Headed up to the Gulf of Slides on Mt. Washington this past Sunday with Scott Osgood for our first backcountry trip on skins. We had great weather - windless blue bird skies and weather around 20 degrees Farenheight at the base of the Gulf.
(looking up at one of the main slides in the Gulf)
The only downside was that we were less than 48 hours removed from high winds and an eight inch snow fall. So although the sun and warmth surely helped stabalize the snow pack a bit, there was definitely a risk for some wind loaded slabs. Tuckerman Ravine has a similar aspect to the Gulf, and the avalanche forecast for the ravine varied between Moderate and Considerable.
A weekend of changing plans - at various points I was planning on heading to Sugarloaf and out into the Backcountry, but ended up taking a day trip to Cannon Mountain on 14 January instead. Cannon pulled in about 9 inches on the 12th and 13th, and it was in decent shape, but not really enough snow to play very much in the woods. Also - as you can tell from the second to last scene in the video - the mountain seemed to enjoy pointing its snow guns at the chair lifts.
Most of the actual "skiing" footage comes from the Global Warming glade (my favorite part is where I plow right into a tree) and the Taft trail, which Cannon allowed to bump up for really the first time in my memory. The groomers were pretty icy, and some of the other trees we ducked into were pretty rocky (I almost made it two full days this season before I tried to ski something with my new planks that clearly did not have enough snow. Typical.) None of this takes away from my love of Cannon though - its still the best NH has to offer by far. Just needs a bit more snow.
One other highlight from the weekend - I was able to break out my skins for the first time ... in my front yard. Pretty cool sensation to be climing up hill on skis and not sliding backwards at all. Can't wait to try it for real. Was 'thisclose' to heading up to the Sherbourne trail today on my own to try them out, but Wildcat and Blackmountain only have a 16-20 inch base, and didn't want to drive four hours by myself only to have to side step down the trail because of rocks. So I decided to run errands and do work instead. Carpe Diem, right?
Anyway, enjoy the flick - short and sweet this time. Played with the stabilizer this time - so I think the bouncing is significantly reduced, but I am still having some conversion issues - the resolution on the final product isn't nearlly as good as the raw HD footage. I'll figure it out eventually.
Headed up to northern Vermont and Montreal for the final days of 2011 and the first days of 2012 in an effort to find snow and a bar without a cover charge for New Years Eve. We had marginal success on the first count, and although we technically failed on the second count, it has to rank amongs the best New Years Eves I've ever celebrated anyway.
Great trip all around, and decent snow for the first time out this year. Mother nature needs to get her act together soon though if we are really going to get Kyle to move back to the East Coast.
