| Summary | On Carter-Moriah, don't expect to find your trail broken in after a snowstorm. In fact, don't expect to find your trail at all. |
| Owner | Rachel DeLucas |
| Creation Date | 2010-06-02 23:37:15 UTC-0400 |
| Description | ---------------------------------------
from Rachel De Lucas date Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 7:16 PM subject the mad carter-moriah range party overnight "Petek and I are planning on hiking the carter-moriah range on February 27-28. This will either be 13.8 mile or 18.9 mile overall, depending on if we decide to do moriah or not. But we will probably try to do them all, because this weekend will be all about PAIN. Just kidding. Well, maybe half-kidding." --------------------------------------- Intrepid trailblazers: Ian Tracy, Yuval Kochman, Sally Peach, Rachel DeLucas, Petek Saracoglu Weather forecast: 100% chance of snow Saturday, with ~2 feet of new snow in the last 48 hours After a cozy stay at Intervale and some morning D+D, we set off. The Wildcats trailhead where we originally planned to leave Car 1 was virtually unrecognizable with unplowed snow. That could have been our first clue, but undaunted, we left Car 1 at Pinkham Notch Visitor Center instead and made our way to Gorham. Only one other car kept ours company when we started off at 10 am. An hour into the hike, we met up with the owners of that car as they were turning back. At 11 am, that could mean they did a badass early morning hike and tagged Moriah, or it could mean they were pansies. The broken trail ended about 10 minutes later. Not being pansies, we started to break trail through 2 feet of new snow. Luckily we had Ian, one of those people who can carry a gorilla on his back and still go faster than the rest of us. He led the way for a while. And then we ran into some trees. On the way to Moriah from Gorham, you pass over a bump called Mt. Surprise, which always seems to live up to its name. This time the surprise was that from here on out, we were never to find the trail again for a sustained period of time. We occasionally saw a rare blaze and rejoiced ("...oh my god! it's a blaze!! YESSS!!!! BLAAZZEEE I LOVE YOUUUUU"). By dark, we were certain that we were right near what was most likely Mount Moriah. But we had clearly veered off into shwacking territory. We decided were done for the day. One advantage of definitely not being on the trail? Camping exactly where you are. Rachel won the creative dinner award, with a homemade ramen and peanut butter concoction. Over dinner we strategized about the upcoming day. "We'll just leave our packs here, tag Moriah in the morning, and head out and get lunch before we go back," Rachel stated confidently. Plan made, we got ready to bask in the glory of our warm sleeping bags. The weather was better on Sunday but still cloudy. We left our packs at the campsite and set off. About half an hour later we were standing on what looked and felt like Moriah's summit. We went through an ambivalent "is this the summit? This can't be the summit. This must be the summit!" phase. We started taking summit pictures. Then Ian reluctantly made this observation: "You guys...you see that break in the clouds? I think there's a higher point over there, close by." Hmm. Crap. We were standing on a lesser Mount Nublet. Certainly not as far away from Moriah as we could have been (given that I was helping navigate). We'd go back to our packs, resupply, and head to the summit. It was at this point that Ian made another reluctant observation: Ian: "Ummm, guys. I think I lost a snowshoe." The collective reaction: "Uhh. What?" Ian: "It must have come off. Did anyone see it?" Baffled group: "You what? How did you not notice it come off?" Ian: "I, uh, don't know. It's got to be around here somewhere." Once the absurdity of it wore off, we treated the situation pretty rationally. The first order of business was to tease Ian. Next, we started looking. Yuval went further back on the trail. The rest of us stayed on or near Nublet, trying to ask Ian questions like "when do you last remember seeing both snowshoes?" with a straight face. We looked around for a while. No renegade shoe to be found anywhere. We were about to give up and head off Nublet when Yuval shouted the good news. This had to be the single most impressive detective work I've ever seen by anyone. Yuval noticed that there were post-hole tracks next to our broken trail. He followed these tracks a good distance back until they disappeared, almost back at our campsite. He then started digging around and, lo and behold, found a bright gold snowshoe almost completely buried in the snow. The snowshoe had come off while Ian was on a side-trip trying to figure out what direction would be better for us to follow. Since that direction lost in the end, none of us followed him, and the shoe went unnoticed by the rest of our group. Mystery solved. I'd like to note a few things in Ian's favor here.. First, Ian's snowshoes were a pair of Sherpas from the Paleolithic Era. They were an artifact left by the people that inhabited the White Mountains during the Ice Age. Ancient binding systems are bound to give you trouble. Second, Ian is so incredibly focused and unyielding that he can manage to break trail for almost 20 minutes, uphill through 2 feet of snow, with only one snowshoe. That is a mean feat by any standard. Third, Ian was a good sport and took our subsequent taunting well. It can't be easy knowing that you'll be the butt of a series of snowshoe-losing jokes the rest of the day, or knowing that this will get referenced on every snowshoe hike he will ever do with any of us again, or that we will tell the story as a humorous anecdote for years to come, or that it will end up as the longest part of an already-long trip report. He also put up with my hysterical giggling like a champion. With the snowshoe ordeal over, we went back to our camp to grab extra supplies. While prepping to head off, we got a visitor. He had followed our trail up, and was dismayed to hear now that we weren't actually on the trail. We explained that we weren't quite sure where it was, though it had to be somewhat nearby. Our visitor was gifted with the ability to talk to satellites, which quickly determined that we'd actually been smack dab on the trail all night. To be fair, our last push to that campsite had been up a sadistically steep hill through lots of snow and underbrush (the undertaking was affectionately named Battle of the Bulge). And a trail can make a darn good place to camp when you unknowingly come across it. We left once again with only our small packs (after happening to let our GPS donned friend, named Serge, get a head start). It's amazing how much more like a trail it looks when even just one person has passed through already. Pretty soon we were joined by a party of 8 people from a local hiking club, and then all 13 of us caught up to Serge, making one big happy trailbreaking family. We continued on for about a quarter mile when the going got a little tougher. The tough got going. The hiking club turned back. We went another half mile or so. Although Serge could tell from his GPS that the trail was somewhere nearby, he did manage to pick a route that got us personally acquainted with every single tree (ask Rachel about Bruce the Spruce). He got help in leading the way. Ian broke trail most of the time, finding that it was even more effective to have both snowshoes on. And, at 3:30 in the afternoon on the second day, after countless hours of wading through snow and getting violated by trees, we finally succeeded. We thanked Serge for his GPS services. He thanked Ian for his formidable trailbreaking skills and requested a picture with "his hero." That's quite an honor for Ian, as we found out. Less than a month from now Serge will be off to Nepal for his second attempt to summit Everest from the south side. We wished him the best of luck and a safe journey. After we ate and Sally did a celebratory handstand, it was time to head out. The journey back was relatively uneventful, the standard being set high by the rest of the trip. We were back to the trailhead by 9 pm. Our odyssey at an end, we crammed into Car 2 and headed to the Pinkham Notch visitor center basement to change out of our wet-and-nasty before parting ways and heading home. I would like to close with one thought here. I've never been a fan of blazes. Really, who needs flashing neon signs when the trail clearly tells you where to go? Blazes are for noobs. Or so I thought. By the end of this trip, I had cheered every time I saw a blaze, gotten disappointed every time I thought someone had seen a blaze which turned out to be a false alarm, written songs about blazes, taken pictures with a blaze, and seriously given consideration to naming my firstborn child "Blaze." Ah, trail, thou art fickle. Thank goodness for blazes - and the people that maintain them year after year. -PS |