Tucks

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

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Tuckerman

Departure - Off to Boston

Arrival!

Bretton Woods Ski Resort

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    Now that I've been there, I can say it.  Tucks is wicked.  Pictures are completely inadequate to describe the size of this glacial cirque.  After climbing and skiing it, Jim and I sat at the bottom of the bowl and had a bite to eat.  I sat in awe - nibbling on the crackers and gorp that I brought with me. You've probably been to the Grand Canyon and felt it - two dimensional photos distort how big things really are.  You have to be there to get it.  I have watched all the videos on youtube and perused the pictures on Google images, but none of them prepared me for the size and steepness of Tuckerman Ravine. This is why you have to do things. You can read about them, study them, Google them and blog about them, but until you go and experience them, you know nothing.  

    Everything I read online about the ravine makes perfect sense now, but only now.  Before, it was just words, now it's something else.  If I could describe it, I would.  I'm a little mad that no one properly prepared me for what I would find. I'll try to convey my experience, but I apologize in advance for failing to properly explain what I saw.

    I met Jim at Synnott Mountain Guides and after a gear check and completing a disconcerting liability waiver/emergency contact form, we drove to Pinkham Notch trail head.  I caught a few glimpses of Mount Washington's southeast face through the trees, but didn't see Tuckerman Ravine during the drive, which is probably a good thing. 

    We were able to don our skis and skin up the trail from the parking lot. Jim set the pace and we did 1,500 feet of vertical in a little over an hour.  That's as fast as I've ever climbed on skis and was pretty tiring. 

    There are two trails to Tuckerman Ravine and we took the ski trail, which we would descend later in the day after skiing Tuckerman. After a mile and a half, we veered off to ascend the Lion's Head to the right of Tuckerman.  Jim had never carried skis on this route, but thought it would give us more options for the day.  We entertained the idea of summitting Mt. Washington, but that wasn't my goal. By going this direction, we would approach the ravine from the top right, as opposed to going directly up the middle.  In hindsight, this was a great way to experience Tuckerman for the first time.  This way, the "big reveal" came from the top of the ravine, not the bottom.  

    After a quick break, we put our skis on our packs and headed up the Lion's Head.  The first 500 feet were nearly vertical and I had to learn to use my ice ax and whippet as grips while toeing into the snow and ice with my boot crampons.  A whippet is a ski pole with an ice ax on the end of the grip. The climb was slow and exhausting.  Lugging my pack and skis up a steep climb is something that's hard to train for in Macon.  Once we reached the mid-way point of the Lion's Head, we got our first view of Tuckerman Ravine:

The Lion's Head to the right and Tuckerman Ravine behind. The Left Gully runs along the shadow line.  The Left Head-Wall is visible from here as well.

    Once I saw the ravine, my thoughts shifted to how we were supposed to get down.  At first glance, it looks completely un-skiable.  The central head-wall is comprised of gigantic vertical ice falls and the right head-wall, while free of ice, had a fresh wind-loaded snow pack and showed signs of recent avalanches. The Left Gully looked like a thousand foot death-chute between craggy rocks and I couldn't see the Right Gullies or the Sluice because they were below us, and from the top of the Lion's Head, it just dropped off out of sight like a cliff's edge.  Jim asked which route I wanted to ski and I said, "the easy one." 

     A view from the top of Tuckerman at the Lion's Head. This is where we started our ski descent.

    Jim gave me a look that landed somewhere between confusion and that apologetic shrug you see when you ask someone a question they just can't answer. He pointed to the third chute of the right gully ahead of us and said we could take a look at that one.  So we hiked another hundred yards or so to check it out.

    Oh yeah... the wind.  Once we reached the top rim of Tuckerman at the Lion's Head, high winds from the west came screaming over the summit ridge and made walking on the rocks and ice a challenge. I worried it would make skiing impossible, but eventually I just forgot about it. My hands and face became numb, but I wasn't worried about frostbite because I was more worried about falling into the ravine (instead of skiing into it).  Once we made it to the Right Gully, Jim instructed me to stay put while he venture toward the edge to check the route he had selected. He called me over and showed me a ledge where I could safely put my skis on.  At this point a photographer/climber from the Associate Press happened by and asked us if we were going to ski "that" and could he photograph us.  We said yes and yes and gave him our email addresses.  I hope he sends the pictures.

    Jim took off down the chute and I followed.  Jim had perfect form doing a series of jump turns and waited patiently for me to give it a try.  I didn't fall - you really can't. If you do, you'll end up on the rocks at the bottom of the ravine. It was the most exposed and challenging skiing I've ever done and I was relieved to make it down in one piece.  When we got to the bottom of the ravine, we stopped and had our lunch. That's when I saw Tuckerman for the first time.  It's not the one you see in the pictures, but here are some anyway.

Our view during lunch.  Some other skiers were just arriving.

Proof I was there.

    The ski back to the car was uneventful but nice.  Conditions on the trail were resort-like and we were able to take one more look at the ravine from the Hermit Lake Hut.  Here's my last picture of Tucks:

The rocks to the right of the head-wall are where we dropped in.  Between the rocks are narrow chutes with pretty nice snow and only moderate avalanche threat. They look like thin white lines running up the side of the ravine.

Geek Notes

    It bothers me that pictures can't capture the scale of mountains. When I summitted Shasta for the first time, I took a picture of it from the trail-head and remembered that it didn't capture the splendor of the volcano.  I described that to my friend Tom, who is an artist in SF, and asked if he could paint it for me.  I indicated that the picture didn't do the mountain justice. He told me that artists are familiar with this and have to exaggerate mountain peaks in paintings to make them look right. The pictures of Tuckerman Ravine seem to under-represent the actual look of the mountain by a factor of 10, if that helps.

    You may have noticed that the rocks look green in some of the pictures.  They are.  Here's an example:

    All the rocks were covered in lichens.  It was surprising to me that things could live in the harsh environment of Mount Washington.  Lichens are pretty tough though. Technically, lichens are not plants, they are two separate life forms comprised of fungi and algae, living together symbiotically. The algae provide the fungus with nutrients via photosynthesis and the fungus protects the algae from the harsh environment.  The reason it's called Tuckerman Ravine is because the botanist Edward Tuckerman studied the lichen there.  Note: it's not Tuckerman's Ravine - he didn't own it.