“Photo: Patrick Allen”
Well I saw it and maybe I didn’t ski what would be considered classic Tucks but I skied TUCKS and Gulf of Slides, Tuck’s steep friends to the south. As the work week went by and the plans changed from making a technical ascent to the summit of Mt. Washington proper to getting in as many runs in as we could before our legs or the sun gave out (it turned out to be both at the same time) on Gulf of Slides (part of Boot Spur a peak about 800 feet short of Washington’s summit 6,288 ft.) I was stoked to pick Igor up in Davis square Friday night and head up to the MIT cabin about 15 minutes from Pinkham’s Notch, our trail head.
The cabin was great and made an early start easy for Saturday morning. Igor and I had skied together the weekend before but were traveling with a larger group that combined with a foot of fresh snow to break through moved slower than Tats’ and my friend Mertle the Turtle, so when we reached the bottom of the chutes we were about to ski, I had no idea what hit me. We had just done 2 miles and 2000 vertical ft in less than an hour and were peeling off our skins and strapping our skies to our packs. The rest of the way was about 40 - 50 degrees and perfect eastern wind buff that we would boot pack up.
“Photo: Patrick Allen”Half way up Igor decided to dig a pit to test the avy danger and even though I didn’t think it would help (thanks to Alpine Ascents awesome training!) it ended up being a fun exercise in avy awareness. The pit showed some instability but in a section we didn’t plan to ski and when we dug another in the middle of a line I would ski later it was much more solid. All signs pointed to go (including the park rangers’ avy report) and so we headed up about 750 more vertical feet.
At the top of the run we made the decision to rip the top of our ascent chute cut into the more anchored trees and let it rip from there. While neither of us had made the ascent before Igor had been on the mountain multiple times and was basically leading the way so I did the right thing and watched him ski away getting first tracks as I salivated all over wind layer. The snow as previously mentioned was amazing wind buff which I liken to a 9th grade wet dream. My turn came and (I just stopped writing for 3 minutes thinking about it – wow) it was more than I could have ever imagined steep, fast and features galore (including tree tops, spines and ice bulges).
“Photo: Patrick Allen”Halfway up the hike we had seen an older man and his dog hit the bottom of chutes and turn around and as we settled down for lunch at the bottom of our first run we saw a couple skin by headed to the same chute we’d just shralped. That was it not another soul all day! Oh did I mention the views? No I didn’t because I’m still thinking about the skiing! The views, as you would expect from the tallest mountain in the Northeast, are amazing with all sorts of weather, under cast covering 4000 footers blue skies over head and multiple old school ski areas looking just as quaint as the New England villages at their base.
Back to reality, we strapped our skins back on and headed up chute #1 (we’d just skied #2). The skins didn’t last long as we reached the long steep pitch we would ski next. Boot packing our way up we decided to ski half of chute #1 and then pack it right back up and over so we could get a third run in on the Tuckerman’s Ravine side of Mt. Washington. Chute #1 was dope and even worth a description of my line: Igor let me get mine first this time and I took off with two big turns and a quick direction switch to launch over a well vegetated spine, as I crossed over the spine looking like I was Chris Tatsuno, I setup for my landing on the other side of the chute but landed on the uncovered top of a tree that was hungry for my skies! After I purged the tree of my skies I had a perfectly normal run – that was perfectly sick but not worth boring you about.
Reaching the summit of Boot Spur on our third ascent was well worth the 50 mph winds and post holes we found on the second half of chute #1. The views were sick and skiing Tuck’s has been a dream of mine since high school. We skied Hillman’s Highway which isn’t traditionally considered “skiing tucks” but technically on Tuckerman’s Ravine (this is second hand information I could have been on mars for all I know!) and was a perfect way to end the day. We had changed aspects and the snow had loosened up a little which made for another dope line and mushy legs that were about to face 2000 vft of CCC hiking/skiing trail before we were back at the car.
Igor and I went back to the cabin to brag to the tele skiers (who had opted to go to tele fest rather than come with us) and get some sleep before we would take on Doublehead the next day with the rest of the MIT gang.
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