Tag Archives: Lincoln’s Throat

Overkill!

This represents the first ‘lengthy’ video I’ve done in quite a while. After roughly a year of considerable slacking, and the associated accumulation of interesting footage, I decided enough was enough. No point in owning two GoPros and two expensive point-and-shoots without ever doing anything cool with the footage. In the end, this video uses on the the Hero 3 Black and HD Hero footage – the rest of the stills I’m saving for subsequent projects.

One of my goals for this project was to collect up all of the clips which were cool but did not really warrant a standalone treatment. Additionally, I really wanted to focus on quality over quantity. I settled on a thematically appropriate soundtrack which was only moderately long and lent itself to the ‘story’ being told. With the intent of producing what is essentially a mashup of miscellaneous old footage, a moderately long soundtrack should let me cram in a lot of random stuff without feeling the need to add filler or fade out the music after I’ve run our of exciting footage. The numerous ‘false endings’ provide the ability to naturally segment the clips and offer some periodic changes in tempo. Also, it’s Motorhead. Seriously, there is not enough classic heavy metal in action sports or pop culture, or really anywhere…

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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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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