When New England thaws out in springtime and the region’s ski resorts close shop, skiers head to a place where the snow never melts. On the southeast face of Mt. Washington, Tuckerman Ravine every winter accumulates an average 55 FEET of snow that lingers well into the summer.
Along with snow and diehard skiers, the ravine also also attracts a few people who quite obviously should not be attempting to ski down the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi. Like me, a goofball wearing mere hiking boots strapped into short snowblades and not having skied in nearly three years.
I was terrified. A few days earlier I’d read online about how, on a recent weekend at Tucks, “one snowboarder lost a few pieces of his front teeth, and there was a gnarly bloody faceplant.” Staring over the edge of Tuckerman Ravine is dubious even while standing firmly on dry rock and wearing sturdy boots. In skis over snow, it feels like suicide. I was there with my winter hiking partner Phil Plouffe and my former basketball nemesis Rich Carmona (we’ve since made amends). Phil was hauling his four-decade old Rossingol skis, while Rich had his snowboard, and I had a decade-old pair of faddish snowblades.
We were far outnumbered by the 1,000-plus downhill skiers tackling Tuckerman Ravine on super-stable parabolic skis. Then there were the onlookers, gawkers who’d trekked 2.5-miles up from Pinkham Notch to see the real skiers hurtle down the triple diamond 55-degree slope and maybe also catch a glimpse of the morons like me wetting their pants. I was looking down a slope twice as steep as your typical black diamond, which is 30-40 degrees (about the same slant as a residential staircase). My legs quivered. A big lump formed in my throat. Hundreds of onlookers stared expectantly.
We began on the “bunny” hill, which was still wicked steep but was only halfway up the ravine and in a wider area without obstacles like four-foot-deep gullies or rock outcroppings. On the first run, I fell and bent my ski pole. After the second run, I felt I was regaining my snow legs. By the third, I was ready to hike up and ski Left Gully, a narrow descent on the west side of the ravine from about 5,100 feet elevation (about 1,100 feet below the summit of Washington).
The hike up, starting at about 3,800 feet, took just over an hour. So many skiers had already made the trek that our boot prints had carved something of a steep staircase into the snow. We chucked up a mountain using only our own two legs, not a noisy and expensive and destructive ski lift. I wore tights and a t-shirt, but was still sweating. Many people wore shorts. It was downright balmy, that first weekend of May.
Once at the top of the ravine, I looked out over Pinkham Notch and toward Maine, looked north to Canada, west to Vermont… and I only had one way down. Straight down. On a ravine littered with two-foot deep moguls. Far far below, Phil was relaxing in his bare feet on a big rock at the base of the ravine. Wisdom does come with age, I guess.
As I slid into the gully, careful not to fall backward or lose my footing and slide halfway down, my blades gripped into the snowpack and — miraculously — I began carving gently down in the shadow of my tall friend Mr. Washington. To be sure, I fell about dozen times. But it was exhilarating. Once at the bottom, Rich and I climbed back up and did it again. We passed a woman skiing down with her dog, which bounded after her down the ravine.
That evening we trekked back out to Pinkham Notch and stayed at the Joe Dodge Lodge, taking it “easy” the next day with a 10-mile hike up to the summit of Washington via Tuckerman’s Path to Lion’s Head, then on the way down traversed the ring around Tuckerman and descended via Davis Path to Boott Spur. We’d left Connecticut on Saturday at 5am, hiked into Tuckerman Ravine by 11am, and were back on the road home the following day by 2pm.
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Picture #2 is incredible. It looks like a bowl, and to think you were skiing down it!