Diagonal Gully, Huntington Ravine

By:  Sam
April 17, 2008


Allen Taylor and I went over to HR yesterday to try and knock a few more things off the list. From Marc Chauvin’s website http://chauvinguides.com/conditions.htm (April 7th entry) we knew that Yale had been skied. Due to its south facing aspect we figure that we wouldn’t have much time left (if any at all) if we wanted to ski it all this year. So yale became priority number one for the day. Initially we thought that the main problem would be the uppermost ice bulge, but as we climbed up we found a lot more ice than we expected, the lower section would probably have been skiable, but transitioning would have been seriously sketchy, so we down-climbed from about half way up. As a consolation we decided to go up diagonal. Allen wasn’t initially super excited about it, he had Odell’s higher on his list, and Odell’s was fast running out of snow, but we stuck with diagonal because we were closer to it. We thought we’d be up and down really quickly and have time to go look at Odell’s but Diagonal had other plans. I had only gotten like 3 hours of sleep the night before and was also feeling kind of sick, on top of that allen and i were both bonking pretty hard as we started up the gully. Once we finally reached the top we were pretty dead, but we got the privilege of watching a few other skiers drop into central via the steep start that was too icy for our trip last monday. So, the pictures.

Central is the one in the middle, see if you can guess which one is Diagonal
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The view of the upper part of Central with the summit in the background. Those are ski tracks going into Central.
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I’m ashamed of this picture…..anyone want to sponsor me?……..
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Rolling over into Diagonal
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Allen dropping in
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Looking down into Diagonal
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Allen further down
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Another picture of Allen that I forgot to add earlier
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Kind of not a great picture, but it shows the steepness pretty well. On another note i’m starting my own ski clothing line, who wants to look this good?
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I love this picture, this is me heading towards the bottom.
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Looking back up:
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Allen and I decided that we wanted to huck the ice cliff at the bottom as a two stager to lookers right. He was having the better day and decided to give it a shot. He went over the lip………and didn’t pop out on the apron. So i called his name a few times and got no response. Then i waited a few more minutes and called his name again, still no response. I started to assume the worst and moved over to the left to begin down climbing and presumably rescuing Allen. Pretty much as soon as I got my skis off though, I heard a cheerful call from below, that he had fallen but was fine and would meet me at the bottom. I was pretty psyched out on the idea of hucking by now so i decided to continue with my downclimbing plan and skied down to meet allen after missing the ice.

Me getting ready to downclimb. Allen hit the cliff as a two stager to lookers right, but rather than stomping it he skilled it as a huck -> fall -> flip off the next stage and land on back.
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EDIT: picture from boardman’s TR on T4T of allen prior to dropping
MISSING PHOTO

Me skiing out:
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We were both exhausted by now and nothing had really been going as planned all day so we decided to call it after diagonal. A better man probably would have done south or central as well.

On the way through ghoram on the way back to UVM we saw a sign that has cracked me up every time i dirve through the town. Not as good as the “house of tang” sign that I keep forgetting to take a picture of but still pretty funny.
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On route 2 on the way home, there is a long straight hill with smooth pavement, Allen had wanted to long board this for some time and he finally remembered his gear.
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Thats all folks! thanks for looking, I’ll see everyone up in the ravine this weekend,

Sam

Read about the author:   Sam
Enjoy this TR? Read another: TR: VTah Part I – Stowe Opening Day 2008

Related Stuff:

  1. TR: Diagonal Gully, Huntington Ravine
  2. Diagonal, Huntington Ravine, NH (2/7/09)
  3. TR: Feb 7, 09 – Diagonal, Huntington Ravine
  4. Huntington Ravine 12/22/09, Central, Diagonal, and my new 7D
  5. Central Gully, Huntington Ravine
  6. TR: Central Gully, Huntington Ravine

2 Comments

  1. Rex Miatke
    wrote on October 13th, 2010 at 8:13 am  
    1

    Did I see u guys are from University of Vermont?? Also who says East coast doesn’t have any Steeps!! Have you guys skied over at Jefferson or Kings Ravine?? What about Great Gulf. East coast steeps rock!!!!!!!!

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
    • Greg
      wrote on October 13th, 2010 at 4:13 pm  
      2

      Rex: Sam and Allen are from UVM. I’m from Middlebury, and then the rest of the crew is from different institutions.

      We’ve been to two of the three places you mentioned ;)

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