-Trip Report- North Twin III: Third Time Is the Charm (March 2011)

Finally.

The music from my phone alarm pierced the morning air at 5:30am.  I had carefully prepared myself the night before for my "morning-self" and was armed with reasons that I wanted- no, needed to heed the call.  But there he was in my head at 5:30 telling me that I just wanted more sleep:  that today would be a good day to sit on the couch and watch some basketball; that I wouldn't be letting anyone down by not going.  He had a good point.  I mustered as much consciousness as I could gather and concentrated on a single thought:  It'll be worth it.




I still hadn't been to the North Twin Slide and I was quickly running out of March. I carefully watched the weather in New Hampshire previous week, and checked the avalanche forecast for the eastern bowls of Mt. Washington.  The news wasn't good:  It had snowed a half foot, but that half foot had turned into deep slabs of powder in the eastern bowls.  Given that there was no avalanche forecast for North Twin, I had to extrapolate.  Even though it faces North (and not East like Tuckerman's), a large ridge sits above the North Twin slide's western edge, which can create a wind shield and allow wind loading to occur.  However the AMC Hut reports indicated that there was about an inch to three inches of snow recently at nearby Zealand Hut, in contrast to the half of a foot which had fallen on Mt. Washington.  Plus, the ridge above North Twin is covered in trees, which could help to calm the wind loading effect.  Given that I was travelling by myself for this attempt, I had decided to play it very conservatively.

Rock hoping is easier with skis.

After winning my mental wrestling match, I set out on the road with a full cup of coffee and a Pop-Tart.  It was a gorgeous morning with crystal clear blue skies all the way from Boston into Northern New Hampshire.  As I neared Franconia Notch I caught a glimpse of the snow being blasted off of the western side, thrown hundreds of feet in the air, and creating a veil of snow falling over the eastern side.  It was beautiful, but not a good sign.  Apparently enough powder had fallen on the area to allow for significant wind loading. Furthermore, the temperature was much below where it had been on my last attempt.  This wouldn't be good in the event that the slide had been wind blasted.  So in essence, I was looking for a little bit of sticky powder on the slide- but not too much.  Anything else and I would be taking pictures from the woods.

Pain does not exist in this dojo. No sensei.

I arrived at the trailhead ahead of time and flew through the first part of the climb past where Justin and I had cut into the woods the week before.  This time I continued on, crossing a large brook, and then cutting up into the woods.  The roaring brook I had envisioned the week before turned out to be a gurgling rivulet, which I easily crossed by rock hopping.

After cutting into the woods, I faced an almost impenetrable wall of young hardwood saplings.  I engaged in a half-hour battle of sapling judo, as I twisted, turned and contorted my way through the young glade.

Okay.  I'll stop raving about the birch glades.
But seriously.  Just look at that

The reward for my hard work was another unbelievable birch glade. At this point I feel like I keep beating the same drum with North Twin, but you really have to see it to believe it.  This new glade was undoubtedly the best of all the birch glades I had seen.  Where the others had been occasionally peppered with low brush, this was a wide open moose-sized living room.

I marked the top of the glades on my GPS so that I could hit it on my way back and cut up toward the slide.  The trees stayed remarkably well spaced, which led for easy travel until just before the slide.  As I sidestepped across some of the steeper slopes I noticed that the snow slid easily down the hill.  Not good.

I caught a tantalizingly close glimpse of the slides before I was thrust into a tightly spaced evergreen glen. I pushed through the last of the fir trees and cut down onto the main slide just before it branches up to the left.

View from the bottom of the slide

As I stepped out onto the slide, I noticed that there was fresh powder, but it wasn't beyond ankle deep.  I decided to climb a little higher and assess the conditions.  I cut tracks back and forth up the slide until I reached close to the halfway point.  I decided, given that I could see the wind loading the slide above, not to push my luck and instead ski the lower angled portions below.

I followed the slide path down to the end, and then cut back into the trees and uphill toward the GPS mark for the glade.  I found some great turns in the fresh powder in the birch glades, before fighting through another session of sapling judo.

As I followed the logging trail out, I thought of all the areas I had become familiar with in the last few weeks, and wondered where my next adventure might take me.

I also left a little mental note for my morning self.  "I told you so, you lazy bastard."

The view across to last week's playground.

The Nubble

Heading home.

Here's the video....