| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2004-09-20 00:09:43 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Spring Skiing and Hiking, Mt. Washington Date: April 27, 2004 Location: Mt. Washington, Tuckerman Ravine Participants: Chris Glazner, Greg Wallace, Mike Oltmans Author: Chris Glazner Photographer(s): Chris Glazner, Mike Oltamans The three of us departed Cambrige on a nice, warm morning. The few people that did see us loading up in front of Chris' place at Burton Conner must have throught we were nuts, loading skis in a car just a few days before finals. Despite a lousy year for snow in Tuckerman's, we knew that there would be plenty to ski once we got there. We arrived at Pinkham Notch sometime around 8:30 to fill bottles and get ready. There wasn't any snow on the ground. Greg and Chris decided to hike up in their tele boots to avoid the hassle of carrying them. A younger skier asked us if we really thought it was worthwhile, but we just shrugged and said, "sure, we'll be fine." See, Greg's been doing this for years: this was Chris' first time. By the midpoint up the trail, the three of us had to stop so that I could work on my newly formed hot spots. I should have know better--I've get to meet a boot I haven't quickly developed blisters in. As it was a nice spring day, there was a decent amount of traffic up the trail. It wasn't weekend traffic, but it was Patriot's Day, and more than a few Bostonians took the day off. We ended up meeting a father and son team, and began chatting. We slowed to the father's pace and enjoyed the conversation, as we weren't really in tha rush to get anywhere. About 2/3 of the way to HoJo's, the trail became icy and packed. Chris and Mike switched to crampons, while Greg delftly continued to bareboot his way from rock to rock. This was the first trip out with MITOC's new stell CAMP snowrider crampons. I grabbed a couple from the package the previous day to "test" them. At HoJo's, our party split ways. While Mike is a budding tele skier, he didn't feel up for shussing down Tuckerman's just yet. Instead, he opted to "take a little hike around." He had come prepared, and surveyed the area. He was thinking about heading up Boot Spur, and justing seeing how it went. As he was alone, the plan was to stick to popular trails and play it conservative. In general, the idea was just to play around and enjoy the wonderful day. With a quick survey and a short break, Mike was on his way towards Boot Spur. Chris and Greg prepared to make their way from HoJos to the base of the bowl. People hanging out advised crampons beyond HoJos, so Greg and I both put ours on for the 15 or 20 minute trip to the bowl. As we neared the bowl, the large crown from a massive slab release was still clearly visible, even after about 4 weeks. An avalanche had released in the night after an intense downpour, taking out about 6 feet of snowpack curving halfway around and centered on the headwall. The debris field was substantial, and bascially covered all of the more moderate slopes below Lunch Rocks. Today, it was hard to wimp out. A little explaination is in order. I started tele skiing in the previous December, but had to lay off for a while after a frostbite injury in Janurary. I picked it back up in late February, so basically I hadn't been skiing that long. It was my goal, from the beginning of the year, to ski this very ravine. As I looked across the ravine, it was beautiful. It was steep. It was vary steep. On this clear spring day, I looked across the notch to Wildcat, and wondered if I shouldn't be there instead. No, I said to myself, it's time to learn. This is it--you want to ski the backcountry, now go for it. But first--let's watch Greg. Greg is an amazing skier by most standards. When we got to Lunch Rocks, we sat down with a few other people there. No one had gone over the headwall yet--the few that got there before us were waiting for the sun to bake the surface a bit, praying for something a bit softer. It was getting close. Greg looked up, and decided to start making his way up. I decided I'd stay back and watch. After a good bit of time, I lost sight of him. In the meantime, I had been enjoying watching a few complete morons sledding down the lower slopes. They would hike up a bit, sit in a small crevasse(!), and then race in heats of 4 to the bottom. I don't think I saw one sledder make it down on his sled. If only Dave and Yoko were here.... I soon caught sight of Greg coming over the headwall. He was making the first run of the morning, so all eyes were on him. He was making a good number of jump turns, with the occasional, seemingly direct, hockey stop which through quite a bit of snow. He continued making his way down, jumping a small part of the crown from the old avalanche and then skiied to my position at the Lunch Rocks. With that, many others started making their ascents. My turn. Greg suggested that I hike up a little bit above Lunch Rocks, and start from there. I made my way up, and by trial and error, figured out how to kick in tha platform and put on my skis. Oh for the ease of step ins! Someday there will be a step in, releasable telemark binding! Once I was locked in, I looked sheepishly down. It looks MUCH steeper going down then coming up. This was way steeper than anything I'd done previously....and the snow sucked. Well, here goes nothing, I thought. Well, nothing would have been better than the preformance I turned in. I started cruising out, away from the Rocks, stopping occaisionally. Greg tried to coach me to point my skis down the fall line and just ski it. So..I did. And wiped out. Then got up....and wiped out. And again. It wasn't pretty at all. Covered in snow, I made my way back up to Greg, who wasn't saying a lot. Yeah...embarrassment by association. He had met a couple other tele skiers, and they had decided to ski Right Gully, and started making their way up that way. The other tele guys, maybe in their late forties, both had old bike inner tubes tied into their belts. They just looped their ski tips with the tubes in a lark's head and clipped them it to their belts, which allowed them to just drag their skis along with them, instead of having to carry them. Cool idea. I waited on rocks for them, slowly allowing time for my ego to heal. After they all made nice runs, Greg encouraged me to give it another shot. I got out there, timid as before, and tried to turn. I fell. I got up, and gave it another try. This time, it worked, and I linked a few turns down to the bottom of the rocks (where I then promptly fell on my butt). I climbed back up, and Greg and the two others had nice words of encouragement for me, and I felt better. So, the others did about three of four more big runs, while I stuck to the lower angles, climbing a little higher with each run, and getting a little better each time. Greg made a really nice run through the center headwall. At my peak, I made it almost halfway up the center headwall, and skied that down to the debris without biting it. By this time, it was almost 2, and we had agreed to meet Mike back at HoJo's then. I hiked down, while Greg skiied the drainage area back. We were there about 5 minutes before Mike showed up. Apparently, he somehow missed Boot Spur, and started up what we think was Hillman's Highway. He got in to a little more than he thought he was going to do, but pressed ahead up to the lip. The weather was good, and he was feeling good, so he made his way to the summit of Washington, and then back down via the Tuckerman Ravine Trail. We were all decently tired and were satisfied with the day, so headed back down. The top 1/3 of the Sherborne trail was open, so Greg and I decided to do that, meeting Mike at the crossover. The trail was really spotty. Greg whizzed through it, while I slowly made by way down, trying hard to stay in control with very little room to manuvere. Just before the end of the trail, I hit a root pretty hard, and both heels came up and I was sent flying through the air into some rocks, tearing a large hole in my pants and bruising my knee. I then nursed my way out, to meet Greg, who had come back to look for me. I was OK, so we just hiked out way back out to Pinkham. We decided to stop for a bite to eat before heading back to Boston, so Greg got us to go the Yankee Smokehouse at the intersection of 16 and 25. Greg had been dying to show me the place, to prove that there's good BBQ in New England. The place certainly was up to my standards. Although I found the sauce a bit off from my Texan sensibilities, everything else was pretty darn good. It gets my thumbs up. After a quick stop to get gas at a place that give 5 cents off gas for everyone and has a "better than nothing restroom around back," we were on our way back home, and I was more than satisfied with my first trip of many to come to ski Tuckerman's. Thanks guys! |