Tag Archives: Franconia Ridge

Pemi Loop: Ski Beta

As per the main Pemi Loop TR, here is the ski beta companion post. If you are not interested in backcountry skiing, this is probably a good post to skip: it’s pretty dry and in essence just a bunch of maps and weird photos. At the risk of providing too much detail (not sure if that’s possible for this topic), each entry will follow this general format:

Quick textual blurb about what we’re looking at.
Photos – these are the main artifacts that we took away from the whole thing.
Google Earth View – I’ve tried to highlight the regions of interest and panned to a view similar to that shown in the photo(s).
Topo Map – Same highlighting; more informative for those actually trying to hike / skin / walk there with the aid of a map, compass, or GPS.
Satellite Map – These actually give you a better idea of where the skiable part is.
Additional Photos, etc…

The entries are sorted roughly in the order in which we were able to photo these things. We took a counter-clockwise route around The Pemi and snagged shots of promising looking lines as we encountered them. This is simply the easiest way for me to catalog this stuff.I suppose I should probably provide some sort of disclaimer here at this point… I have not actually skied most of the lines discussed below. In fact, I haven’t even seen many of them in winter. The idea here is simply to collect information so that we can have an idea of where to continue looking when the snow actually falls. Just because I think a given run looks sweet does not mean that it can be safely skied. When winter rolls around, the next challenge will be to give each of the highlighted runs significant individual consideration, and then maybe ski them.Also worthy of note is the fact that this post is probably going to take forever to load. By the time you are reading this paragraph, most of the maps have probably loaded, but if not give it some time, or try to refresh the page. If things totally are not working, just open these maps in Google Maps by following the little blue links. Also, for the love of God, do try to use a modern web browser…

And without further ado…

Guyot South Bowl

Guyot is exceptionally remote, even for The Pemi, but there are two large bowls both of which contain several slides. They are mostly quite long (~1000′ vert.) and upon closer inspection, they are quite smooth. There are few boulders or other obstructions meaning that it probably doesnt take super long for things to fill in.

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West Bond and Bondcliff
Bondcliff is tempting for obvious reasons, but it’s questionable at best. It’s extremely steep and all of the crazy terrain features would require a stupendous amount of snow to fill it in. It’s northwest facing, so it probably get’s blasted but upslope weather, but may well get scoured by the prevailing winds. I think the more promising looking runs are actually on West Bond.

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Osceola and Scar Ridge Slides
These are actually not in The Pemi, their across the Kancamagus just east of Loon. I hear they slide left and right but if appropriate conditions could be found, they look like fun. These slides are roughly a mile from the highway and each of them drains out into the Hancock Branch of the Pemi River which runs parallel to the Kanc, so access is pretty straight forward.

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Flume Slides

Of Flume Slide Trail infamy. This is one of those runs where people assume you’re totally out of your mind since the Flume Slide Trail basically goes straight up the mountain. As it turns out the Slide itself makes for relatively mellow skiing when compared to say the Lincoln Slides, according to my partner in crime, Rob. In fact, I think the Lincoln Slides are probably slightly easier to get to and offer greater variety, but if you’re looking for a mellow backcountry season warm up run, this might be it.

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Haystack Slides

Two or three skiable-looking slides can be found between Haystack and Lincoln. We managed to snag a number of photos of this area, but the GPS on my camera was disabled when we took them and I’m now having a hard time identify which was which. (Rob, Shane, or anyone for that matter; feel free to weigh in on these…) In any event, here are the photos and their rough locations.

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Lincoln Slides

To me, these appear to be the best skiing (good lines, ease of access, long runs) on the west slope of Franconia Ridge. Here’s a quick photo of the drainage containing Lincoln’s Throat and the other unnamed slides off Lincoln. These lines are covered in greater detail here, and here.

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Bridle Path Slides

The shrewd observer will have noticed a few short but steep slides on the shoulder of Lafayette that leads down from the Greenleaf Hut back toward I93. They can be seen above in the mid-ground, in front of the distinctive cliffs on the west slope of Cannon. Or just look at this way better photo:

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Lincoln Slides – East Slope
The east slope of Franconia ridge has several nice looking runs however, there’s no easy way of getting to them. The shortest route may be to climb the west side of Lincoln, and then simply ski down the west side. Of course then you need to get back. Additionally, conventional wisdom dictates that you climb the line you’re going to ski. The safer route involves a 5 or 6 mile slog through The Pemi over easy terrain, followed by some bushwhacking to get to the base of the slides. Yet another alternative, would be to follow Lincoln Brook, possibly skinning up it all the way to the bottom of the drainage. This is more direct than following the Franconia Brook Trail, but may not be faster due to the comparative slowness of bushwhacking on skis. The north aspect of these slides is wide and relatively mellow, however punctuated by lots of passenger car sized boulders, which should make for good fun on a powder day. The south aspect is considerably steeper and narrower – an exciting looking technical line. The photo we got is actually not a great perspective (I think the sun was starting to get to me…), so really rely on the maps to see what’s going on here.

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Lafayette Slides
These look gnarly and could be accessed without any sort of bushwhacking at all, although the fastest route would almost certainly be to take the Old Bridle Path to the base of the drainage and just follow it up from there.

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Pemi Loop

After an entire week of sweating my face off around Boston, Rob, Shane and I figured it was about time to head back up north for some cooler climes, fresh air and good old fashioned exercise. The plan came together at the absolute last minute, with details lacking finalization until some late hour of Friday night. Per usual, we reasoned that we’d better stock up on calories, so we hit the town in search of beers and burgers. Around midnight we skulked back to our respective apartments, set our alarms for 6:30 AM and crashed. Shortly after 7 AM we all rallied and set off for Lincoln, NH.

For those not familiar with the Pemi Loop, familiarize yourselves:

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Ok, so here’s what you’re looking at. The Pemigewasset Wilderness (or Pemi, for short) is the large tract of land between I93, the Kancamagus and Rte. 302. In many cases, the word wilderness might seem a bit overstated. In the case of the Pemi, not so. There are many places in the Pemi that are basically a day’s hike from any sort of civilization with the only mode of transport being your feet. When you get out there, it actually feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere…it’s cool! The Pemi Loop is a 36 mile loop of trail, which essentially surveys the whole Wilderness. Much of it overlaps the AT and most of it is at elevation. In fact, only the 7 or 8 miles on either end of the loop are spent below 3000′. Totaling about 36 miles, the route is frequented by trail runners looking for a challenging, single-day distance run.

By contrast, we opted for a more casual two day pace: about 14 miles on day one and the other 20 or so on day two. We tried to pack as light as possible by bringing various ultra-light gear. Rob and Shane each used a Hennessy Hammock and I used my Sprite in it’s pitchlight configuration. We each brought summer sleeping bags, ultra-light mattresses, food, rain shells, water/purification equipment, and minimal miscellaneous equipment. I somehow managed to fit all of this into my North Face Off-Chute 26, all weighing in at 19.8 lbs! I’m sure people have gone farther with less, but I was pretty proud of myself…

We hit the trail about 10 AM on Saturday morning. The first few miles are an easy cruise along a former railroad bed. Eventually you come to the Osseo Trail which heads uphill toward the backside of Mt. Flume and Franconia Ridge. This is basically the last time you’ll be anywhere near the valley floor for the rest of the hike. We thought this was great for a number of reasons. Escaping the heat was certainly a concern. Gaining elevation quickly and hanging onto it for as long as possible tends to do wonders for morale – it seems as though you’re storing up potential energy that way… But, perhaps of greatest importance was the outstanding view of the surrounding wilderness offered from the high ridges of the Pemi Loop. One of our highest priorities on this trip was to produce as much documentation of ski-able backcountry lines as possible for the winter.

After a quick perusal of the incredible amount of photos and GPS data we collected, I realized that the ski beta probably deserves a post of it’s own. So… the rest of this entry will be a straight-forward trip report from our Pemi Loop excursion and a follow-up entry will recount all of our ski recon in a more concise and dense format.

And on that note, I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking…

Rob and Shane at our first break about half way up the backside of Flume.
As it turns out the back is nearly as steep as the front…

Franconia Ridge: Lincoln and Lafayette

Rob atop Liberty with the ridge in the background.

The Ridge north of Lafayette.

Our campsite should be down in there some where…

Our campsite with the days progress in the background:

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It took us a lot longer to get from Lafayette to Garfield Pond than we expected. You always intuitively expect the descents to be easy and fast, but frequently, as was the case here, the steep challenging terrain causes you to go even slower than the same slope would were you going uphill rather than down. It didn’t help that we had just climbed four mountains plus like three false summits.

As we got closer to the pond we began to worry that it might be obscured by dense trail side brush and that we might miss it. This concern turned out to be unfounded, as the pond is easily visible from the trail. In fact there are a number of reasonable (but totally unofficial) camps on either side of the trail right next to the pond. Just to be on the safe side we used an an altimeter in conjunction a topo map to get our rough location. For maximum accuracy, I was able to use Backcountry Navigator on my phone which uses the GPS and pre-cached map tiles to pinpoint your current location.

We arrive just before sunset and make our first priority water…

Rob and Shane at work with the water filter.

As usual, the water filter proved to be kind of a pain in the neck. When my MSR Sweetwater filter met it’s untimely demise on the Long Trail last summer, I replaced it with the MSR Miniworks. This model is slightly bigger and heavier, but is 100% field serviceable. Every single part can be removed without the use to any special tools and the filter element can be cleaned with a simple piece of steel wool, included in the kit. The pond was a silty mess, so we had to clean the filter a number of times and use the float to keep the intake away from the floor of the pond, but we ended up with plenty of water eventually.

Dusky pond.

Sunset begins over Garfield Pond.

Sprite 1 Pitchlight: ultralight summer
comfort!

The Hennessy Hammocks: pitch anywhere and sleep in
comfort!

A pretty solid sunset ensued…

Ideal ratio of clouds to clear sky for
maximum sunset action.

Rob hoisting the food into a tree for the night.

We awoke to wisps of cloud drifting across the pond.

Looking back toward Franconia Ridge as we make our way up Garfield,
early Sunday morning.

Our first summit of the day: Garfield.

Same thing…

The Pemi from just below Garfield.

Owl Head and The Pemi.

The precipitous scramble down from
Garfield, and a good example of why
descending frequently takes a long time.

The ridge up on top of Guyot.

The three of us at the summit of Guyot.

Bondcliff.

More Bondcliff…

Rob surveying the land in epic fashion.

Ditto…

After the dramatic West Bond and Bondcliff ridgeline, the trail descends at first steeply, but gradually mellowing, back to valley floor of The Pemi. It’s not a bad hike, but by this stage of the game it seemed to drag on forever. We eventually shambled our way out of the wilderness (well Shane and I did some shambling; Rob somehow marched out with the cadence of a soldier fresh out of bootcamp, apparently undaunted). We threw all of our smelly junk into the back of the car and set off in search of steaks. We found just what we were looking for at Gordi’s Fish and Steakhouse in Lincoln in the form of 20 oz steaks, all you can eat salad bar (which in our case was more like all you can eat fresh vegetables and other toppings with a bit of lettuce for good measure) a potato each and some complimentary loaves of bread.

Gear List (click links for more product info):

Winter Endures: Lincoln’s Throat

Recently, as I go about my daily routine, I’ve been hearing all sorts of hushed utterances from passersby, people around the office, news anchors and others regarding spring, snow melt, warmth and other such unsavory notions. To anyone guilty of such blasphemy, this post is for you. I present Exhibit A:

Winter Endures! Undeterred by the recent rainstorms (or, for that matter, the rain that we woke to yesterday morning) we ventured back into Franconia Notch in search of steep, exciting lines.

A few weeks back, we set out to the same area with the aim of skiing Lincoln’s Throat, one of the slides running down from Franconia Ridge. Upon getting there we realized that the unnamed line to looker’s left of it might actually be more fun: it was a powder day and we just wanted to make huge fast turns. This time around, we decided get back to the original plan and see what it was all about. We loaded the car, picked up some breakfast, talked to some sales clerks about how they “don’t know about the skiing because of the warmth and the rain” and headed up into the notch, where the rain promptly turned over to snow.

The skin in was relatively easy going, as per the last time around. We made sure not to go a mile out of the way time, and quickly found the stream bed which leads up to the slides. We found the stream to be completely opened up in many places and had some difficulty crossing. We resorted to tossing skis across a shallow section and quickly running over a few exposed rocks. AT sole blocks and trekking poles for the win. We eventually found that the stream was intact at higher elevations and were able to come out of the woods and head for the slides.

Cliffed out: the ice bulge at the top of the skiable part of the slide.
Photo Credit: Rob

In classic Franconia Notch style, the weather became progressively worse as we approached the summit. The wind picked up, the clouds sunk in around us and the snow continued to fall. All florid prose aside, the conditions turned out to be close to perfect. It was a touch on the warm side toward the bottom, but once we got to decent elevations it dipped below freezing – much more comfortable for a long climb. The recent rains and warmth had created a thick rain crust layer, and solidified the snow pack to the point of negating any avalanche concern. Anticipating these conditions, we took crampons and ice axes along. For most of the ascent, trekking poles and some carefully places steps were sufficient protection. Close to the top, I starting to get nervous and pulled out my mountaineering ax. Rob used a whippet self arrest pole to fill that role. Despite these few difficulties, the travel uphill was actually considerably easier than the last time, conspicuously lacking any wallows through thigh deep snow and deeper drifts. However, the snowfall was steadily coating over the firm rain surface. The crust was providing just enough support for relatively easy climbing and the new powder (2-6 inches) was looking to be just enough for some soft turns.

Our staging area. It was pretty steep.
And we couldn’t really see.
Photo Credit: Rob

We arrived at the top of the chute and were struck by how cool this place really was. We were surrounded nearly on 3 sides by steep, icy rock. The top of the chute was steep enough that we had to kick into the slope and build ourselves little platforms to work from. It was probably close to 40 degrees at the very top. The fog was now full blown pea-soup. Rob snagged a few pictures, we finished messing around with our gear, clicked in and got ready for the skiing.

Ready to shred. Photo Credit: Rob

Concerned about scraping away too much of the new snow surface and ruining Rob’s run, I do a quick jump turn, and take off straight down the fall line. It turns out that the snow was pretty fast that day. Between the low visibility and tight line, it felt like things were coming at me pretty fast – this was some exciting skiing! Eventually, I figure it’s time to speed check and pull over.

As Haigh would say, ‘Point ’em and pray!’

As I come to a stop I notice a big swath of slough pouring past me. By now, I’m really starting to worry that I’ve ruined Rob’s line by taking all the snow down with me. A few seconds later, Rob tears past me, laying down some fast, hard turns. Apparently there was plenty of snow for the two of us, despite the large volume of slough. We leap-frog our way down, alternating who takes first tracks.

Emerging from the fog. Photo Credit: Rob

The pow wasn’t quite so epic, but the line was just a little bit steeper and the snow, just a little bit faster. Bottom line: great run. By this time we’d each worked up a serious thirst, so we cracked open a couple cans of stout, quenched ourselves, and started to find our way back to the Old Bridle Path and eventually the parking area.

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Gear List (click links for more product info):

Franconia Ridge

Having been confined to lift serviced terrain thus far in the season, Rob and I decided it was about time we ventured into the backcountry. Specifically, we chose to ski Lincoln on the western slope of Franconia Ridge. We arrived at the Lafayette Place parking area around 7:30 am. After a solid 20 minutes of messing around with our gear, we were on the trail. It was bright and clear, the wind was still and it was about 10 degrees: perfect skinning weather!

Here’s an overview:

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We shot off down the the Old Bridle Path toward the Greenleaf Hut, shedding layers left and right despite the cold. The plan was to follow that trail until it passed the bottom of the drainage and then follow it all the up to the top of the slides. After about 2000 feet of vertical, we realized we had missed the cutoff. on the upside, we got a pretty good look at the slides we were about to ski.

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We skinned back down the trail about 300 vertical feet, until we found the point where the trail comes closest to Walker Brook. Once there, it was obvious that someone had hiked out of the woods on skis. We should have known to follow these tracks when we first encountered them. We quickly found the brook and followed a week-old skin track toward the slides.



Left: the bottom of the drainage and the slides in the distance. Right: Rob and I skinning.

Eventually the pitch becomes too steep for skins, so we stash the skis and start boot-packing our way up the 1300 foot slide. This was fun but a lot of work. The snowpack was mostly powder, but every now and then we’d find some crust or ice, and in many places we were scrambling over larger rocks that were buried just beneath the snow. For much of the way up we were in thigh deep powder. The ascent was about 35 degrees sustained and we had to use our poles to ladder up for nearly 50% of the time.

This was my first time hiking in my new North Face Off Chute 26. When I first found it, I pretty much concluded that this thing was the perfect winter day pack and my conclusion still stands. I was able to get all of my technical gear, extra layers, food and water into it and it still carries pleasantly.

Rob scrambles upward – I still owe him a case of beer for
breaking trail most of the way.

By the time we got to the top the skies had socked in and it had begun to snow lightly. The wind was blowing steadily, though thankfully not too hard. Even so, it was still pretty cold, so we scrambled to get dressed and ready for the descent. On the way down, we alternated between taking fresh tracks and working the cameras. Check it out…

Rob, wrapping up his snow pit and packing his bag.

A quick review of the run.

Rob, ready to slay pow.

Killin’ it.

Rob disappears behind a small drop, in a cloud of smoke no less.
He talks me into dropping it shortly after…

Me looking like a fool…

Rob shreds up a nice pitch.

Many have already correctly observed that I was on the verge of experiencing cardiac arrest during the filming of this line. This is hard work, we just climbed straight up a mountain! I attempt to redeem myself as seen below:

Ducking under a tree on the way out.

By now, we’d worked up a pretty serious appetite, so we went into town and got sandwiches. All in all, it was a darn good day.

Gear List (click links for more product info):