Cardigan: Dukes trail - 1/5/08

[David Metsky]

With great snow falling during the week, sunny skies on Saturday, then warmer weather coming in to start the next week Saturday was the obvious day to try for. I got one friend to carpool with up from Boston and another to meet us at the Cardigan Lodge around 9:00 AM. Tom, the caretaker suggested Dukes which is what I had in mind, hoping to hit the ledges on Firescrew up top.

We put skins on at the parking lot, where many other skiers and boarders were headed up, though most were headed for Alexandria. There were only two tracks coming down and some fresh skin tracks headed up in front of us. The coverage was excellent, and the snow was in fine shape. Dave K, on lighter gear and in better shape, was setting a fine pace. Lafe and I, on heavier gear and in sad shape, were bringing up the rear.

We met two skiers at the top of the Whitney trail who were headed down the 80Z, then another couple coming down from the top who reported that the ledges were unskiable due to ice and breakable crust. At treeline this was confirmed, but we went up a bit just to be sure. They were right. It was pretty nasty up there. We took a few pictures and then dropped down to treeline to get ready for the descent.

I removed skins, the other two kept them on until they got a little lower. The snow was excellent, the turns were a lot of fun. This was the best skiing I've ever had at Cardigan. You could use the entire trail and the woods on either side. It was mostly untracked but there were several folks coming up the trail that would ski it up pretty well by the end of the day. At the bottom we took a few laps on the Practice Slope to get some good pictures and called it an early day around 1:30.

The rest of the pictures are HERE.

-dave-

 

[bvibert]

Nice pics Dave! Looks pretty cool up there...

 

[cbcbd]

Good timing for me to see this TR!
When I was deciding where to go for a nice run or two tour this weekend before deciding on the Tbolt, someone recommended checking out Cardigan, which they said had tons of BC skiing... I was completely in the dark about this I guess, so where can I find more info on the Duke and other skiing tours on Cardigan? Any books, sites, word of mouth?

 

[David Metsky]

Cardigan is pretty well covered in the David Goodman book "Backcountry Adventures - NH and ME". From the AMC Cardigan Lodge there are two main ski trails, both labeled as such - Dukes and Alexandria. Dukes is a two way, Alexandria is not for climbing, just skiing down. You can take the Clark trail up instead. Many of the other trails get skied (Whitney, Alleyway, 80Z) but they aren't as big runs as the main two.

There are some hidden stashes, and if the conditions are good (they weren't this weekend) the ledges on Firescrew and Cardigan are great fun. Nothing at Cardigan is super hairy, it's fairly mellow in the grand scheme of things, but it's a lot of fun when the snow is good.

-dave-