| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-02-25 20:57:09 UTC-0500 |
| Description |
Backcountry Skiing at Doublehead February 25, 2007 Lots of folks--Chris, Greg, Pat, Mike, Josh, Anne, Eric, Rosie, Aaron, Liz, Yuehi, Martin...am I missing anyone? Trip Report This was a big ol' fun trip organized on the mitoc-bcski list. We got many of the usual suspects, along with some fun new faces. Many of the tele-oriented folks hit the telemark festival at Sunday River on Saturday, while Pat and Josh had an amazing day over at the Gulf of Slides and Hillman's Highway. Most of us settled into Intervale Saturday night for a bit of fraternizing and merriment. The place was packed, but we had a good time and got a chance to meet some of the new folks. We took our sweet time waking up, which was nice for a change. Greg and Anne drove up from Boston to meet us, then we hit the trailhead. The very, very nice thing about Doublehead: it's on the same road as Intervale! Now that's convenient. Greg, the ringleader of this friendly bc excursion, told folks that the trail would be mostly doable without skins, and that the club's Alpina Cross Terrains would be OK. Some people didn't know Greg well, and didn't realize that he's Captain Understatement. Fortuantely, many of us knew better and brought our downhill skis and skins. We had just about every kind of backcountry ski gear available. We had leather boots, we had big, burly four buckle plastic monsters, and we even had a NNN-BC boot, riding a wide array of cross country, telemark and alpine-touring bindings on all sorts of skis some with scales, many without. It was kind of amusing in the parking lot. The day was absolutely amazing; perfectly clear skies and definitely on the warm side (upper 30s?). We started up in two groups, one faster and one a little more relaxed. In practice, it kinda ended up being the people with skins and the people without skins. There were a couple exceptions. In any case, the two groups were more than 15 minutes apart when reaching the cabin on the top of North Doublehead. The skin up was a little bit more more difficult than Greg let on, but it wasn't too bad. On skins it was fairly easy with the exception of one icy/crusty pitch that sent a couple people slipping backwards. We hit the top and took in the amazing views. Wow. Perfect views of Washington, and great views of Maine off of a side trail. We ate lunch and just hung around joking with each other. I think Rosie gave kisses to just about everyone:) Time to head down. We strapped on our boards and pointed 'em down the fall line. We had a range of abilities with us. Some folks shussed down the top, steeper sections with a nible ease, while some of us had to do a bit a skidding on our way down. After an upper section that wasn't super hot, we hit a nice middle section that was corning up nicely. We all had a blast skiing the "hero" snow. The "Holy Crap" award for this trip went to Eric, hands down. The previous week, he emailed the list wanting to get into backcountry skiing. We said come along. Saturday was his first time ever on tele gear (on softer boots and three pins) and on Sunday he was making tele turns down some fairly challenging stuff! Everyone was highly impressed with his tenacity for the turn! After about halfway down, we stopped, did an assesment, and then split into two groups. One skied the lower section of the trail, while the other climbed back up to the top of the corn and did another run. So much fun... We all hit the trailhead about the same time. I think it was Liz that said "I can't beleive everyone...they all have huge grins plastered on their faces." Yep, that pretty much sums up the sentitment. It was a lot of fun for everyone. Definite do again. |