The objectives were two fold: peep some leaves and get in another more pre-season conditioning climb up a big mountain. The weather was essentially horrendous, with visibility approaching nil at the summit and winds gusting in the 60s, to say nothing of the driving rain. Despite the inclement weather I was rewarded with a few glimpses out of the Ravine and across the Notch. These are the ones that made the cut:
A few weekends ago, Ziehl, his friend Annelise and I headed off to the Sandwich Range for a short hike and some ski recon. We decided to tackle Osceola and see if we could get a close look at the slides running down toward the Kanc on the North face of the mountain. The ski recon turned out to be a total flop: once at the top, we found ourselves totally socked in with only 100′ or so of visibility. We could probably have bushed-whacked to the slides using Backcountry Navigator for bearings, but the undergrowth was so thick and the visibility so poor that we scrapped that part of the itinerary. We would have had to trample all sorts of alpine plants and probably still not get a great look at the objective. The rest of the hike was pretty nice though, and Ziehl documents it here.
View Osceola Southern Approach in a larger map
After the hike, we decided to have some fun with my GoPro by mounting it in the windshield of my car for our exit from south side of Osceola via Tripoli Road. Tripoli Road is a windy mountain road which snakes through Thornton Gap. The road is seasonally closed, and is mostly unpaved. It’s a quintessential New England backcountry road. We aimed the GoPro out the window and set it to fire a single still shot once every 2 seconds. While less than perfect, there were a few nifty shots in the bunch. Here’s the best of the lot…
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…Such was our demeanor when we lumbered into Cafe Noche in Conway Village and hastily ordered all of the food and drink appropriate to the circumstances. We had just skulked down from a day of superlative skiing in Tuckerman Ravine and were on the ride home this past Sunday . Let’s rewind back to last Friday night for a full trip report…
Over the course of last week, Mount Washington somehow managed to pick up enough snow to fill in most of the lines in Tucks to a reasonable state. Most of it was due not to actual heavy snowfall but to wind loading. Our hope was that during the course of the week things would sinter enough that much of it would be skiable for the weekend. We rallied in North Conway and prayed for a favorable weekend update and avy forecast.
As we got closer to the Notch, we were dismayed to see that snow was falling a good deal more heavily than had been forecast – great for the Wildcat crowd, not so great for us. Between new snow and windloading we could be in for some sketchy conditions. We arrived at Pinkham to find a fairly startling mix of Moderate and Considerable ratings.
We decided we’d skin up the Tucks Trail, change into crampons at the Lion’s Head Winter Route, climb to the ridge, and have a look at the east snow fields from which point we could easily summit and lap the East Snow Fields. With so little protection from the wind and such mellow terrain, they should be pretty scoured and free from touchy slabs.
We arrived at the Winter Route to find a log jam of climbers messing around with their gear. We were promptly advised by one of them, that shortly down the trail we would encounter an hour long wait while dozens of novice climbers were coached up and over the steeps. None of us relished the idea of standing around in the wind in sub-zero temperatures, and we were forced to abandon Plan A.
We quickly settled upon a contingency plan: we’d try our hand in The Lobster Claw, with the thought that it might be just filled in enough to be skiable, but still small enough to preclude the presence of any truly large slabs. We continued to HoJo’s, de-skinned, got dressed for the cold, and prepared for some boot-packing.
Rob looks dubious as we head up into the bowl.
Alex breaks trail as we begin to wallow into drifts…
We realize it’s time to stop and evaluate the situation.
Some deep and crumbly looking snow pack.
Once we got into the bowl, it became totally socked in and gusty. We started toward the snow fields under The Lobster Claw, bushwhacking through the un-buried shrubs and into ever deeper drifts. Eventually, we realized that we needed to seriously consider the safety of the situation. We started digging some snowpits and discovered small chunks of slab breaking off before we’d even finished digging out columns. Kinda shady… The poor visibility and double-digit sub-zero temperature didn’t help much. We decided to go no higher than the snow fields at the bottom of the Lobster Claw and stay out of the slide paths. We’d get a few good turns in, and then pick our way to the Cutler River for maybe a few more untracked turns before the Sherbie. In short: skunked.
We tried to make the best of it…
Ziehl in front and Alex in the background getting ready for action.
One of about a dozen decent turns….
Gettin’ tossed back…
Alex celebrates our prodigious accomplishment of skiing about 6 turns.
Well we tried to make the best of it anyway. It was better than not skiing… After picking our way through all the shrubs and junk in the floor of the ravine we began searching for the Cutler River in what was probably slowest wilderness travel I’ve ever participated in in my life: a knee to thigh deep wallow through frozen bushes and back and forth across the only partially frozen Cutler…
Yea. Adventure…
We finally make it to the skiable part of the drainage and get ready to make about 4 more turns…
Ziehl gets in a few good turns before the bottom of a pitch.
And then there was profanity…
Back at HoJo’s we conclude that we’d made the right choice…
And right on cue, as soon as we get back to the car, the skies clear and it turns into a beautiful day…
Well that was a debacle. We called it quits for the day, planned out some rest and refueling, and contemplated our next move. After some thought, we decided we’d get an early, start head up to HoJo’s and see what the report called for. We were none too enthused about the inbound skiing story in New England, and thought a bad day in Tucks would probably be better than the same day in the resort. We were pleasantly surprised, to say the least. We arrived at HoJo’s to find that Left Gully and Lobster Claw were both de-escalated to a rating of Low. Our path was laid clear before us: we quickly agreed to ski The LG and then make our way across the bowl to The Lobster Claw. The LG if nothing else would be long, steep, and fast. The Lobster Claw, we knew from the previous day, would have a decent amount of snow at least toward the bottom. It was a good 20 degrees warmer, less windy and visibility was great – in hindsight I could have used my black lenses. We eagerly went after The LG.
After warming on Left Gully, we decided to traverse across the floor of the ravine to scope the conditions on the south facing aspects. In the clear skies, we could see that the coverage in Lobster Claw was a lot worse than we’d expected. We decided to poke around under Right Gully to see how the conditions would be. A number of people had already hiked all over lower portions of the south facing aspects. The snow felt a good deal more stable than it had the previous day, and the southern aspects had been in the sun for a while by the time we got there, but we were still concerned about the pillowy convexities toward the top or the Sluice and Right Gully, so we stuck to the low angle bottom parts. This was easily the best skiing of the weekend. Ziehl took a turn behind the camera for a few runs.
After a short dry spell of epic skiing, we finally hit some good luck and scored some high quality turns. It seemed like we might finally be through the worst part of the winter (the part with no good skiing) and with lifted spirits we headed back down into The Valley in search of sustenance.Gear List (click links for more product info):
At long last Ullr has smiled upon us and our prayers have been answered in the form of a bout a foot of snow across Northern New England! Anticipating this long overdue dose of snow, Rob, Ziehl and I cranked out a week of work in less than days, loaded up the car and hit the road bound for Jackson NH, where we crashed at the Denaro residence. Armed with a fire-hazardous quantity of coupons and discounts, we set our alarms for 7:30 AM.
We rolled up to Wildcat and were pleasantly surprised to see that the weather was fair, and the place was empty. They’d gotten 8-10 inches of fresh with a bit of a rain crust. It was one of those days where it was technically debatable as to whether or not we were slaying pow or slaying gnar, but in any event we were finally slaying something.
We spun laps on the triple until we were good and sick of it, at which time we swung by Attitash to see how things were shaping up over there. In hindsight we should have stayed put, but it was worth a shot.
By around 3PM we concluded that we’d skied pretty much all that was worth skiing in this neck of the woods, so we loaded up the car and headed off to Lincoln, NH to rally with Alex, Denaro, Shane and Hannah. We crossed the Kanc just as the weather shifted into high gear, without incident thanks to Rob’s new Nokian snows. We feasted like kings at the Woodstock Brewery, showered at Alex’s condo, and then rolled up our sleeves for some serious logistics. Coordination would be paramount if we were to make it from Lincoln to Jay in time for first chair the day after a blizzard. We unloaded the car, paired down our gear to the bare minimum, repacked the car with every we’d need for the following day minus whatever we planned to wear that day, drank some beer, set our alarms for 5:15 AM and hit the sack.
Almost immediately after we’d hit the sack our missing companions, Shane, Hannah, Alex and Denaro showed up and woke everyone up… We exchanged salutations of dubious sincerity and went straight back to bed. Miraculously we were all on the road by 6:05AM the following morning. The waking up and driving into a blizzard in the wee hours of the morning in 0 degree weather wasn’t so great, but the skiing was. We managed to get first chair and found fresh tracks on several occasions during the day. Check it out:
The astute listener may have noticed my incessant griping regarding the cold starting shortly after the first run. Well the wind chill was -40F, and around 1 PM I succumbed to my better judgment and went in to thaw. Upon yanking my boots and socks off, I discovered a couple of pearly-white big toes with severely limited sensation – OK no sensation at all… About 5 minutes later they turned a nice, angry, shade of black, at which time I nearly dumped my beer and snacks all over the floor in horror. Unfortunately there is little that you can do aside from keeping them warm and dry, and hope for the best, so I wrapped my feet in a blanket, passed out and dreamed of sweet powder turns while the rest of the crowd took their last few runs and collected my hiking boots so that I could hobble back to the car later.
To my surprise and relief, by the time Ziehl and Alex came by with my hiking boots, both of my afflicted big toes had begun a fairly remarkable recovery transitioning from a frightening black to the mundane black and blue characteristic of a simple bruise. By the following morning they had recovered nearly to the point where I could walk normally. There’s almost certainly some amount of permanent damage, but no where nearly as bad as I’d originally feared. Seems like a may have dodged a bullet this time… Hell, I might even be ready to ski again next weekend, as long as it’s not going to be 40 below zero again!
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