Opening Day, Auto Road
Here’s a quote from the Obs forecast today: “Springtime showers and thunderstorms [sic] with the possibility of small hail and gusty winds.”
It’s 6 AM. and the angel on my shoulder is saying, “Paul, you might want to stay out of high, exposed places today.” From my other shoulder, the little cloven hoofed guy with the trident takes over.
“Eh Bucko, if you don’t like the weather forecast, look out the window.”
I look outside. Not a cloud in the sky. The day is not in plain sight but I’m imagining brilliant snow and crisp shadows. The image suggests the smell of sunscreen. Now, I’d prefer the funk of a long-dead fish to the smell of that stuff, so I’ll just put on a Gilligan hat and cover up with zinc oxide.
A web-cam view of Mt. Washington confirmed the all-clear so I called Phil, loaded the Outback, and picked him up. We planned to drive to Winter Cutoff, hike it, then recon the ski terrain along 6 mile grade. We’d be well positioned to go higher if fair weather prevailed. At 8:30 we hid the car at the Ess turn just above Winter Cut-Off parking lot, which is the end of the line for tourists driving up today. The hike up Cut-Off was in sneakers with AT gear on our backs.
Around 1952, the Air Force was testing jet engines on the summit and employed upward of forty men there. They built Winter Cut-Off as a shortcut for wintertime access. (F.A. Burt–The Story of Mount Washington). The Cut-Off was a concession to impassable snowdrifts on the 5 mile grade. The rough, graded way runs through krumholtz and tundra from the Auto Road 4 ½ mile mark to the 6th milepost. It is mostly exposed to northwest winds, but catches enough snow for good skiing if timed right. See "Skiing the Cutoff" in April, 2007.
Lee Vincent tells about how equipment-operator Phil Labbe was avalanched while traveling the Cut-Off in his crawler near a place they called the Sugar Bowl. He and his passengers shoveled out the machine, turned around, and headed back down. (Vincent-Ten Years on the Rockpile) A battered, retired version of one such taxi is on display in North Conway’s Weather Discovery Center parking lot. For more on Phil Labbe, follow this link to an old Popular Mechanics article, “Taxi Up Misery Mountain”.
We moved quickly along 6 mile grade, wandering off toward the Great Gulf from time to time for pictures and to check out some drainages that might be holding snow.
My Magellan GPS held waypoints for a few snowy traces that I’d gleaned from Google Earth historical imagery. I liked the idea of exploring something low angle and close-by Winter Cut-Off, something less exposed than the higher stuff pictured above. For me, the foreground held convenient possibilities.
Near Hairpin we studied a strip of snow directly below us that disappeared into the Gulf. We knew the classic spots above us were skiable, but weather was closing in, beginning to look just like the forecast. In the 1940s, refuge shelters were placed above treeline every half-mile along the road for storm-bound summit personnel who often had to travel on foot. None are left today. We called retreat, turned around, and headed back.
We stuck to the main road and gave up our sneakers for ski boots at Cragway turn. As if on cue, "Pinkham’s Window" opened; sunshine streamed in, the Northern Peaks came out, and it looked like turning back might have been a mistake. No matter, we skied all possible variations of the 1000' snowfield that is Cragway drift. I won't say we were the first to ski this place, but this terrain is otherwise noteworthy. I reviewed Nick Howe's detailed account of the legendary Dr. Benjamin Ball, "The Man Who Collected Views" (Not Without Peril-2000). Dr. Ball's name is immortalized in a prominent outcropping just below the summit called Ball Crag. With little besides the clothes on his back and an umbrella, the doctor survived three days lost on the mountain in an October snowstorm. By Howe's reckoning, he hunkered down under his umbrella for two nights, right here above Cragway turn on Chandler Ridge. Somewhere under our skis may be an abandoned windbreak of rocks, a discarded snuff tin, or a penknife left behind.
Clearing snow from Cragway is usually a turning point for the road crew during spring opening. For years, road employees hand-shoveled their way through 30' deep of drifted in time for the traditional July 4th arrival of tourists. These days, the drift is pushed away by a Bombardier 250, a big Quebec-built snowcat with a blade as wide as the road itself. By the time we got there, the crew had finished carving the drift all the way down to the entrenched road.
Next we ambled down the five mile grade and dropped into two little chutes I’d been eyeing all winter from the Stage Office in the GGT Lodge.
That finished, we were out of snow. Phil signed off on our vertical and turns as adequate, so we called it a day. Rich was parked across the road in a stage working his way through a book of crossword puzzles when we passed through his road block. Said our good-byes, thank-yous, and came out the bottom around 2:30.
...a few more of Phil's turns
Google Earth Archive Images:
Five Mile Chutes
Hairpin Chutes
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