THE ASCENT OF DEATH (day 1)

We met at MIT at 6am Monday morning and headed north. Before we could start trekking up the Gulf of Slides (GoS) Trail we had a few things we/I needed… First Doogie and I needed a mug to drink out of so Einstein’s Bagel shop was nice enough to sell us each on of those refillable cups and everyone enjoyed one last meal inside. Next I needed a down jacket, because it is freaking freezing up there! So with our last minute shopping done we drove to the Notch and loaded our sleds.

Because we were going to be camping for 4 days we needed to carry in tents, stoves, food (mostly sausage and various forms of sodium), sleeping bags and all the other camping necessities on top of our regular ski gear. All this means we were carrying a LOT of weight behind us, up 3 miles and 2000 vertical feet. Basically four us had sleds attached to us like mules and as we skinned up we pulled… and pulled… and pulled. The other three wore multi-day camping backpacks (not light) and helped push the sleds as we pulled. Honestly a miserable experience that drained so much energy out of me that I refused to use my skins for the remainder of the trip to avoid remembering that experience (I’m crying right now thinking about it – don’t look at me).

After reaching our campsite at the base of the GoS, westill had plenty of work to do before we could go skiing. I had never been winter camping and to be honest I’ve only been camping a few times ever so when it came to setting up camp I had no idea how much work we actually had to do. First we chose an avalanche and wind safe site with room for three tents and room for a “kitchen”. Next we had to flatten the snow and dig out space for the tents (two of which had no floors and therefore needed deep pits to insulate them – don’t worry mom mine had a floor) after setting up the tents we started digging out the kitchen. The kitchen was a U shaped snow bench that held our stove and butts, it was great!

Once camp was set it was time boil snow to make water and cook meal 1, mac and cheese with chicken, delicious… sitting in our kitchen, freezing (it was -10F) I was stoked to be done with the heavy work and excited to get some turns the next day without having to skin up the 3 mile trail before reaching the fun skiing (yes that’s why we bothered to camp – easy access).