Dan and I stopped for a bit and observed what seemed like three climbers trying to ascend the Tucks head-wall. People have to be utterly insane to try and ski down that near-vertical rise! After Lions Head, the pace slowed down a bit more, and Dan, William, and I (all three of us were working sweep while Christiaan led up-front) entertained ourselves with thoughts of a one-day winter presi-traverse. We tried to identify Eisenhower for a bit and later realized (at a higher-elevation, though) that what we thought was Eisenhower was actually some peak beyond Crawford Notch Although the weather was really nice, the trail conditions were not ideal.. it was icy, and very rocky (no snow so rocks still exposed). Try scrambling up rocks in crampons Not the easiest or most pleasant thing in the world Soon, the summit moon-station came into-view and at 1pm, we all stood at the summit cone for the traditional summit photo. Now heres when things got interesting The temperature was roughly 10 degrees (F), and winds were not gusting that much (maybe 40 mph), so I decided to take off my shirt for a once-in-a-lifetime naked winter summit photo. Of course, I thought, others would think I was insane. Little did I know that my actions would trigger everyone in the group to do exactly the same!! First Tomas and I stripped for pics, and fumbled with our shirts to put them back on then after we came down to a sheltered cove in the building, Dan decided he wanted to strip and run up to the summit for a photo. William, Kevin, Sam, and Chris soon followed. Not to be left behind, the girls also stripped to their base layers (beyond which would constitute moderately soft-core porn) for summit pics. After bundling back up, and having some hot cocoa provided by Christiaan, we debated over how long it would take for our nipples to catch frost-bite highly intellectual discussion! The guys decided that it didnt really matter as theyre useless anyway the girls understandably had a different opinion! Onto the descent! All the while we were climbing up the icy-slopes, I was thinking to myself what a bitch it was going to be coming down on these highly exposed, rocky and icy slopes. But after executing a few yoga booty ballet moves at the summit, we were all so energized (and excited that we could all reach the hard-to-reach portions on our thighs) we all made it down alright. For the last part of Lions Head below treeline, we took off the crampons and glissaded down to the Tuckerman Ravine trail. Here, William had the bright idea of glissading on one of the avalanche shovels we were carrying. After insisting on trying out the shovel-slide on the Sherburne trail, he proceeded to land on a rock at the bottom of the trail.. he was alright though as his strong booty cushioned his fall those moves we made at the summit were already showing results! Kevin also decided to give it a shot, and sure enough, ended up on the same frikkin rock as William! The rest of us were content boot-skiing all the way down to Pinkham. We got to the lodge before sun-down (perhaps around 4pm or so) changed out of smelly/sweaty clothes, and headed over to North Conway for dinner. I knew this really good Italian pizza place (no not Evlios!) from the last time I climbed Washington last February and they didnt disappoint. All of us went through half-a-large pizza per person along with onion rings and drinks. After the food was all gone, I had the bright idea of heading over to Camelot and sitting in the sauna for an hour to really relax those muscles.. The idea struck a cord with Christiaan and two cars then headed to Camelot, while Sam, William, and Dan decided to head back to Boston instead. We got to Camelot a little after 9 only to find the place completely crowded by other WS trips. Thankfully the sauna was empty, so Kevin and I proceeded to light it up. Greg warned us that it would take 2 hours for it to get hot, but we went anyway. Within 45 minutes, we had the place cooking at 135 degrees (F) and were psyched. Christiaan, Tomas, Polly, and Lidiya soon joined and we all sat there for a bit. After it got really hot, and the conversation took a rather raunchy tone, we decided to cool off and run outside to make snow-angels. We unequivocally decided not to compromise our yoga booty ballet workouts in the snow as the cold wet snow would lessen the amazing fat-burning effects of the workout.. instead we stuck with snow-angels. Theres just something about snow piling up your exposed self that makes this exercise really entertaining the trick is that once you get past the immediate cold-shock, it actually kinda feels good! I managed to make 5-6 while others didnt last as long. We scrambled back into the sauna only to run out again after 15 mins for another snow-angel session. This time when we got back, Lidiya stuck herself to the sauna ceiling and refused to sit back down and insisted that it was warmer up there.. it was quite funny actually After realizing that I had indeed fallen asleep for 5 minutes, I decided to call it a night and head back. The others too decided the same so we ran back to the main cabin and immediately fell asleep. This was a great group of hikers and all of us had a great time! Now about that one-day winter presi-traverse hmmmm FOR TRIP PICS, SEE OTHER SUB-ALBUMS OF THIS TRIP FOLDER. |