Mark Renson
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/19/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR> With 6" of new wet heavy sludge and some other shots of light snow, Stark <BR>Mountain had a different complexion today compared to last Sunday ..... <BR> <BR>Met up with plaid Nick Malcyzk at the Basebox at 8:00AM sharp. Morning was incredibly brilliant - no humidity, no wind, no clouds and single digit temps. In fact, I was able to catch the morning sunrise with the alpenglow bathing the summit. <BR>With me on AT gear and Nick on telemark, we put things in gear for the slog to the summit, ascending the same route as I had last week. Nobody was on the mountain and I cannot overstate how brilliant the morning was. <BR>Summit views were stunning with the 'Dacks, and the Moosilauke, Franconia and Presidential massifs coming in loud 'n clear in the distances from the Stark's Nest. <BR>Then, we went to work. Since it was Nick's first day on boards, I let him select the candy and he led us into Catamount Bowl with the sun beating down on us. Coverage was complete and snow was sweet with only a minimal <BR>of chunkiness in the snow. At the bottom, I found a nice line of heavy snow on the right. <BR>Next was on the menu was the far right braid of the Antelope/Catamount complex and snow got even better with sweet boot-top pow on a firm base !! <BR>On the small hump at the entrance to Lynx and Lower Antelope, Nick said he wanted to do something crazy and I declined to join him, opting to meet him below. I headed on my own towards the Single midstation, negotiating a <BR>tricky water bar in the process, and cruised onto Beaver, carefully and deliberately navigating the ledges under The Single before making my way to the Lynx intersection. Here, I found 2 (or was it 3) sets of tracks on the <BR>skiers left, so I opted for the middle, finding great untracked and only hitting bottom once as I enjoyed my best turns of the season. <BR>When I arrived at the Devil's Elbow, I waited for a lengthy period of time for Nick - if you know MRG, you probably just figured out what Nick attempted. I won't steal his fire, so I'll let him tell the details. <BR>Descending past the Devil's Elbow, we found nasty crust - the change was very abrupt. At the intersection with Bunny, we tooled up for another ascent, heading for the Double via Bunny-Broadway-Fox. Nick has obviously taken notes and he took us onto 'ol reliable - Quacky. These turns were even better than those experienced on upper Beaver. The firm snow underneath provided for an elegant ride - when you sank into the powder, it <BR>"sprung" ya' back, almost like a spring mattress with boot-top fluff on top. We kept the trip going by launching onto the Porcupine headwall where the same stellar conditions persisted. <BR>It wasn't long before we hit the crust. It was negotiable, however, and we went onto Chipmunk via the the cutover and stopped. We knew a good thing, so we went for another ascent via lower Panther-Broadway-Fox to the <BR>top of the Double. <BR>At the top, we congregated with others because of the quiet were able to observe the low haunting rumble of jets far off in the distance. <BR>Obviously, the only thing better than the first run down Quacky was to do a second run down Quacky. Same stellar results and again, we hit the Porcupine headwall with the same success. <BR>After 3,500 feet of ascents, it was time to pack it in. The descent past the Birdcage was brutal with all of the death crust. Anything below 2,500 feet was brutal crust and the best we could do was find some stuff that had been made rolled into a narrow semi-manageable state. But, it was not too <BR>bad of a price to pay for the fantastic skiing up above and the brilliant day under the sun!