Eighty Nine North: Mt. Ascutney

After most of New England received close to a foot of snow on Wednesday, February 5, there was little question we would head out this weekend. The question was - where? Given the lack of snow so far this year, most of my outings have been confined to resorts or the mellow slopes of Mt. Cardigan. I was eager to climb something a bit bigger and actually find some fresh snow.

Chad and I gave serious consideration to a few options, including laps in the woods off the Tuckerbrook trail now that Mittersill was (questionably) open or exploring some of the woods off of Lincoln Gap road. Ultimately, we lacked confidence that there was enough of a base under the trees, however. We also were surprised there was not more intel on the T4T forums about the quality of snow in the GOS following the mid-week storm. The combination of moderate avalanche concerns following high winds on Saturday and lack of excitement over that option on the world wide web had me questioning the merits of a 6 hour round trip drive just to ski the GOST without getting up high.

So we settled on Mt. Ascutney, an abandoned ski area just west of Claremont, NH. Although there is a cool network of mountain biking trails on a different face of the mountain that may have offered some more technical skiing, we stuck to the abandoned ski slopes figuring they had the best chance to have enough snow to allow for some pow turns.

As the pictures and video below attest - we were mostly right. The sapling growth after three years was impressive though, and definitely a deterent on the more sun-exposed slopes. At this rate, these slopes will be tough to navigate in another year or two, which is definitely too bad because it makes for a nice little tour when the conditions are not epic.

What a nice looking ride.