Settling In

By: Sam
December 22, 2010 8:05 pm | Category: Skiing | 2 Comments | Permalink

Allen and I have been having a great time exploring our new home-turf recently. Coming from VT, where by the end of our tenure it felt like we could ski the familiar lines with our eyes closed, it’s been a frustrating adjustment though. In Washington, the snow leaves nothing to complain about, the crowds aren’t too bad, and contrary to popular belief it isn’t always cloudy (only most of the time). It’s just taking us longer than we’d like to learn our way around the mountains… yeah “boo-hoo Sam”, “your life is sooo  hard”,  I hear you, but it’s still is an adjustment to be the new kid on the block.


Allen enjoying some turns on the half lap that we got in before I had to go to work. Had we known a more intelligent place to put the skin track we might have gotten a full lap. Oh well. Continue reading Settling In


Pre-Holiday Snows: Eastern flow snows over next 48 hours

December 22, 2010 11:18 am | Category: Weather | 19 Comments | Permalink

Again, moisture retrograding from a coastal low will impact the North Country.  Now, last week I mentioned the possibility of the development of  NORLUN trough delivering moisture to NH and Maine.  Well it looks like this might not develop quite as planned.  Instead it appears that an easterly flow from the storm will transport a fair degree of moisture into the North Country and the White Mountains.  However here is the funky thing…NWS just really isn’t talking about it. If you look at the models and then compare to their forecast discussion (here is Grey Maine’s covering the Whites) you would scratch your head and say am I seeing things?  No you are not…

Continue reading Pre-Holiday Snows: Eastern flow snows over next 48 hours


SPAM #11: I Swear Occifer! It was Occidental!

By: Greg
December 22, 2010 7:34 am | Category: Skiing, SPAM | 11 Comments | Permalink

With an eastern flow promising to bring some fresh snow to the east for Christmas, and the west digging out from a rough commute on the Pineapple Express, let’s go into the holiday weekend with a bit of SPAM from FIS. As you may recall, the east coast contingent of the FIS got exceedingly lucky with a day of powder skiing high above an undercast last weekend. If you click on that link, and go look, you’ll surely realize that there was no way that day was going un-SPAM-ified. It was simply too pretty to not amalgamate some skiing photos. Here’s my favorite so far. The skier is Noah Harwood.
SPAM 11: Noah Harwood Skiing Powder above an Undercast
Continue reading SPAM #11: I Swear Occifer! It was Occidental!


TR: Occidental Powder

By: Greg
December 20, 2010 8:57 am | Category: Full Trip Report, Skiing | Permalink

Some of the best days of powder skiing are purely a matter of luck; one might say they are accidental. This past weekend we had one of those days. As detailed in a quick update yesterday evening, we got spooked off steeper terrain by an alarmingly weak layer that failed without any stress added to it once it was cut free from the rest of the snowpack. This TR is about our “plan B.”
East Coast Big Mountain Powder Skiing
Click the picture or here to read Occidental Powder.


East Coast Snowpack Update

By: Greg
December 19, 2010 8:48 pm | Category: Quick Update, Skiing | 3 Comments | Permalink

Snow packs are beginning to build across the northeast. As we all begin to poke around the backcountry, please remember to be avalanche smart this winter. While a glisse line may look glorious, please educate yourself about avalanches, and use that information to help make decisions about whether a slope falls within your acceptable risk. Today we made plans to ski one of the Mount Washington’s finest gems; a northeast facing high elevation (~5000ft at top) couloir with plenty of twists turns and rocks to break your bones. After a few thousand feet of climbing, we were greeted with what on the surface appeared to be glorious powder snow. Upon closer inspection however we found an alarming number of weak layers. At 70 cm we found an ice lens acting so perfectly as a bed surface the snow column failed upon cutting. No pressure whatsoever was required. In other pits we found 3 layers, each failing with a swing from the elbow, about equally spaced from 20 to 60cm deep. These layers appeared to be rime ice layers presumably formed between loading events. THESE DETAILS ARE NOT MEANT TO BE AN AVALANCHE FORECAST/REPORT. Please only interpret them as a friendly prompt to get serious about snow safety this winter. For more details that you can (and should) use to base your trip planning on please check the Mount Washington Avalanche Center.

Anyway, despite a low rating (albeit with words of caution about the upper reaches of loaded areas), we passed on this particular couloir, and headed on to our (safer) Plan B… more on that tomorrow (look for a full TR–for now check out one picture)

Here’s Noah excavating the column that failed.
Noah excavating a failed column in an avalanche pit
Continue reading East Coast Snowpack Update


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