1. A couple weekends ago, I made my way down to North Conway for a weekend of hiking/skiing Tuckerman's Ravine. I don't know why, and I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I never made it to Tuck's while I was at Colby. It just never came together between finding alpine gear and a group of people. Anyway, I met Anders Wood, Jess Seymore, and a bunch of their friends down in NH, and it was a great weekend despite semi-disgusting weather.
Most of the group was from Boston, and it turns out that they weren't very hardcore about being outdoors. Without telling Anders, Jess, and I, they brought road bikes instead of skis, and when the weather got cold and cloudy, they weren't even that into biking. They were a really cool bunch, but not that worried about getting out the door. Anyway, on day one, we ended up doing a pretty cool hike up Mt. Kearsarge. It had good views, and a cool lookout tower on top.
On day two, Anders and I (because we were the ones with skis) headed up Tuck's despite warnings of icy conditions, wind, and low visibility. It turned out that "low visibility" was an understatement for most of the day. When we got to the hut, you couldn't see shit, and the patrollers were trying to convince people to head down. They almost scared us out of it, but we decided we weren't willing to be stuck lugging our skis up a mountain for nothing, so we went up to the bowl anyway.
When we got up there, things were ugly, and our first run in the left gully was icy and scary. You could hear people scraping down above you for a solid 30 seconds before you could see them. By then they were right on top of you. It looked like that might be our only run of the day, but we happened to bump into Alex Jospe at the bottom, and as we talked, the clouds began to lift. As things opened up, we realized that the right side was actually pretty nice, and we ended up making a few good runs in about four inches of powder. It was sweet.
At this point it should be noted, that I am on tele skis now. I don't have normal alpine boards on the east coast, so I've been free-heelin' it for the last season and a half. I'm not very good yet, so Tuck's was a definite challenge for me. I was pumped that I could ski it, though, and people seemed to think I was more badass because of it. Honestly, though, I think the trail down the mountain was the toughest skiing of the day. My legs were tired, and the trail was all moguls in sections. I really had to step up my game to make it through that. Anyway, I've now skied Tuck's and I can't wait to go back.
2. I'm getting a car on Tuesday! It's a 2000 Toyota Camry, and it has 160,000 miles on it. I know, not exactly the sexiest car on the road, or the youngest, or the toughest. It might be the cheapest, though. I'm getting it for only $2000, and it's in great shape, so hopefully it will get me to Tay's wedding and back without any problems. I have to say that although it's just a cheap set of wheels, I'm pretty excited anyway.
Love and Adventures,
Toast
