Part 2 of Nemo at Wildcat! Due to limited goPro juice, the footage only shows the first few hours of the day, although the best snow at the resort was in the morning. As usual, some great turns never made it on film, but I was psyched just to have a reason to use my new toy.
We’ve got a mash-up for you from Brian and I’s perspectives, check it out:
While many New Englanders hunkered down and prepared for the worst, there were those among us who geared up and prepared for the best…
…well at least the best we’ve had in a while. All the hype surrounding Nemo gave us hope that at least the resort skiing scene would get back on track, and in many ways it did. The storm tracked further south than would have been preferred by some skiers, but pockets of the North received a healthy dose of our favorite natural resource. Determined not to miss a single ounce of the precious stuff, and not to be marooned in the soon to be paralyzed Boston, we hit the road at the crack of dawn Friday morning.
The Clipper components of the storm arrived over Northern VT early on Friday, delivering a good refresher dose to the ailing snowpack. We skied Jay for the day and then followed the weather southeast toward the center of the storm. For the arrival of the Nor’easter we wagered that Wildcat would have the best ratio of slope-angle to snow. We hit the jackpot and were greeted by upwards of two feet of dense snow which filled in all but the largest nooks and crannies in the Northern Whites. For day one, we hit the slopes armed with insulating layers and GoPros. Stay tuned for some highlights! Day two brought a spectacular blue-bird day with temps mercifully approaching the 20s and almost no wind. We decided to take advantage of the great conditions and pull out the point-and-shoots, just so we’d have evidence of the shredding that was perpetrated once winter finally returned…
Thusly rejuvenated, we returned to Boston to get back to work so we’d be ready for the next time Old Man Winter decided to come out of hiding.
On the weekend on the 9th, a planned day hike turned into an ambitious overnight, and Sweeney, Rob and I once again made the trek to North Conway to hike the Wildcat range across the street from our winter hang out.
The plan was to light-weight backpack (~20-25lbs) starting at Glenn Falls, across the Wildcats, up Carter dome and the rest of the Carters, then summit Imp, Moriah, and Selburne Moriah, and descend to Wild River campground on Saturday. Then on Sunday hike out via Carter Dome and back over the Wildcats.
On Saturday we got off to a great start with beautiful weather after a rough storm the night before. Eager to make some mileage, we quickly ascended to Wildcat D where the top of Wildcat’s lifts are.
First up for the day, Wildcat summit with the bits of snow in the bowl as a backdrop.
Descending into Carter Notch made for some impressive views, and a very steep descent and ascent of the Carter Dome.
An awesome look at the daunting Carter Dome from the Carter Notch Hut.
Looking back at Wildcat from the hut, one of a few AMC huts fed by spring water.
Ascending Carter, looking back to the glacial ponds of the Notch.
We hung around briefly on top of Carter to re-coup, but then pressed on to Mt. Hight which had far superior views.
Presidential Range panorama. All the photos come from Sweeney’s expert photography and far superior camera.
After Carter the rest of the ~4000 footers started to blur together a bit, but the ridge offered continuous views of the northern Presidential Range.
The northern end of our Saturday traverse, soaking in the views
We crested Selburne Moriah in early evening, and booked it to camp. We’d decided to go stoveless, which was not exactly my preference. It worked out okay, and I was never hungry, but I think next time I’d do freeze-dried meals and a pot for approximately the same weight, like Sweeney and I did on our Bigelow Range traverse.
Evening view of the Presidential Range, looking back at the peaks we’d crossed
On Sunday we weren’t exactly rearing to go, but we broke camp and got moving quickly. Unfortunately on of the first scenes we encountered was this:
Our first encounter with the Wild River Sunday morning.
Is that the trail across the river? It was. After Rob assured me the depth was a trick of the light, we made a waist-deep wade across, with our shoes around our necks.
After crossing the river, we proceeded down the Wild River Trail, until the trail abruptly disappeared into the river. About .5 miles past the (closed) Wild River Campground, the trail had fallen completely into the riverbed, a remnant of Irene. There had been no warnings, so we attempted to find the trail again, but eventually were forced to re-route and continue down the less exciting, but intact, High Water trail, after re-crossing the Wild River, this time via wooden suspension bridge.
At this point we’d backtracked a fair amount and wasted time locating trails and looking at maps. We re-evaluated our options, settling on a Carter Dome ascent via the Black Angel trail, and descent out Nineteen Mile brook trail from the base of Carter Notch.
We made a dogged ascent of Carter, once again a humbling experience. As we descended, Rob went ahead to get the car, while Sweeney and I hiked out. We were all relieved to get out of our wet trail shoes and head to Moat for a post-hike chow down.
The hike itself stands alone as the hardest, and one of the most rewarding hikes I’ve done to date, hitting 12 4000 footers and totaling ~40 miles round-trip.
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