Bretton Woods Ski Resort

Country: U.S. - Elevation: 6,289 Feet - Maximum Pitch: 90 Degrees - Highest Sustained Winds: 231 mph - Latitude: 44 degrees N

Today we skied the local resort as a warm up for tomorrow's trip to Tuckeman Ravine. Kimberly picked up the mechanics of "skinning" amazingly fast. After a morning of skiing, we donned our climbing skins and climbed the resort from base to the top of the Bethlehem lift. We heard a lot of positive comments from skiers who seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing as we worked our way up various groomed slopes. It took about an hour and a half to climb a little over 1,000 vertical feet, which was a nice pace for Kimberly's first time out. We were rewarded with a final run back to the lodge.

I've been concerned about dragging Kimberly to Tuckerman, having never been myself. It's a legitimate double/triple black diamond run and bad weather can make it unskiable. The winds are going to be high tomorrow and the snow conditions at the ravine are variable. Jim Surette has agreed to guide me tomorrow and I look forward to exploring the terrain and working with him. After a discussion this evening, Kimberly and I decided that I'd go tomorrow with Jim to recon the climb and familiarize myself with the area. At that point, we can decide our next steps. One possibility is to go back on Wednesday or Thursday, or we might check out the old Cog Railway that runs up the west side of Mount Washington. It's not quite as challenging as Tuckerman and would be a more appropriate introduction to the backcountry for Kimberly.

The weather cleared today and we got to see the alpenglow on Mount Washington at sunset. For the past two days, it's been cloudy with snow flurries. It was nice to see the sun again.

Geek Notes

Sunsets are distracting. They can be so colorful and scenic, that many times we miss some of the more interesting parts of the show while being mesmerized by the showstopping blaze of glory as the sun dives below the horizon. We were all taught why the sky is blue (the atmosphere scatters blue light) and we are also taught that this is why sunsets are reddish orange. That's what creates the phenomenon called alpenglow. If you face away from the sunset, everything in the opposite direction is illuminated orange. And if one of those things happens to be a snow-capped mountain, it lights up with a pleasant orange glow. Living most of my life in warm climates, it was only recently that I've been fortunate to observe Alpenglow at Mount Shasta, on Ecuador's volcanoes, and now, Mount Washington. Here's a picture of alpenglow on Tuckerman Ravine. This happened at sunrise, since Tuckerman Ravine is on the east side of Mount Washington. I didn't take this picture.

If you turn your back to the setting sun, you can also watch the earth's shadow rise if atmospheric conditions cooperate. It's called the terminus (technically, it's the line in the sky where day meets night, kind of - see below) and is a pretty impressive sight.

While I'm on the topic of sunsets, I recently learned that the sunset is a little more complicated than at first glance. First, even after the sun has dropped below the true horizon, it can still be seen because the atmosphere serves as a lens, bending the light from the sun. This allows it to be seen a bit longer than if there was no atmosphere. It's also interesting to point out that the sunset is followed by dusk, or twilight. While this is not that shocking to anyone, as always, there's more to it. When the "apparent" sun first falls below the horizon, we enter a time called civil twilight. Once the sun falls 6 degrees below the horizon, we enter nautical twilight. From 12-18 degrees below the horizon, the sun creates what is called astronomical twilight. Only after that, do we enter night. During civil twilight, terrestrial features are still clearly visible and the brightest planets and stars reveal themselves. During nautical twilight, the horizon is still visible to sailors under normal atmospheric conditions, but not so during astronomical twilight. After astronomical twilight, it's dark.

The transitions from one twilight to the next are called dusks. So there's actually three dusks in addition to the sunset. They are called, civil dusk, nautical dusk and astronomical dusk. Some extreme northern (and southern) locations experience perpetual twilight since the sun never dives more than 18 degrees below the horizon. That makes it hard for some to sleep and means that some places don't have three dusks.

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