yak
New member
I made a mistake. I admit it. On Monday, I cancelled my planned trip to visit my friend Mike in Underhill on Thursday evening. 3 of us were coming up to ski Friday and Saturday, and the Monday forecast called for 40's on Wednesday, then colder temps with flurries - a receipe for dust on crust, and I wasn't interested. 
I called my bud's and we postponed the trip.
Then it happened. :shock: I returned from a business trip on Wednesday night and started looking at the forecast, and by Thursday evening everything I read had changed my mind. Only now I had Saturday morning commitments, so I ended up leaving at 11 AM Saturday.
On Saturday night, over a nice corned beef & cabbage dinner washed down with Youngs Double Chocolate Stout, we made our plans while a constant flurry of snow floated down in the lights outside.
And our plans called for - Dawn Patrol! Up at 5:00, we cleared about 4 inches of pure fluff off the trucks and headed out. We took 2 trucks since I was heading straight home from the mt. Driving down Pleasant Valley road, I was in a whiteout following Mike. He took a right on Pratt Rd and I found myself skidding into the corner snowbank as I tried to make the turn. I was in 4WD, so I backed out and turned up the hill just in time to see Mike spin out and end up in the ditch on the left facing down the hill at me. :shock: I pulled up past him and he quickly chained the two trucks together and after a few spins in low with no joy, I backed off and put some slack in the chain and hit it. Out popped his truck and we were on our way.
We started skinning at 6:20 up Chilcoot as the darkness was just hinting at daylight. Temps felt about 15 degrees with lighly blowing snow. There was about 5 inches of fluff over the groomer track, so breaking trail was easy. About halfway up, just below Doc's, we hear a sled coming up behind us. We turned to see Mike's friend Paul sitting behind the liftie. They blow by with a "hey!" and disappear up the trail. We mumbled something about us having a better time than him and kept sloggin.
We decided to take the direct route up Doc's, and zig-zagged our way through the glades as it gradually steepened and bumped up. Things got gnarly as the snow was about a foot deep and the styrofoam steeps below it gave us little to no grip. I wiped out once and slid back into a drift, filling my pants with snow through the open side zips - d'oh!
We took the bailout traverse over to FIS and quickly reached the catwalk and up the Coot. We changed clothes in the patrol shack and Mike wandered down below the rope on lifline to return with reports of wind-scoured rocks. At the same time the patrollers started rolling off the chair and we found out our friend Mark who runs the patrol was headed up. I also found that my heel settings were way low and I was easily popping out of one heel just standing and leaning forward, so we went back into the shack to adjust them, and Mark came in. Mark was sending patrollers out to check out different routes, and we decided to wait a few more minutes to hear the reports coming back over the radio on the conditions. We ended up dropping the ropes into Freefall from the FIS traverse with Mark and were rewarded with knee-deep fluff over soft bumps.
From there, rode Sterling, climbed Spruce peak and headed towards Heinous. The untouched snow under the new snow combined for a dreamy, creamy thigh-deep experience, with face shots galore. It was like riding a soft elevator shaft though the birches. I was a bit unnerved at times skiing blind in the trees, but just as I though I was a goner I would pop up and the white cloud would roll away just in time to see the next tree. We hooked up with more of Mike's local bud's, and proceeded to loop it 3 times. I lost track of the local names for the shots we did, but each one was a similar white elevator shaft leading to rolling birch forests. I was clifffed out at one point, and postholed about 40 yards back up in waist-deep pow, exhausted but exhilirated.
We then decided that all the good lines were getting tracked out, and that another skin was in order. Mike, myself, and June headed out to skin up the Long Trail to the peak of Morse. It was defintely a more diffcult skin, breaking trail in deeper snow with boughs of powder hanging over your head waiting to dump a cool blast down your neck if you weren't careful. It looked like someone had skinned through on Saturday, but nobody had been there on Sunday. We got to one section where June had planted a rope, but it was deeply buried and useless, so we postholed up a face, throwing our skis up on a ledge and floundering our way over the face. There was an obvious shot off to our left, and the Saturday skiers had taken it, and it became more difficult breaking trail through narrow corridors of pine loaded with drifts.
We reached the spot where we de-skinned, and our secret glade beckoned. June disppeared below a downed tree and I heard whoops and shrieks. I swooped in and found waist-deep fluff, shooting continuous faceshots as we smoked down through a sweet glade. The terrain flattened a bit and we cruised through some drainages, reaching the lower section where we had to leap-frog to keep cutting trail. Morse isn't a very steep face, but the rolling terrain, drainages and brooks make for some nice lines, and being the only tracks out there on a two-day powder fest was priceless.
We bummed a ride from the courtesy van back to the parking lot, and finished the day with pints of Guinness, buffalo wings, and sliders at the Smugglers Inn.
Apologies for the rambling post. It was easily my best day in New England in 10 years, so the irrational exuberance got the best of me. 8)
I called my bud's and we postponed the trip.Then it happened. :shock: I returned from a business trip on Wednesday night and started looking at the forecast, and by Thursday evening everything I read had changed my mind. Only now I had Saturday morning commitments, so I ended up leaving at 11 AM Saturday.
On Saturday night, over a nice corned beef & cabbage dinner washed down with Youngs Double Chocolate Stout, we made our plans while a constant flurry of snow floated down in the lights outside.
And our plans called for - Dawn Patrol! Up at 5:00, we cleared about 4 inches of pure fluff off the trucks and headed out. We took 2 trucks since I was heading straight home from the mt. Driving down Pleasant Valley road, I was in a whiteout following Mike. He took a right on Pratt Rd and I found myself skidding into the corner snowbank as I tried to make the turn. I was in 4WD, so I backed out and turned up the hill just in time to see Mike spin out and end up in the ditch on the left facing down the hill at me. :shock: I pulled up past him and he quickly chained the two trucks together and after a few spins in low with no joy, I backed off and put some slack in the chain and hit it. Out popped his truck and we were on our way.
We started skinning at 6:20 up Chilcoot as the darkness was just hinting at daylight. Temps felt about 15 degrees with lighly blowing snow. There was about 5 inches of fluff over the groomer track, so breaking trail was easy. About halfway up, just below Doc's, we hear a sled coming up behind us. We turned to see Mike's friend Paul sitting behind the liftie. They blow by with a "hey!" and disappear up the trail. We mumbled something about us having a better time than him and kept sloggin.
We decided to take the direct route up Doc's, and zig-zagged our way through the glades as it gradually steepened and bumped up. Things got gnarly as the snow was about a foot deep and the styrofoam steeps below it gave us little to no grip. I wiped out once and slid back into a drift, filling my pants with snow through the open side zips - d'oh!
We took the bailout traverse over to FIS and quickly reached the catwalk and up the Coot. We changed clothes in the patrol shack and Mike wandered down below the rope on lifline to return with reports of wind-scoured rocks. At the same time the patrollers started rolling off the chair and we found out our friend Mark who runs the patrol was headed up. I also found that my heel settings were way low and I was easily popping out of one heel just standing and leaning forward, so we went back into the shack to adjust them, and Mark came in. Mark was sending patrollers out to check out different routes, and we decided to wait a few more minutes to hear the reports coming back over the radio on the conditions. We ended up dropping the ropes into Freefall from the FIS traverse with Mark and were rewarded with knee-deep fluff over soft bumps.
From there, rode Sterling, climbed Spruce peak and headed towards Heinous. The untouched snow under the new snow combined for a dreamy, creamy thigh-deep experience, with face shots galore. It was like riding a soft elevator shaft though the birches. I was a bit unnerved at times skiing blind in the trees, but just as I though I was a goner I would pop up and the white cloud would roll away just in time to see the next tree. We hooked up with more of Mike's local bud's, and proceeded to loop it 3 times. I lost track of the local names for the shots we did, but each one was a similar white elevator shaft leading to rolling birch forests. I was clifffed out at one point, and postholed about 40 yards back up in waist-deep pow, exhausted but exhilirated.
We then decided that all the good lines were getting tracked out, and that another skin was in order. Mike, myself, and June headed out to skin up the Long Trail to the peak of Morse. It was defintely a more diffcult skin, breaking trail in deeper snow with boughs of powder hanging over your head waiting to dump a cool blast down your neck if you weren't careful. It looked like someone had skinned through on Saturday, but nobody had been there on Sunday. We got to one section where June had planted a rope, but it was deeply buried and useless, so we postholed up a face, throwing our skis up on a ledge and floundering our way over the face. There was an obvious shot off to our left, and the Saturday skiers had taken it, and it became more difficult breaking trail through narrow corridors of pine loaded with drifts.
We reached the spot where we de-skinned, and our secret glade beckoned. June disppeared below a downed tree and I heard whoops and shrieks. I swooped in and found waist-deep fluff, shooting continuous faceshots as we smoked down through a sweet glade. The terrain flattened a bit and we cruised through some drainages, reaching the lower section where we had to leap-frog to keep cutting trail. Morse isn't a very steep face, but the rolling terrain, drainages and brooks make for some nice lines, and being the only tracks out there on a two-day powder fest was priceless.
We bummed a ride from the courtesy van back to the parking lot, and finished the day with pints of Guinness, buffalo wings, and sliders at the Smugglers Inn.
Apologies for the rambling post. It was easily my best day in New England in 10 years, so the irrational exuberance got the best of me. 8)
