The List 2/17/07

I don’t think I explained very well what the deal is with the email list or more importantly how magical it is to receive emails from “mitoc-bcski-request”. The magic usually shows up to my gmail account around the Tuesday of the week before a trip and continues to brighten my mundane work week straight up until Friday night as we try to figure out which sucker is going to drive and if anyone has a key the mitoc lodge.

The second trip I took drew a larger crowd than the first but no repeat customers; I was once again going skiing with a group of axe murders that I had never met before. I picked up most of the crew at the Davis sq T stop and we turned around and headed to NH. We were going to Mt. Moosilauke (4,802ft – which is about as big as they get out here) and going to ski some CCC trails (you know the New Deal and what not).

This trip taught me a lot about touring. It’s not always about the turns especially when the only turns you can make were cut by the forest service in 1930! But don’t get me wrong this was an awesome trek. We started out as a group of 6 following some snowshoe tracks and ended up as a group of 10 breaking trail for the same hikers who had left there snowshoe tracks for us to follow. Breaking trail through this sort of steep heavy snow is unique and hard and this was my first time doing it. While it was a lot of work it was a lot of fun and we really felt like we earned that summit. The peak gets some nasty weather and is bald for about 50- 100ft of elevation (if you have never been above tree line in the northeast it’s a different story and worth a hike) and has huge views of NY, VT, NH, ME and MA. We braved the wind for about 10 minutes while we downed our lunches and prepped for the descent.

The descent was on a single track and not really worth talking about but it brought us to a different trailhead, as planned, where I thumbed a ride a back to my car. Some guys from ME were nice enough to give me a ride and a beer (these were the guys who found out I am a paralegal and called me a weekend warrior!) We headed back to Boston stoked to meet up again.