EAST COAST ROLL CALL #8 14/15 A NEW HOPE

[danmelon]

sweet!

[clubhousebmx]

Sweet VTCS face shots in almost mid April that's what I'm talking about, pissed I used sick days actually being sick last week.

Headed to Cannon Sunday if anyone's around should be some nice sunny laps after the rain smooths things out today.

Whats up with that wrod vtfh?

[Jonathan S.]

When was the last time someone was actually completely buried by a slide on washington?

March 24.

1996:



Yes, that's a fatality list, not a burial list.
But nobody on Mt Washington has ever survived a full burial.
(Two individuals have been buried with just a hand showing -- one uninjured, one hospital stay and released).
And nobody on Mt Washington has ever:

• died while wearing an avalanche beacon;
• been fully buried while wearing an avalanche beacon; and/or
• been searched for with another avalanche beacon while wearing an avalanche beacon.

And just to clarify, my additional reluctance to keep ascending in the presence of four people who lacked beacons wasn't specifically because of burial concern, but rather just not wanting to be around people with the kind of mindset and possibly corresponding travel practices given that they're ascending beacon-less to the start zone of a micro-scale forecasted Considerable line.

My concern up there is getting taken out and thrown into rocks.

Yes, the historical record supports that concern.
I highlighted that in my ESAW presentation on airbag effectiveness starting at slide #8 here:
http://tinyurl.com/airbagppt
The more humorous side of that (if that is indeed possible) is at the audio starting at about 3:10 here:
http://tinyurl.com/airbagaudio

[scharny]

And just to clarify, my additional reluctance to keep ascending in the presence of four people who lacked beacons wasn't specifically because of burial concern, but rather just not wanting to be around people with the kind of mindset and possibly corresponding travel practices given that they're ascending beacon-less to the start zone of a micro-scale forecasted Considerable line.

Well said.

[strawjack]

Jonathon, that is pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing.

[NoPostholio]

Jonathon, that is pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Ditto - thanks for info JS

[Vt-Freeheel]

Thanks Straw. Those stats are sobering and I would guess the two hands belonged to beaconless folks. The weekend-update/ talks about safety and also makes mention of Westside slides today involving skiers. Seen enough shit up there that I think long and hard about what and who with I am doing.

[Jonathan S.]

[...]The weekend-update/ talks about safety and also makes mention of Westside slides today involving skiers.[...]

That's referencing slides on Tuesday and Thursday, not today (Friday)

As I finish this up, I am learning of another round of avalanches on the Westside, at least one of which involved skiers. The details are few and I will refrain from guessing about them [...]

The account sure seemed detailed to me.
Pending any public posting on the details, here's a publicly posted picture of the debris from Thursday's Monroe Brook slide, most likely skier-triggered:






Also, AR South went, most likely naturally, most likely on Thursday.
And AR Central seemed to have been skier-trigged on Tuesday.

[Vt-Freeheel]

Thanks for clarifying.

[Jonathan S.]

TR April 8 & 9 (Wed & Thu), 2015

Wed morning, early start around 6:00 – out of bed that is.

After family matters, driving, carpooling, etc’ing, started skinning from the Cog at 11:10, twenty minutes ahead of schedule, a schedule we thought would be ok with plenty of springtime daylight, even though snow conditions were still far away from springtime.

Arrived at ART treeline to glorious sunshine and no wind.
View from near Monroe summit of a surprisingly busy hiker scene (maybe half a dozen or so in total) at Lakes hut:






C.S. enjoying nice snow in Oakes (though potentially punchy, so had to ski cautiously):






From near the very bottom, skinned out and said goodbye to Oakes, as well as said goodbye unknowingly at the time to ... well, cue the avy bulletin:

Expect clouds to be on the increase this afternoon. I don’t have a great grasp on when the clouds will arrive [...]”

Must have been around 1:30 judging by the photo timestamps.

Given the hiker crowds (relatively speaking) at Lakes hut and Monroe ridgeline, I expected to be saying hello to many hikers at the windless summit, so just before we arrived there I stopped to take a leak and ... was buzzed by a helicopter about a hundred feet overhead:









Now remember all the rules kids - don’t walk on the Sherb, don’t ski on the TRT, don’t camp in the Cutler River drainage, but do take a Mt W summit selfie:






And remember that any NE Snowfield pic looking down requires a view of Wildcat:






C.S. on the slightly tricky yet still pretty good windslab:






Don’t drop anything at this ski>skin transition:






From near the top of the Lip, we skinned up and over to where we could ski down into some of the AR snowfields so as to angle north, then we skinned back up and further north again so that we could over to the Cog and down into Burt, which even if the focus here isn't very sharp, definitely required sharp edges (but at least smooth, unlike the real-time text I got on AR Central):






Skinned back up from low in Burt to join the Cog on top of the big pitch above Jacob’s Ladder.
Snow conditions that high started off okay yet then deteriorated ... or maybe my ability to delude myself had diminished?
Utility line was bad, with additional taunt of my left pole being planted in beautiful light dry powder on the protected north bank.
Cog was even worse, prompting me to look longingly at the base off in the distance, until I looked to the right side and saw some untouched smoothness – yes, you know the ski conditions are deteriorating when you’re very happy to be skiing sun crust that is at least smooth!

Overall though, despite the variable snow quality for skiing, a very nice afternoon ski tour:






Then drove to a friend’s house in Jackson, and briefly entertained ourselves by asking about his Inferno prep (defending champion!), watching rando race videos (http://www.skintrack.com/skimo-racin...-pierra-menta/), and worrying about the NOAA wx fx (http://w1.weather.gov/images/fcicons/mix.jpg), before going to bed early in attempt to beat that worrisome wx fx.

Thursday morning, got an early start at around 6:00 – for real this time!

And another skier was right next to us in the parking lot, ready earlier to skin up even earlier than us, with rando race tights even tighter than mine, and light skis even lighter than mine – hey, who is this guy?!?

Turned out to be the guy who was on my tail (or rather, tails, almost literally) during the first ascent of our Greylock race this year.
D.S. was also headed up into Huntington, but unlike our sampler ski tour, he was packing technical ice tools for some serious ski alpinism.
We were grateful for D.S.’s trailbreaking, as well as for the novelty of needing to break trail on April 9.

A forgotten yet fortunately quickly noticed item sent C.S. back to the car, while I continued to head up for a lap up high (still worried about a possible changeover down low of the beautiful falling snow) from the entrance to the Fan all the way down the powdery Fire Road to a few illicit turns below that before we met up again.
At the entrance to the Fan, I saw D.S. digging a snowpit, which was the last commendable snow safety action we observed for the day.

He also got a nice shot of us from across the ravine:






Yes, we really are in there – I circled us in red here to convey a sense of the scale:






I was *SO* excited to ski such nice snow out in the open:






And here I am slowing down as I realize I can’t see any contrast at all out in the open:






C.S. staying close to the shrubbery to help with the contrast:









Skied all the way down the Fire Road to the Huntington Ravine trail intersection, then skinned all the way back up again for another similar run:








Skinned up into Tux to ski a snowfield without anything above it, kind of in between Lobster Claw and Right Cubed / Triple Right Gully:






And at the bottom, before skiing a cut-up yet still nice Lower Headwall:






We then briefly split up so that I could get a bit more skiing on lower Hillman’s while C.S. could get a bit of rest.
Little did we know that this maximized our collective avy-related obs, as C.S. had a great view from the HoJo’s deck of this:
https://instagram.com/p/1Q70vLiR-b/?taken-by=mwacenter
... while I had this disturbing (as well as disturbingly frequent on Mt W) encounter:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...57#post4469657

Sherb skied perfectly, and then some steady traffic earlier in the day had broken out the GoS skintrack.

On the way up, we stopped to talk to a descending snowboarder.
Thinking back to my Hillman’s encounter, I switched my beacon to search.
Only C.S’s signal?
I asked the snowboarder, and he showed me his borrowed beacon, with the transmission indicator light blinking – on that tell-tale teal housing of an old Ortovox F1.

I switched to test mode: off by 160; the spec is +/-80.
Especially scary because *some* beacons can successfully search outside the min +/-90 (note the intentional margin of another 10), which thereby could mislead the owner of a unknowingly drifted F1 into concluding that *all* beacons could find that noncomformingly drifted unit.

Skinned partway up the Snowfields until the visibility was so limited as to limit my confidence in safely navigating through the avy hazard:






Consolation prize:






Overall, nowhere near as interesting a tour as the prior day, but even though my 8,570' vertical for the day was only 35% more than the prior day, the amount of soft skiing we had was about, oh, 8.57x as much!

[Jonathan S.]

And another skier was right next to us in the parking lot, ready earlier to skin up even earlier than us, with rando race tights even tighter than mine, and light skis even lighter than mine – hey, who is this guy?!?

Turned out to be the guy who was on my tail (or rather, tails, almost literally) during the first ascent of our Greylock race this year.
D.S. was also headed up into Huntington, but unlike our sampler ski tour, he was packing technical ice tools for some serious ski alpinism.

So now I realize that he hadn't woken up any earlier than us ... since he'd apparently never gone to sleep the night before!
Nice combo of detailed snow assessments and dramatic pics in his TR here:
http://www.iceclimbingforums.com/sho...nvirons-4-9-15

[vt_ski]

Spending the night @ 3610'

[cat in january]

Nice TR and pictures Jonathan.

I have put up a TR on our recent (myself, Darkstar, Moops and FNG) up into Baxter State Park. Click

Great group of people and just a great time. Unfortunately a few could not make it, but a glass was raised to them.

[PhishingME]

Cannon bound tomorrow. Gots and white helmet.

[Harvey44]

Sweet MTW photos and stoke!

Surprising day at Gore, was really not expecting to get enough sun or warming but by afternoon it was game on.



In the years I've been at skiing Gore, not sure we've ever had t2b trees in play this late.

Deck scene was old home week.

[kokomas]

I have a set of old head womens 160 cm shaped rental skis with bindings, poles, and packed out head boots size 25.5 that we would love to stop lugging around.
Also have an old set of marker selective control bindings (in a bag with mess of parts) that I don't need.

Anyone want this stuff for free?

Local pickup at magic only

[Jonathan S.]

[...]Pending any public posting on the details[...]

And now here's the public posting:
http://timefortuckerman.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=16451

[I've seen black diamonds!]

ml242 and I closed down Plattekill in style today:



What a great day. Didn't want to go home.

[ex-powderbroker]

Bump, way to close it out with style.

[strawjack]

^nice guys!

it appears we are isothermal and most certainly after today. tick tock

[robrox]

Cardigan yesterday. (pix tonight)

Sugar on medium firm corn down low. It softened more on each lap. Yo-yos till the dog started postholing.

Alexandria was excellent to mid level and then heavied up a bit..skied well. The crossing at the bottom of the last pitch has to be detoured. The usual detour should last for a while as the cover is very good.

[Peruvian]

Liquid lunch and bump buffet at Stratton yesterday.

[robrox]

^nice guys!

it appears we are isothermal and most certainly after today. tick tock

Fingers crossed that water doesn't run on the east-side's ice layer and cause the whole thing to rip out this week, If it holds, the game is afoot!

[yellofin]

The corn horn was blowing loud and clear at MRG yesterday. What a beautiful day. So glad I got a early start so I could get 5 on the single before the large crowd of locals arrived and who could blame them it was so good I didn't even mind the 25 minute lift line to the closing lap and a cold PBR to wash down all of that corn. I definitely will be dreaming of this day and many more days from this great season!
It ain't over yet

[dark_star]

busted out the tele skis and shredded k mart yesterday... spring skiing at its best. Spent a good chunk of the day on outer limits hitting up the beautiful corn. Fuckin' A!