We discussed a few options - Mt. Washington received lots of snow the week of Feb. 24 with strong west winds, setting up some potentially great conditions on the east snow fields. But sub zero temperatures and 50-60 mph winds on Saturday scared us away. We talked about a repeat trip to Tripyramid (North facing slide) and checking out Mt. Hancock for the first time (south facing slide). Both received minimal snow fall during the week, and their respective aspects made it unlikely any significant loading occured on top of the boiler plate. We chose Mt. Hancock because it was new, and because it was south facing, and we hoped that might help it soften up a bit.
The day ended up being a great adventure. It is quite a haul to the base of the slides, about 3.6 miles along the Hancock Notch/Hancock loop trails. We then followed up the North Hancock trail about half way before we realized we missed the cut-off to the base of the slide. Oops. Fortunately, some friendly folks with a GPS helped us get our bearings, and after a 15 minute bush whack, we were out on the slide.
We assessed stability - like a rock. In fact, it was so hard I took a few test turns just to see whether the crust would be too much to deal with (either because my skis would keep popping through or because it wasn't edgeable at all). Osgood smugly watched - snow boarders just don't have the same edging issues! Anyway, after concluding we would be able to get down and eating a quick lunch, we pushed to the top of the slide, toping out at around 3 p.m., a little later in the day than we would have preferred.
(Scott eating lunch)
(Scott following my boot pack)
The skiing was ultimately terrible. Fortunately the slide wasn't as steep as other internet reports have suggested. I'd say it topped out around 40 degrees, and most of it was probably in the 35 degree range. Which is good, because I was basically trying to descend it on ice skates.
After getting to the bottom, we realized that we had only missed the cut off to the base of the slide on our hike up by about 10 feet. Hardly any bush whack was necessary at all. We felt a little dumb, but sometimes figuring things out is part of the fun.
The hiking trail back to the base was pretty packed down, creating a bobsled run of sorts. Not pleasurable skiing, but it was the fastest way back to the car, so we pretended to be Olympic lugers and got back by around 5 p.m. A successful outing on the whole!
(picture of the bobsled run/hiking trail)
(Another picture of the bobsled run/hiking trail)
(Shot of the Osceola Slides from Hancock trail head - we'll have to explore over there sometime soon!)
(And of course, a link to the worst video I have created for this blog so far!)
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