Angus
Member
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2005
- Messages
- 961
- Points
- 16
Weather: Overcast & Fog, mid-50’s
My goal was to ski in June. With weekend’s occupied with family stuff, it didn’t happen until yesterday but my consolation is I can now say I skied in June and during the summer in New England!
Left the AMC center a little after 7:30 with my faithful companion – there will be more about him later. Hiked up in a thick overcast with only a few folks on the trail. When I arrived at the HoJos, I was told to ski left of the head wall due to undermining.
Didn’t see snow or the bowl until we were probably no more than 50 yards from the base. The streams were roaring from runoff. It was so foggy that I was disoriented and initially began to climb up along the lunch rocks. Note: I’d never been into the ravine in the summer so I didn’t have any reference except for my Memorial Day ski trip and things then looked a lot different!
The dog started charging around on the snow all excited and I was scared he would slide off into one of the crevasses or be swallowed up if the snow collapsed underneath him so I put him on the leash. With the clouds lifting, I was able to get oriented and the dog and I went back down crossing at the bottom of the bowl and hiked back up to a spot just left of the center headwall.
There was already a man skiing with his son along for support. He was finishing up and it was probably not yet 10 o’clock. Pretty amazing, he was from Ohio and we laughed about the folks back home thinking he was crazy when got the chance to tell them about his vacation!
I put my skis on and tied my friend up to a bush at the edge of the snow. Because I didn’t have crampons, I had to side step up the slope. The snow is like ice with a thin edgeable layer and too hard to kick-in with your boot toe. Now to report what you all want to know, there is a ton a snow up there still. I was able to take 75 to 100 yard runs and could have gone higher but a combination of fatigue and two large crevasses kept my runs short.
On the right side and left, there are still probably 175-yard runs available. The headwall is somewhere in the vicinity of 30 or 40 feet above the snow level right now. I took 8 runs skiing for maybe an hour. It was a lot of fun and probably would have stayed longer if I hadn’t had the dog tied up below whining at me and howling at any newcomers into the ravine plus I needed to get home.
So, I took one final run, packed my stuff up and got ready to leave. During my runs a gentleman had come up and started skiing the far left side. He knew what he was doing and had brought crampons. We had been chatting between runs from a distance. Coming up, he’d taken an alternative, bushing wacking path that looked a bit easier so I decided we’d go down that way. It required we traverse and go down twenty or thirty feet of snow.
Thinking my friend would be more comfortable and perhaps safer off his leash during the descent, I unbuckled him and we both started down. I was pre-occupied by my own worries of slipping that when I got to the bottom of the snow and looked back, the dog had gone up instead of down. He wasn’t much further up than where we’d started but further out on the snow. I started to shout for him to come but he was clearly scared and started climbing up.
My first inclination was to climb up after him but when I tried I couldn’t get any traction with my hiking boots. The other skier said he’d go up and get him with his crampons and I ran down to get my boots and skis on. As we watched, the Knucklehead climbed up to where I had been beginning my runs at the deep crevasses and started looking like he was thinking about going into them!
At this point I was screaming like crazy and panicked. I could see it now, go skiing in late June and end up losing the family dog! My ski career would have been essentially over! Luckily my new skier friend got up to the dog, put him on the leash and then slowly bring him down. I ended meeting them half way down slip-sliding alongside them until we got to the bottom. While I got out of my skis and boots and re-packed, my dog sat with his new friend/rescuer and ate from a bag of dog food. I’m obviously very grateful to this person. Thank you again.
The trip down was fairly un-eventful with the exception of most people heading up asking, “What are you doing with those skis on your back?” followed by a “What, you mean to tell me there’s still snow up there and you were skiing on it!”
IMO based on no prior experience or knowledge, there is still three weeks of skiing left. There is a ton of snow in the ravine.
Ski season is now over. Almost 20 ski days (1/2 and whole days) spanning 207 days over seven calendar months!
My goal was to ski in June. With weekend’s occupied with family stuff, it didn’t happen until yesterday but my consolation is I can now say I skied in June and during the summer in New England!
Left the AMC center a little after 7:30 with my faithful companion – there will be more about him later. Hiked up in a thick overcast with only a few folks on the trail. When I arrived at the HoJos, I was told to ski left of the head wall due to undermining.
Didn’t see snow or the bowl until we were probably no more than 50 yards from the base. The streams were roaring from runoff. It was so foggy that I was disoriented and initially began to climb up along the lunch rocks. Note: I’d never been into the ravine in the summer so I didn’t have any reference except for my Memorial Day ski trip and things then looked a lot different!
The dog started charging around on the snow all excited and I was scared he would slide off into one of the crevasses or be swallowed up if the snow collapsed underneath him so I put him on the leash. With the clouds lifting, I was able to get oriented and the dog and I went back down crossing at the bottom of the bowl and hiked back up to a spot just left of the center headwall.
There was already a man skiing with his son along for support. He was finishing up and it was probably not yet 10 o’clock. Pretty amazing, he was from Ohio and we laughed about the folks back home thinking he was crazy when got the chance to tell them about his vacation!
I put my skis on and tied my friend up to a bush at the edge of the snow. Because I didn’t have crampons, I had to side step up the slope. The snow is like ice with a thin edgeable layer and too hard to kick-in with your boot toe. Now to report what you all want to know, there is a ton a snow up there still. I was able to take 75 to 100 yard runs and could have gone higher but a combination of fatigue and two large crevasses kept my runs short.
On the right side and left, there are still probably 175-yard runs available. The headwall is somewhere in the vicinity of 30 or 40 feet above the snow level right now. I took 8 runs skiing for maybe an hour. It was a lot of fun and probably would have stayed longer if I hadn’t had the dog tied up below whining at me and howling at any newcomers into the ravine plus I needed to get home.
So, I took one final run, packed my stuff up and got ready to leave. During my runs a gentleman had come up and started skiing the far left side. He knew what he was doing and had brought crampons. We had been chatting between runs from a distance. Coming up, he’d taken an alternative, bushing wacking path that looked a bit easier so I decided we’d go down that way. It required we traverse and go down twenty or thirty feet of snow.
Thinking my friend would be more comfortable and perhaps safer off his leash during the descent, I unbuckled him and we both started down. I was pre-occupied by my own worries of slipping that when I got to the bottom of the snow and looked back, the dog had gone up instead of down. He wasn’t much further up than where we’d started but further out on the snow. I started to shout for him to come but he was clearly scared and started climbing up.
My first inclination was to climb up after him but when I tried I couldn’t get any traction with my hiking boots. The other skier said he’d go up and get him with his crampons and I ran down to get my boots and skis on. As we watched, the Knucklehead climbed up to where I had been beginning my runs at the deep crevasses and started looking like he was thinking about going into them!
At this point I was screaming like crazy and panicked. I could see it now, go skiing in late June and end up losing the family dog! My ski career would have been essentially over! Luckily my new skier friend got up to the dog, put him on the leash and then slowly bring him down. I ended meeting them half way down slip-sliding alongside them until we got to the bottom. While I got out of my skis and boots and re-packed, my dog sat with his new friend/rescuer and ate from a bag of dog food. I’m obviously very grateful to this person. Thank you again.
The trip down was fairly un-eventful with the exception of most people heading up asking, “What are you doing with those skis on your back?” followed by a “What, you mean to tell me there’s still snow up there and you were skiing on it!”
IMO based on no prior experience or knowledge, there is still three weeks of skiing left. There is a ton of snow in the ravine.
Ski season is now over. Almost 20 ski days (1/2 and whole days) spanning 207 days over seven calendar months!
