Category Archives: Skiing

Back to Back Tucks Expeditions

We’d been away from Mt. Washington for over three weeks, and it was past time to give it another go. The weekends prior had mostly considerable avalanche risk in the bowl of Tuckerman Ravine based on the advisories from the avalanche center, but things seemed to be settling down. Rob, Sweeney and I met up in North Conway on Friday night, and made some final gear preparations.

Saturday

We made our way to Pinkham Notch Saturday morning to join up with our other compatriot, Alex. Little did we know, the annual Ice Fest was this weekend and we ran into swarms of climbers also making their way up the mountain.

We started skinning up the Ravine trail, with the intention of heading to the East Snowfields, since we figured we had the best chance of getting some turns in there. When we turned onto the Lion’s Head winter route however, we heard that it was slow going on the trail because of the heavy foot traffic. The group decided to change plans and scope out the bowl to see if anything was skiable.

Rob, as we approach the bowl. We used Sweeney's camera for all the photos, but it changed hands often.

When we got into the bowl the wind picked up. It was likely in the teens in the bowl with 35-45 mph winds. Most of the bowl had Moderate avalanche danger due to windloading. We veered off towards Lobster Claw once we reached the bowl, assessing the conditions as we went. The snowpack was variable with ~6+ inches in lee areas on top of a breakable rain crust. In one or two spots we post-holed almost up to our waists. As we approached steeper terrain to the right of Right Gully, we stopped. Rob, Sweeney and I spread out and dug snowpits. Even though my knowledge is rudimentary at this point, it didn’t look great. There were many layers shearing cleanly away from each other even as we were cutting the snow to do tests. Sweeney and Rob came to a similar conclusion: if conditions didn’t improve, we’d likely have to turn around.

The remnants of Sweeney's snow pit

Alex leading the way up lower Lobster Claw

We ascended a little further up to a rock wall which the wind was whipping around. At this point the wind was blowing in snow very quickly, and some of our earlier tracks were starting to fill in. We stopped here and transitioned to get ready to ski. Sweeney went first and was rewarded with a few good turns of some deep, dense powder, before cutting right through some brush. I followed suit, with Alex and Rob not far behind.

The group then headed in search of what was supposed to be a route down to the Sherburne, but ended abruptly in extremely dense brush and low woods. What followed was a few hundred yards of the densest bushwacking I’ve ever done, wallowing in waist deep snow at points, while maneuvering skis around branches. At one point we had enough room to link up some turns near the Cutler river, but then the skis came back off. An hour later we emerged on the hiking trail near Hermit Lake, where we chatted with one of the avalanche forecasters for a bit about the conditions.

We got the skis on for a few turns. Here's me enjoying a bit of pow.

Eventually we all skied down the Sherburne back to the car. The trail was filled in, but firm, and icy in patches. We’d managed a few sweet turns, but overall the consensus was we’d made the right call, even though we got skunked.

Sunday

Sunday was proof that you never know what the mountain is going to give you. We got an earlier start and skinned straight for Hermit Lake. We were greeted by the advisory indicating Low danger on most aspects of the Ravine. The Sunday Advisory said that strong overnight winds moved most of the new snow we’d been in yesterday out of the steeper sections of the Ravine.

Looking across the bowl to the summit.

We decided to head up Left Gully since we had the best bet of finding stable conditions all the way up. It was a beautiful, crisp winter day, with a completely clear sky. What else can you ask for?

Rob breaking trail up Left Gully

Me following Sweeney up after we spread out.

Left Gully was firm all the way to the top of the Ravine, with a just a bit of softer snow to edge on. We all had a great first run, Rob even found some pow he kindly pointed out to me near the runout of the Gully.

Rob getting ready to rip

Me, following Robs tracks into some dense powder

I'm thankful the mountain saw fit to reward us for coming back.

At this point, there were other skiers in the bowl already enjoying some turns part way up the Sluice, so we traversed over there for a short second run. We were rewarded with some soft creamy snow to toss around. It’s amazing the difference a day can make in the bowl.

Rob, heading down the bottom of Sluice

Laying it over in the soft snow.

Sweeney makes his move

...and tears it up

Time to head home.

Worth Skis: For the Consummate New England Skier

This past weekend, Rob, Ziehl and I made our way back up north on our perpetual quest for soft turns and steep lines. Our first stop was Smuggs which might have been decent were it not for the bullet proof crust that had been whipped up by the wind and mixed precip… After throwing in the towel at the resort, sidecountry, and backcountry, we refueled and set our sights on Jay in hopes that it’s higher latitudes and prevailing weather patterns would… well, prevail. We rolled in around 10 AM, mustered as much enthusiasm as we could, geared up and hit the Bonaventure Quad. From the lift we got a good look at the scratchy conditions: exposed water bars, rocks, dirt… As we got up the mountain things got better – there was certainly plenty of decent skiing to be done at higher elevations but all of it would be firm: a good day for all-mountain skis.

As luck would have it, Rob had recently scored a pair of pre-production, locally engineered, boutique, dare-I-say-quiver-of-one all-mountain sticks: the Daily Bread by Worth Skis. If you live in New England and can only afford one pair of skis, this is probably the one to get. It features a modern geometry, with just enough early rise to keep your tips above the surface in variable conditions, just enough width to float in light pow, and a full sandwich construction and 21m radius so that you can rip GS turns all the way back to the lift. Oh, it’s light enough to tour on, too. Keep your eyes peeled for the full line of these New England specialists to go into full production some time in the upcoming years.

Check out Rob doing some beta-testing (you gotta zoom these in – click to enlarge):

Check out those angles…

Rob lays ’em over like a new pair of race stock GS 12s…

Gear List (click links for more info):

Making the best of the weather

If you live in a place with perpetually very hard snow you should think about moving to a nicer climate, but not to Utah, please.” -Bruce Tremper, in Staying Alive

In spite of the rain in NE this past week, Rob, Sweeney and I were determined to find some decent skiing. We were at Smuggs on Saturday, where it was definitely a day to focus on the touring rather than the skiing. We bootpacked a mile or so in the area, where the rain crust made any potential runs look a little sketchy. I tested the diagonal carry of my REI Double Diamond pack, which I found works well for getting the skis on the pack quickly, but for excursions of any length I much prefer the A-frame carry. The diagonal straps allow the skis to hang a little too far off behind the pack.

In the afternoon we went on a brief skin, mostly to stretch our legs. It turns out having skins correctly cut for your skis makes a huge difference.

Sweeney ahead on the skin track

We passed a few deer and rabbit tracks on the ascent through some calm low angle woods. There wasn’t much snow so skiing down our skin track was pretty interesting.

We crossed lots of animal prints

Sunday, we decided to try Jay Peak, since Mt. Washington was reporting up to 80 mph winds. We skied the tracked trees all day and had a blast. Rob was on his new pair of Worth Daily Breads, which he let me try last weekend at Wildcat. Worth Skis is an up and coming ski manufacturer that designed a line of East Coast specific backcountry skis. I took Rob’s pair for a spin on some groomers where it gripped like a dream in variable snow. I felt comfortable making GS speed turns, and really enjoyed the rebound they delivered. I could swing around the 185s in the bumps as well. Rob got the stiffer version with the Power Core which I found was maybe a little too much ski for me when making tighter turns, but I bet I’d like the softer version.

Update: Brian put up a brief TR with photos of Rob laying it over on his Worth Skis.

Right now, I’ve got my nose buried in Avy safety books. Let’s hope the next few weeks hold some big storms for us.

Finally we get to play in some Pow!

Practically giddy from excitement during last Thursday’s storm, Rob, Sweeney, and I headed up to Jackson, NH where we crashed at Denaro’s. Rob and I had plans for a mini-ski vacation: 4 days up north. We were kindly greeted on Friday with ~10 inches of fresh at Wildcat.

Day 1: Wildcat / Attitash

We’d come prepared with coupons galore, ready to get the best deals wherever the snow was. Wildcat was empty when we showed up, and there was some serious graupel falling that switched back and forth to snow during the day. I’m going to have to agree with Sweeney’s TR here, in his words, it was debatable whether we were slaying gnar or pow, but we were finally slaying something.

We ran laps on a few trails we basically had to ourselves, skiing fresh lines every run. My Atomic Helidaddy’s did pretty well in the steeps, but wanted to sink a bit more on the flats which resulted in skiing the tails a bit.

Rob on his DPS 138s

Sweeney on his Drifters

Me getting into a turn

Rob kindly lent me his DPS 138’s to try–which were pretty much the best thing ever. They are basically shaped like two water skis, which makes them butter turns in pow, no matter how far forward you get. I’m sold that rocker and reverse/reverse camber is the way to go in Pow. We didn’t snap any more photos after the swap–we were too busy having fun ripping it up.

We headed over to check out Attitash for the afternoon, which was maybe not the best idea in retrospect since they got less snow and more sleet than Wildcat, but overall I can’t complain. By around 3 pm we’d pretty much skied everything worth skiing, so we packed up and headed to our next stop at Alex’s place in Lincoln to meet up with Alex, Denaro, Shane, and Hannah.

Day 2: Jay Peak

We rolled out of bed Saturday at the ungodly hour of 5:15, but as soon as we looked at Jay reporting 14-16″ of new snow overnight we knew it was going to be an epic day. We got to Jay just in time to stand outside in the 0 degree temps and high winds which was well worth it to get first chair. Some of the runs we took might have been the first tracks of the season.

Sweeney got some sick POV footage of the woods, see for yourself:

Eventually the winds beat us down and we headed in for the final time to warm up and recuperate. Sweeney had some nasty looking frostbite that sent him in around lunch, but seems to be making a quick recovery. My own previous frostbite injuries were acting up as well, unfortunately. We headed back to Lincoln where Rob and I schemed up plans for the rest of the weekend.

Day 3: Smuggs

While everyone else seemed to have had enough of the cold, Rob and I woke bleary eyed at 5:15 again to make the drive up to Smuggler’s Notch. Not really knowing the mountain, we met up with a group of Rob’s friends off the TGR forums, and headed over to the resort, which had gotten about as much snow as Jay. The wind was mercifully mostly still, but the summit temp was a frigid -20 which kept us from doing too many laps. We skied some trees with the TGR guys, and the ducked off a trail into what looked like a nice open line, but dead ended. We ended up having to backtrack, bootpacking a few hundred yards in dense woods where we’d unknowingly made the classic mistake of going right where we should have gone left. Oh well, it was a fun adventure.

At this point I tried to take a few photos, but my camera batteries were literally frozen, so I gave up and we skied a few more runs instead.

Day 4: Touring the Notch

We crashed near the Notch Sunday night and awoke to temps nearing -20 in town. This was not very pleasant follow-up to the previous days of freezing our extremities, but I think we made the best of it. Rob’s friend directly us to an undisclosed location, where we headed to do a mini tour around 11 when it was finally warming up. After getting a few turns in, we hiked and then skied out to meet up with another group for an afternoon exploratory tour. My camera was still complaining of the cold, and in the interest of not giving away any local secrets, again, no photos.

We parked below the ridge we were planning to ski, quickly threw our skins on and got moving. Soon I was wearing just a baselayer. I presume it must have warmed up a bit, but it was the first time I can say I was warm while outside during the weekend. We skinned for about two hours until we found some decent looking steeps and transitioned to hit some untracked lines on mostly low angle woods. After a bit of traversing we found a logging road where we got up some speed and got to throw the skis around a bit.

Finally, my first non-resort touring! The skiing was well worth the effort. My new pack seemed to fit the bill, but my borrowed skins were still struggling even on the natural snow. There was just too much glide due to the skins being ~80mm underfoot on my 99mm waist skis. Not a good combo. These seem like they’ll do the trick though:

It was a shame to leave even after freezing our toes off all weekend. This was certainly a memorable weekend.

Edit: In case you didn’t believe the temperatures I was citing, here’s a pic of the thermostat in Rob’s car:

-8.5...the ambient temp outside while at Smuggs on Sunday