Tuckerman Ravine 6/4/11

After taking a look at the weather and realizing I have nothing to do, I decided skiing would be pretty cool. Especially since it's June and all..
I called up Tom, asked him if he wanted to go, he said yes. Friday afternoon I'm calling him from work figuring out when we're going to leave. We thought it was gonna be around 5pm, it ended up being around 8. I ended up getting a call from a friend and got a last minute job interview, and I think a job. Awesome.

I was gonna make a list of things to bring, but was rushing too much. Didn't make a list, checked it twice.
Skis
Boots
Poles
Wallet.
(everything else, optional.)

Check.

Went to my interview, ran out of there to grab Tom. Got some random food, a hydration bladder for my bag, some gas, and we were on our way.

About 3 hours in, we were talking and cruising down I93 at about 80, I look up, and see a moose.

UHoh. SHIT. Slammed on the brakes, and skidded probably 150 feet as it tried to scurry out of the way. We were down to probably 20 when we hit it. It made a THUNK noise, but ran off. I think it kicked my rim or something, because there was no visible damage but my wheels seemed to be out of alignment. Either that, or we have some flat spots from skidding so far. Damn Korean cars and not having ABS.


Thanks for the warning, New Hampshire. Too bad the moose was in VT.

We got into the Mt. Washington valley around 12:30 and drove around looking for somewhere to park. I heard that you may get a visit from the cops if you park at the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center parking lot overnight, so we strayed away from there. After about a half hour of driving around we saw a couple cars in the parking lot for Wildcat and decided to join them.

We were asleep by probably 1:15 and set the alarm for 8. Turns out we didn't need that. Our friend Mr. Sun woke me up around 6:15.



Right about then is when I came to the realization.. I didn't know where I was going. I saw our neighbors were awake and moving abouts so I asked them where the trailhead for the ravine was. They told me, we got out stuff together, and headed into town.

We got some breakfast and protein bars for lunch. Then we were off to the trailhead.

We got there, packed all our stuff, deciding how much clothes to bring because we weren't sure what the weather was going to be like. It was probably high 30s overnight and mid 40s at the time.



There were tons of cars in the parking lot, but not many for skiing. We saw 3 other skiers on the trail and a lot of people amazed that we had skis on our back. A couple even took our picture.



We came up to the hermit lake shelters and knew we were close. I think it's maybe 3/4 of a mile from there. We could see the bowl and some snow.



3ish miles later, we were at the base of the bowl. There were a few skiers, a few people learning mountaineering techniques, and a few hikers hanging out at the lunch rocks.



We suited up and hiked up the bowl.

( I don't know what anything here is called other than "Tuckerman Ravine", so bear with me.)

Headed up lookers right of the bowl. It seems to be where the most people were skiing and the most distance covered. The bootpack was worn in nicely, too.



The snow was a bit dirty, but nice and creamy. The more it was skied, the more dirt was pushed away.
We took a couple runs there, then headed down for some lunch.









We headed up the centerish and took a run down that. It was a fair amount steeper, but a LOT more of a bitch to get your gear on.



Headed back over to the right side and took another run. Started talking to a guy down at the bottom who ended up being MatPadSki, who was there with Riverc0il and a few others.

We went back up for one more run, and called it a season.

Of course, the season had to go out with a bang.

Nice to meet you, fujative! Your picture of the boot ladder includes me and my sun burned arms. :)

Something about a Fuje TR ... every trip seems to have some kind of extra "epicness" beyond the skiing or hiking.  WF toll road... what was that thing last summer in the high peaks? And now Mr. Moose.

Skiing looks awesome. How much vert is left on the longest run you could make?

Maybe River can help with the names of what you guys skied.

Harvey44 wrote

Something about a Fuje TR ... every trip seems to have some kind of extra "epicness" beyond the skiing or hiking.  WF toll road... what was that thing last summer in the high peaks? And now Mr. Moose.

I have heard this phenomena referred to as the "Halo Effect." As in, all the unexpected & unplanned-for stuff that happens on a road trip. Some is good, some not so good.

Great report and cool that you met River and MadPat there.

Harv, We ended up sleeping on top of Colden just in sleeping bags if that's what you're referring to. We planned on going all the way over to the camp site. Or maybe it was fighting the bear

I'm terrible at judging vertical, but This TR from the day before says about 400. I ended up taking 6 runs.

fujative wrote

Harv, We ended up sleeping on top of Colden just in sleeping bags if that's what you're referring to. We planned on going all the way over to the camp site. Or maybe it was fighting the bear

Actually I was thinking of BOTH of those times.

You have got to check out Riverc0il's TR from the day. It's fantastic:

http://www.thesnowway.com/2011/06/04/tuckerman-ravine-because-its-there

Harvey44 wrote

Skiing looks awesome. How much vert is left on the longest run you could make?

Maybe River can help with the names of what you guys skied.

Harv - something like 110 vertical meters (+- 2 meters) from where I left my hiking boots to the top of Sluice. Probably 115 until the end of the snow. (I didn't download the datalog from my watch yet) Left Gully had about some good turns available for those willing to bushwhack across.

(Left to right) Other options where bottom of Chute, under the Headwall (skied by Fugitive) and part Sluice. Sluice had the longest vertical.

Ideas of TR are in my mind, but I just got back last night and have a busy week. Probably going to take about 10 days before I can integrate pictures and all.

Haha, so there was a guy on snowblades there... Turns out he wrote up a TR on it. Said he had 58 consecutive months skiing? Impressive. I'm having a hard time telling if the snowllerblades were a joke or not.

fujative wrote

Haha, so there was a guy on snowblades there... Turns out he wrote up a TR on it. Said he had 58 consecutive months skiing? Impressive. I'm having a hard time telling if the snowllerblades were a joke or not.

Yeah, he was talking about Gapers on the summit.  His pics look way better than the actual live action. It was pathetic and could have serious hurt himself or someone else. I'll respond at one point on TGR.

No problem with people skiing switch with their naked ass forward as long as they know how to do it. :D  (so that is why people were cheering - I was at the top of Sluice). Your turns were in control, unlike that blader.

That snowblader is lucky to be alive. I have never seen anyone so completely and totally out of control and on the edge in the BC. 2 year boarder chick and scared Tigger were in more control than that snowblader.

Many times during the day I counted myself lucky that I was not going to have to give up skiing to participate in a rescue operation. No joke. And that is not intended to be some elitist prick type comment... it really was a scary scene up there at times.

Great that you made it up to Tux, Fuj... Thx for putting up the pics and for the entertaining TR.  Hope moosey's OK...

Great looking report on this day put up by MadPat:

Ski Mad World: Tuckerman Ravine 6/4/11

The tale of this girl alone is worth the click and read:

Harvey44 wrote

The tale of this girl alone is worth the click and read

Two and half year of boarding and that girl is famous.

Tuckerman Ravine NH : June 4, 2011 – Hard Core Only!!!

Are random pic from my TR






For Fujitive...