Kinsman glade

[thebigo]

Has anybody skied kinsman galde at cannon in the last couple years?

I hiked it last week and there was blow down everywhere. It doubt it could even be skied in its current condition and speaking with the tram attendant it never opened last year. I dont remember a specific storm but it must have been severe.

There also seems to be an excessive amount of errosion in that area compared to the last time I hiked it a few years ago.

 

[JimG.]

Has anybody skied kinsman galde at cannon in the last couple years?

I hiked it last week and there was blow down everywhere. It doubt it could even be skied in its current condition and speaking with the tram attendant it never opened last year. I dont remember a specific storm but it must have been severe.

There also seems to be an excessive amount of errosion in that area compared to the last time I hiked it a few years ago.

Skiers were told last season by Cannon patrol to bring chainsaws if they wanted to ski Kinsman.

 

[threecy]

Skiers were told last season by Cannon patrol to bring chainsaws if they wanted to ski Kinsman.

I'd agree with that one - unless there was like 5 feet of natural!

 

[bluishgreen]

There was a big wind storm (even by Cannon's standards) around Thanksgiving last year which blew down a bunch of trees, so they ended-up closing that trail for the whole season. That's one of the problems with trying to do glades in the northern part of Franconia Notch--the trees really need to be a tightly packed forest to withstand the weather up on that side of the mountain. Once you try to thin-out the trees for something like glades, they become more vulnerable to being windblown. I was up there last weekend too, and asked that same question, but no one I was with knew of any status. It sounds like from you that they haven't done anything, which doesn't surprise me too much--I grew-up in that area and it's somewhat of a losing battle fighting the Notch's weather, so they could have just given up for now. Even if you could transplant trees (which may not even be possible on such a thin layer of soil) they could just get blown down again.

One of the benefits of the Mittersill peak is that it is shielded from a lot of the wind exposure that Cannon gets. There is always the debate between keeping the Mittersill side as pristine (or as I like to call it, "off-piste pistes") versus developing it into a mainstream part of the trail system. But, if they did end-up doing any development on Mittersill, glades would work much better on that side, and they could just turn Kinsman Glade into a nice narrow steep like Tramline, only more winding since it isn't tied to a lift path.

 

[riverc0il]

Some shot of Kinsman Glade from 2005:
http://www.thesnowway.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2077

Took Cannon a long time before they cut and opened Kinsman Glade. Would not surprise me if it took them a long time to clean it out again. Takes a lot of time, effort, man power, and tools to clear up the type of damage the 2006 storm. I would expect the Glade to be closed again this season unless Cannon has some major Fall cleaning plans. The Kinsman Ridge hiking trail suffers from horrible erosion, probably one of my least favorite hiking trails in the Whites.