Tuckerman’s Ravine Report from 3/27/16
Drove from Burlington to the Pinkham Notch Vistor’s Center (trailhead for hike up to the ravine).
The trail started as muddy and wet rocks and about 10 minutes in, microspikes were necessary to have any comfort on the snowy/icey trail. Good amount of hikers, but not many people with skis/snowboards. The Sherburne ski trail was mostly open so after a certain point, we saw no people carrying skis.
It took about 2 hours to pass the Ski Patrol station and make it to the base of Tucks. I had some struggles at times with all the weight on my back (35 pounds). It was beautiful once you pass the patrol station, as the trees open up and the ravine and staring down at you.
Once at the base of the ravine, I had a bite to eat and then put on my snowboard boots. I put the microspikes over the boots and started up the Lip. Left Gulley was getting covered by shade and our assumption was that it would start to get crusty by the time we got up top. We passed lunch rocks on the left and shooted up the mountain towards the Lip. The middle section was very sketchy. There was a good section that had a lot of running water and a crevasse that could be seen.
I lost my footing and fell about 5 feet and was able to arrest my fall. At this point I was very scared. The microspikes weren’t doing much and the icy section wasn’t helpful for grabbing a pocket with your hands. A skiier behind me (with his ski boots on) was nice enough to cut ahead of me and cut in boot packs for me. He also nicely offered his mountatineering axe for me to get through the ice and move along. After that point, I was pretty spooked.
I then traversed to the right to get around a cliff and kept an eye out for people dropping in above me. If someone came through when I was there, I would of fallen hundreds of yards to my peril. The surface was close to impossible to arrest a fall if you picked up any speed. It was mostly soft, spring snow for the first 3 or 4 inches and below that was ice.
I went up another hundred yards and had to take a break. I was tired and frustrated that I was moving so slow. I was able to get above a tree that stook up out of the snow on The Lip (http://timefortuckerman.com/routes.html right around where the number 8 is). At that point I didn’t know if I should go up further because I was so tired or buckle in. I sat there for a few minutes, drank some water and decided I better send it down. I thought that I was too tired to make any more boot packs further up. Another skier was nice enough to let me borrow his axe while he was descending for me to be more comfortable (I must say everyone there is looking out for eachother’s safety and having a good time, great community).
I strapped in and started my descent after a short break. The point of the Lip where I was, was probably around 50 degrees at that point. I had never done something that steep, and boy was it scary. I was on heelside traversing over to the left of a cliff, then spun into a toeside to get under this cliff. I then picked up some speed and did some longer turns down the lower section of the Lip. My water bottle ejected out of my back pack, because it wasn’t tightened down, and went torpedoing down the hill. Thankfully the bottle didn’t hit anyone, but it picked up some crazy speed on the way down. My thighs really hurt at that point so hucking any cliff was out of the equation (I didn’t want to tomahawk at the end of the day).
I got some sweet turns in and thoroughly enjoyed the nerve wrecking trip up (took about 1.5 hours to get up to the area of the Lip where I stopped). I then took the Sherbune ski trail down. About ¾ of it was open, with highly variable conditions. That saved about 1.5 hours of the hike down.
All in all, this was an amazing trip and recommend it to anyone that is physically (and mentally) capable of doing it. Mount Washington is beautiful, but scary at the same time. For such a low snow season, most paths were open for riding. The center waterfall areas were almost unhittable, as the drops were so massive, you’d be going about 50 mph by the time you landed.
