a day in the life of mergs

Johnny and I headed up to Mount Washington NH to attend an Avalanche 1 course held jointly by the AMC and the US Forest Service. It was a very eye-opening and informative weekend. I now know 2 things:

1. There are no avalanche experts; just people that know more than you, and people that know less that you.
2. "Avalanche Science" is part science and part black art, and I have a lot to learn!

John and I rolled up to Pinkham Notch, at the base of Mt Washington NH on Friday night and got there in about 8 hours. We checked into the Joe Dodge Lodge and found the rooms cozy and comfy. With breakfast and idnner included, $69 is a good deal. John behaved himself... no hugging and no snoring, and he remained clothed which is a bonus in a roommate. ;)

We hung out in the living room with a 12 pack of Long Trail, then hit the bunks early at 11.

7am we hit the cafeteria and had breakfast. Good food. Class began at 8am. We reviewed the basoic science behind avalanche releases and prediction. The instructors at AMC and US Forest Service Rangers were fun and interesting. After a long drive up, it was nice to be entertained and not bored into sleep. We saw some slides, some movies and discussed the differences between weak and strong layers, etc..

On Saturday, night we had dinner, watched and avy movie over a few Long Trails, and then called it a night early (10 pm).

Sunday we got up and did breakfast at 7 and suited up for a day in the ravine. Weather was brisk at the bottom and as soon as we tucked into the trees, it warmed up due to the trees sheilding us from the wind. It was a bright blue day and the trees looked especially inviting.

After about a 1 hour hike up towards Hojo's, we crested the hill and immediately felt the temps drop about 15 degrees. It was pretty incredible really. And due to my attempt to keep up with Johnny's blistering pace, I broke a sweat on the hike and was cold in a split second. This sucked. I know better than than this.

As we waited for everyone to catch up to the group I went into the shack to try and warm up. I never really warmed up however. My last ditch effort was to strip off my base layer which was soaked and just go with one less base layer. It worked somewhat and I happened to have another fleece in my pack which I threw on. I was much better now. Moral of the story: don't sweat in the ravine.

The teachers took us up the trail up into the bowl in howling winds with temps around 0 degrees F. It was a good hike though and even though I never even saw Tucks, it was cool to get up there at least that close. I need to get back here in the spring to ride the bowls.

Johnny, if you have Ravine photos of this weekend, please send them to me so that I can add real ones to this, rather than all these nicked photos off of other people's sites. :)

We setup about halfway up the trail above a streambed and stated digging pits. The first test was a shovel shear and we dug out a column on 3 sides, cut the backside and did some tap, tap, tappin. If memory serves, the column failed on only a very hard slam of a fully bent arm. Pretty stable. The next was a rutschblock test so we dug out again a section that was about a ski length wide. I tested the first time with a soft hop onto the column, while strapped into my snowboard, followed by progressively harder jumps in place. It did not fail. In fact I jumped so hard that I slipped, fell, ass-checked, then fell off the column into the pit. Doh. Next we gathered 3 fellas arm in arm and we jumped simulataneously onto the column, finally making it fail.

We decided to end the classroom instruction there. The cold was getting pretty unmanageable and we all had ice beards and mustaches. It was the look and feel of a day on Everest.

I turned to the instructor, and older fella and very cool and knowledgeable and he asked "woul you ski that?" I said "I believe I would". I asked him if he would, and he replied "you betcha!".d He then turned to a fella in our group without hesitation said "hey, nice snotsickle. That's about the best I've seen all year." It was a good one: a full 2 inches in length at a minimum. :)

On Friday evening, Jason and I headed up to VT, crashing at his Sugarbush condo. Since the trees at the Bush are suffering from January r@!#s, we hit the road early Saturday am and drove about 1.5 hours up the the "center of the Northeast Powder Universe" otherwise known as Jay Peak.

The weather: superb. The day was brisk, temps in the teens, but with blue bird skies... a perfect ski day. Thus we decided that it was time to hit the trees and ravines on the famous Big Jay. After asking some discreet questions of lot attendant and bumping into a splitboarder (gee, I wonder where he was going? ;) ) we were confident Big Jay was "on" (meaning the snow was deep enough to ski and ride). This would be our first excursion out there, thus we were downright giggly about this.

So, we took the lift up after a single warm up run and immediately ducked into the traverse over to Big Jay. The hike over was beautiful... well packed and easy to hike. The first half is rolling and rideable/skiable and the second half is a skin or a boot pack up to the summit. The shot here is from my phone, thus the res is low but the winter-wonderland look and feel is obvious.

After scoping out some entrances we chose one near the top of the summit. The entrance was tight and admittingly being unfamiliar with the terrain, I was cautious, and I made rather bad turns at the top. But within a couple minutes, it opened up to wider glades and ravines. Although it had been tracked out by probably a hundred other skiers, there was tons of powder to be had, with some lines actually being fresh tracks.

We explored several parallel ravines on decent, keeping within earshot or eyeshot the hole time. We ducked and weaved down gullies around trees, over lips and down dips. This is J emerging from one of the gullies, gittin some:


The conditions were great and the last dump was at least 4 days prior. The place really holds onto its snow.

Unfortunately, even though we knew better, we missed the easy way out. We got lulled into some fresh tracks down low on the face and we went too far, riding to the botton of the basin, and thus missing the easy traverse out. No worries... we were not the first to do make this mistake and there were some others that had tracked out in the flats like us. Jason had no problems on the skis and my collapsible poles came in darn handy on the snowboard... I only had to take a foot out twice.

After about 10-15 minutes on a traverse we bushwhacked a bit then rode a partially frozen, very funky, streambed. We were out to the access road in another 10-15 mins and got to hitch-hiking back to the base. We had a short wait: only about 10 minutes before a Jeep Cherokee stopped, and we hopped in. Not bad! We were back in the lodge in 5 mins for a late lunch... high fiving and grins all around. Damn its nice to make a first decent in knee deep powder!