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| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2005-04-20 11:45:22 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Skiing and camping in the Gulf of Slides Date: April 18-19, 2005 Location: Mt. Washington, Gulf of Slides Participants: Brian Demsky, Justin Fitzpatrick, Natalia Hernandez Gardiol, Chris Glazner, Josh Levinger Author: Chris Glazner Trip Report This was destined to be an awesome weekend. The Institute threw us a bone and gave us a four day weekend in April in honor of the patriots who kicked some British ass and to encourage us to get out of Boston for the Marathon. This was also the same weekend as Spring Conference, which MITOC was hosting this year. Unfortunately, I would be in Texas for a friend's wedding, so I asked around to get some folks together to do something when I got back on Sunday night. I was hoping people wouldn't be too burned out from SC. Justin took over logistics, and we arranged to meet and head off to Pinkham Notch at 6 AM. We left in two cars, one from campus and the other from north of campus, and met at the only sign of morning food in Dover--a Burger King. It turned out to be one heck of a Burger King, complete with a waterfall. Good times were had by all, and I stocked up on toilet paper. We made it to the Notch a little after 10, filled water bottles, and (too) quickly went over group gear for the overnight. Justin, the hoss, carried all the food for dinner. In typical MITOC fashion, we really drug our butts and probably weren't on the trail until 11 or so. The trail had really spotty snow for the first 100 yards or so, and then we stepped into our skis/splitboard. The trail had decent coverage, and we were able to make it maybe a half mile before we hit a turn with exposure and the snow all but disappeared. We carried our skis for a few hundred yards, and were back on our way. There were a few stream crossings that had opened up, some we crossed on skis, others we barebooted. The snow was starting to melt in earnest in the middle part of the trail, but was still solidly skinnable. There were a few patches of grass that we skinned up, but they were short and isolated for the most part. We made it to the base of the Gulf a little after 1 or 1:30. It was in GREAT shape, and there were a few (~10) people in there enjoying the Patriot's Day holiday (nothing like the hundreds one ravine over in Tucks). We met a couple folks that had camped, as we planned to do, over the long weekend. The weather for the past four days had been perfectly warm and sunny and cool at night. The snowpack was rock solid, and oh-so-skiable. We hastily selected a campsite at the base of the Main Gully, at the very edge of treeline. The whole area was obviously a major avalanche runout zone, and the trees around us were pushed over and snapped off, some of the snaps green (and about 5 feet off the ground). Normally, this campsite would be absolutely insane, but the pack was super stable, there was a large hill between us and the gully, and the weather had been perfect for firming up the snowpack, so we decided to stay at our picturesque location. After dropping most of our gear at camp, we put our skis on our backs and started up the main gully in front of us. It was late in the day, so this was going to be our only run. I took about 30 minutes for all of us to make it to the top, which was barren of snow, and offered grass and rocks to sit on and grab a bite to eat before the run. All rested, we slapped on our gear and took a quick (considering the climb) ski down the ~800 feet back to camp. We all made it down fine, after a little initial adjustment. I discovered that spring snow is really, really abrasive, and that gloves are good to wear, even if you're not cold--I sliced my hand up when I punched the snow with my hand at speed. Ouch! We got back to camp, set things up more properly, and dug out a nice kitchen--we even had a nice countertop with recessed stoves! We started boiling water for dinner and the next day, with with the two canister stoves going full blast for good half hour. It was then that we realized where we screwed up--Brian brought a white gas stove with a ton of fuel, but left it when he heard that Natalia and I were bringing our canisters. Both Natalia and I assumed that we were bringing our stoves as light backups to Brian, and didn't have much fuel with us (we both had half-empty small canisters!). Soon, the fuel was gone, and we hadn't had dinner yet or gotten all the water we needed for the next day.. Doh! This was seriously not good. After some debate as to legality, we decided to try to build a fire, and melt water/heat food that way. If that didn't work, I still had a few MRE's that my dad gave me for Christmas. We dug a deep, deep pit, trying to get down to the ground (never did; Justin probed the snow at 5 feet deep at one point in camp). After an aborted attempt, we got the fire doing and dug air supply trenches so it could breathe. The firebuilding gave us something to do and eventually allowed us to kinda-sorta heat our wonderful dinner of beans, rice, peas, tofu, sausage and cheese, and to kinda-sorta melt water in nalgenes suspended above the fire. Not long after dark, we started to peter out. The fire died out, having lost its reason for being, and we crawled into our sleeping bags. Most of us just laid out under the stars; Brian tried out his new super light tent. We all woke up and got moving around 7. All and all, it wasn't cold at all, and once we got in the sun we were nice and toasty. We didn't have as much water as we would have liked due to the stove oversight, we weren't in any real danger of dehydration. We took a while to get going in the morning (what else?), and then decided to give the furthest right gully a shot--it was the narrowest and looked like the longest of the gullies. We climbed up the main gully, and then traversed over to the next gully about 2/3 of the way up. We were strung out a little bit. Once we crossed into the gully, we stopped and waited to regroup. We waited, and waited, but still no Brian. We looked and looked but didn't see him. We didn't hear anything, didn't see anything.... Hmm. We decided to climb a bit higher, and he was sure to turn up. At least we'd have a better view. We got to the top, and still didn't see him. I hoofed over to the top of the main gully, and he wasn't to been seen at all, so at least he wasn't lying there impaled on his ice axe waiting for us. Up top, we had found an old tent twisted and wrecked that a few of us had checked out. While I was looking for Brian, the others wanted to run up to Boott Spur to get a view of Washington. Once they realized that it was going to be more of a hike than they thought and that I hadn't found Brian, they turned around to ski down and look for him. At this time, we started to see a couple people coming into the Gulf from the trail. We were kinda surprised to see people here on a Tuesday! We started down, with Josh and I retracing out hike up, crossing gullies, and Natalia and Justin going straight down the gully. Towards the bottom, I spotted Brian waiting for us at the bottom. We got down and found out everything was OK. We had just traversed something that was easy to do in rigid tele boots, but hard to do in softer snowboard boots, so he decided to just ride down from where he was. We were happy to see everything was good. After a short break, we eyed out next line--a big, expansive slope far to climber's left. Again, we started up the main gully, and then traversed over to the top of the other gully. We made it to the top and grabbed a bite to eat. I busted out some of the MREs I had. While most I've eaten have been good, I discovered that the little silver packet that says "Snack Bread- Fortified. Humanitarian Daily Ration, Gift of the People of the United States of America" was absolutely horrible. Everyone else who tried it agreed: no wonder they hate us. This was to be our last run--we may have had time for another before the snow firmed up, but I and Brian at least needed to get back at a reasonable hour. This gully didn't head down to the same area as the others, so we'd wither have to bail out really early or bushwack, and we decided to bushwack. The skiing was awesome--my favorite of the runs. I shot video of the others, and we made it down a ways to the bottom, all of us in good form. We probably went a bit too far--the bushwack back proved to be nasty, and most of us eventually had to take off our skis and walk out (me for the last ten feet!!) We got back to camp, packed up, and headed down the ski trail with huge packs, weak legs, and a good thirst going. There was to be no beauty in this skiing--it was survival only. After the top 1/4 of the trail, the snow started really disappearing. What was there was seriously bumped up in a really bad way. Skiing huge bumps in packs is very NOT FUN. There were a number of falls, and it was always a pain in the ass to get back up from a weird tele fall with a huge pack. Eventually, the trail just dried up entirely. Huge stretches of trail that we had easily skinned up the previous day were just gone, and the trail was barely recognizable in places. There were several streams that offered running water, and some of us went for it without waiting for iodine. We ended up hiking a good portion out, until we got down pretty far, past the first big uphill on the way up. Then, at the bottom, the snow got better and were were able to ski most of the way back to the cars. We were tired, but had a blast. Upon reaching the bottom, we wanted to get water, a nice Swedish massage....and then we'd take our skis off. There were a surprising number of people in the parking lot hanging at their cars after skiing Tuckerman's. This year has just brought record numbers of people out--we read that in the previous Saturday, there were over 2500 people in the ravine! Amazing. After hitting "An Udder Ice Cream Place" in Conway, we were on our way back to Boston and classes. |