A Quiet Sojurn Up Equinox
Damn, no pics again from me...just a long story for ya'll.
Sunday, went up Mt. Equinox with Balzbaugh & his buddy Josh...another masshole, just joking he was a really good guy, great skier, and person to add in the mix. Eyes were set on skiing a small (maybe 600 vert total) but technical slide path down the eastern face of the mountain. It's just shy 3,000 ft vertical from car to top of slide path and with some bushwhacking required & an extra 500 ft climb thrown in the middle; we had a fairly long day at hand.
Due to some delays, we didn't get hiking until about 11:30. The climb is steady for the first 1800 vertical feet, but luckily the trail had been broken the previous day and only a couple new inches on top which made skinning fairly easy. We broke away from the trail to find the bottom of the slide and found the snow extremely deep and fairly slow going setting a skin track. We reached the bottom of the slide, popped on our crampons grabbed our ice axes and began the climb up the icefalls about 1/3 of the way up the slide. As I was making my way up I was keeping in the back of my mind self-arrest techniques and I was wishing I had brought two axes, it would have made me feel a lot safer. As I'm just cresting the icefall section, I find out that Josh didn't have toe points on his crampons and will have to duck into the woods to try to find a way to scramble up the section. As I'm looking up I notice a nice 18-24" crown propagating out from the center of the slide which was several days old. I dug a pit up to my armpits (not bad for southern vt snowpack) and found that the last thaw had set a nice surface for the new snow to slide on. A couple things seemed to be going our way though, one was that the avy debris didn't reach the icefall, the second was that the thaw layer seemed to be bonding fairly nicely by now. Either way when Josh finally got up above the icefall, he decided there were just too many red flags to keep going, especially since it was snowing heavily at this point. Throwing caution to the wind, Balz & I continue up. We stop short of the top of the slide path because the top of the slide is u-shaped and if it slide there wouldn't be anywhere to go.
We get our skis on and I give a ski cut across the slide and I can't get anything to budge except a little sloughing so decide to go for it. By my second turn I'm deep in the white room...wish there could have been a 1000 vert more of those turns, but I have to pull up after a handful of turns as I approach the crown. We all safely navigate our way down the icefall and get a couple more powdery turns below the fall.
We make our way back to the trail and don the skins for another hike up and over to ski the ridge that extends off the southern end of the mountain. There were a couple fun turns to be found on the ridge and just off the ridge but things got dense in a hurry. At this point Balzbaugh reaches the decision that he has foresaken tele-skiing forever like an alky deciding to give up tequila...well maybe just bc tele-ing. We traversed further out on the ridge and eventually found eastern nirvana. Wide open hardwoods and deep pillowy snow. The nice thing about Equinox is its size, each time you drop down a face you think maybe you're at the bottom, but then it drops away again. By the bottom face, the base was starting to thin out, but still more than enough to make some moderate speed turns. We found a hiking trail at the bottom and cruised down the run-out to our car at about 5:20, a long but memorable day...well at least for me.
Sunday, went up Mt. Equinox with Balzbaugh & his buddy Josh...another masshole, just joking he was a really good guy, great skier, and person to add in the mix. Eyes were set on skiing a small (maybe 600 vert total) but technical slide path down the eastern face of the mountain. It's just shy 3,000 ft vertical from car to top of slide path and with some bushwhacking required & an extra 500 ft climb thrown in the middle; we had a fairly long day at hand.
Due to some delays, we didn't get hiking until about 11:30. The climb is steady for the first 1800 vertical feet, but luckily the trail had been broken the previous day and only a couple new inches on top which made skinning fairly easy. We broke away from the trail to find the bottom of the slide and found the snow extremely deep and fairly slow going setting a skin track. We reached the bottom of the slide, popped on our crampons grabbed our ice axes and began the climb up the icefalls about 1/3 of the way up the slide. As I was making my way up I was keeping in the back of my mind self-arrest techniques and I was wishing I had brought two axes, it would have made me feel a lot safer. As I'm just cresting the icefall section, I find out that Josh didn't have toe points on his crampons and will have to duck into the woods to try to find a way to scramble up the section. As I'm looking up I notice a nice 18-24" crown propagating out from the center of the slide which was several days old. I dug a pit up to my armpits (not bad for southern vt snowpack) and found that the last thaw had set a nice surface for the new snow to slide on. A couple things seemed to be going our way though, one was that the avy debris didn't reach the icefall, the second was that the thaw layer seemed to be bonding fairly nicely by now. Either way when Josh finally got up above the icefall, he decided there were just too many red flags to keep going, especially since it was snowing heavily at this point. Throwing caution to the wind, Balz & I continue up. We stop short of the top of the slide path because the top of the slide is u-shaped and if it slide there wouldn't be anywhere to go.
We get our skis on and I give a ski cut across the slide and I can't get anything to budge except a little sloughing so decide to go for it. By my second turn I'm deep in the white room...wish there could have been a 1000 vert more of those turns, but I have to pull up after a handful of turns as I approach the crown. We all safely navigate our way down the icefall and get a couple more powdery turns below the fall.
We make our way back to the trail and don the skins for another hike up and over to ski the ridge that extends off the southern end of the mountain. There were a couple fun turns to be found on the ridge and just off the ridge but things got dense in a hurry. At this point Balzbaugh reaches the decision that he has foresaken tele-skiing forever like an alky deciding to give up tequila...well maybe just bc tele-ing. We traversed further out on the ridge and eventually found eastern nirvana. Wide open hardwoods and deep pillowy snow. The nice thing about Equinox is its size, each time you drop down a face you think maybe you're at the bottom, but then it drops away again. By the bottom face, the base was starting to thin out, but still more than enough to make some moderate speed turns. We found a hiking trail at the bottom and cruised down the run-out to our car at about 5:20, a long but memorable day...well at least for me.
posted by More Cowbells at 1:22 PM
3 Comments:
killer account Dave.....bring some VT snow this way please...
Sounds like great adventures and lots of good snow happening in VT. I wonder what caused the delay to the start of your trip???
No TK, you're cut off. Snow gods are punishing you for too much good snow on all your snow expeditions this year.
TG...uh, no comments.
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