I didn't ski this weekend, but...

took a hike instead to grab a picture of where we ski most weekends.

Oh, and to summit Mt. Washington... yay!

WANTED

Any information regarding a missing Sunshine Ski Resort magnet.

Last seen on the refrigerator at the Freshie's ski house.

Monetary value is minimal, but sentimental value is priceless.

Whereabouts is unknown, but SR has VERY strong suspicions as to who may have stolen it.

0.17

The legal alcohol limit? My body mass index? The chances of there being fresh snow in North Conway? No, no, no!. 0.17 - The difference that separates 4th place from 3rd place (not that I'm bitter)- separating a winner from a loser. U Go Girl! Well, go faster, because you were 0.17 away from winning a Major Award! Sigh. A tighter tuck? A sharper edge? Less drag? The world will never know. No one remembers 4th place. Do they give copper medals at the Olympics? Methinks not.
But a big KUDOS to Speed Racer for pulling out the the silver medal - the place on the podium - actually winning a major award. What it is, you will have to stay tuned to find out. But in the meantime, here's to you Speed Racer, my hero. Way to go girl!

Kiwi's Tip of the Week/Month

Ok, since I'm being chastized about no tip - this one will have to make up for all of last month. Tip: Don't put something, that can otherwise always be found in the same location, in a new place for safe keeping unless a) you write down where that safe place is and/or b) you don't care whether you remember where the safe place is.

It’s a sad, sad commentary that the Freshies haven’t posted a darned thing to this blog since January 3rd…what is UP with that?? Last year you couldn't shake a stick without hitting a blogger…but alas, thus far no “Kiwi tip of the week”, no insights to the local N. Conway ski/après ski scene. Dare I say…no fun?!?! No, No, NO! We’ve been having so much fun, we just haven’t had time to blog!

Several of us (Tiny Boarder, Spider Pig, Lucky Jeans, Danger Boy Kiwi and Freshies wannabe - 2B) had a fantastic week in Canada for a ski vacation. We stayed in Canmore, AB and skied Sunshine, Lake Louise and Kicking Horse in BC. In the interest of keeping this entry short, (even though I fear it won't be!!) I will limit this to a “Best of the Canadian Rockies” list. The opinions here are expressly my own so to those that were there, please feel free to add your own comments and your own “Best of” should you not agree.
Best Food – nachos at Kicking Horse. I know nachos are hard to screw up, but they are also very hard to make really, really good. The ones at KH were all about the chips. (a close second was Tiny Boarders Beet Risotto…yum-my!! I love beets. I love risotto, how can you go wrong?)

Best Rentals/Sports Shop – Sport Experts in Canmore (or as Spider Pig liked to abbreviate it, S.EXperts). These guys were awesome! I rented skis all week and they were totally knowledgeable, nice and funny! They even had me and Kiwi buying “Superfeet” for our boots and so far, they are working pretty well. Oh, and I got a fabulous deal on Rossi Voodoo’s – and with the Canadian exchange rate, I couldn’t pass it up!

Best skiing - hands down, for me, Kicking Horse on our 1st day there. Lots of snow, lots of steeps and a rating system in which their blues are closer to double-blacks back home. This ‘aint no place for sissies!! The mountain is also absolutely gorgeous with seriously breathtaking vistas.

Best après ski drink – Glüwein at The Fairmont, Lake Louise. Such a warm and comforting drink and you get to overlook Lake Louise. This was beautiful in winter; I can only imaging it in the fall. They also had wonderful service as Lucky Jeans can attest when they accommodated a “special delivery” for her. (OK - so the pix isn't the Gluwein, but don't teh boys look tough??)

Best port-a-potty - You may ask why this is even a category, but as luck (or not so much) would have it, Lucky Jeans has to pee – A LOT - in the morning, so we saw our share of bathroom stops. The best was somewhere past Banff Nat’l Park off of CAD 1. Totally cute little log cabin outhouses…seriously, they were cute!

Best après ski song – Anything by KC and the Sunshine Band!! At least I and some older gentlemen at Kicking Horse thought so.

Best song for the ride to the slopes – ‘Lollipop' by Mika. Thanks to Kiwi for introducing us to the new Freshies ride to the slopes anthem! "Suck too hard on a lillipop and love's gonna get you down"!

Best way to relax after a hard day of skiing – Banff Hot Springs. Ahhhh, what a lovely way to soothe the muscles.

Best Canadian Microbrew – I’m going with Rutting Elk from the Grizzly Paw Brewery in Canmore. I didn’t know what “rutting” meant, so 2B informed me that “rutting” basically meant “horny”. At least that’s what I got out of his explanation. (He also taught me another word on the lift at Wildcat that sort of had something to do with his shoulder injury…but I digress)

Best renditon of "The "Walton's" theme song - Spider Pig's uncanny "trumpeting" ability far surpasses any I have heard.

Best attempt at a part in a Warren Miller movie - There are actually two, both by, surprise, surprise, Danger Boy - and we have the video to back it up. The 1st was Danger Boy's "attempt" to jump a rock that ended up in a scary looking face-plant. The 2nd was an "attempt" to jump off of the headwall at the top of the Paradise Lift at Lake Louise. Neither one was particularly pretty...but were quite fun to watch!

Best Quotes - There were a lot; I will limit it to two:
From the guy at S.EXperts when asked if he could repair a core shot -”I’m really good with carnage”.
From me, Speed Racer, after Lucky Jeans had to make an impromptu “wilderness” bathroom break – “The party pants will catch the drip”.

And with that I’ll leave you all with a real quote.
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh” – W.H. Auden

Here’s to lot’s more laughs for the rest of the Freshies season!!!

Two Runs and Done

Our first ski day of the season - Jan 3rd 2009 - was a total bust. It was about -19 degrees at the top of Wildcat but that includes wind chill. We managed two runs and that was it. Fortunately, we got back in under the hour limit and got vouchers for another day. Hopefully, that day will have a lot more snow and less of a wind chill factor.

Tales of a Mount Washington Day Hike

Caution. So begins the description of Huntington Ravine trail in the AMC’s Guide to the White Mountains. I know this because I read it the night before I and a few other intrepid (read: naïve) hikers embarked on what’s known as the most difficult hike in the White Mountains. I went to bed that night with the image of a sheer, steep, foreboding, blood-thirsty granite headwall looming in front of me and certain of one thing only: my imminent demise the next day. Surely, I would either be crushed by an avalanche of falling rocks or swallowed up by a bottomless crevasse never to be seen again (as my mother is always warning me). I awoke hours before the alarm went off, drenched in a cold sweat, wondering how I could get out of this gracefully without appearing as though I was scared out of my mind. But it was too late. Gerry, known as “Danger Boy” to his friends (and with good reason), was up early and ready to roll. He assured me and our friend Joanne in his irrepressibly optimistic manner that it wasn’t all that hard. The guidebook, he reasoned, was trying to scare people off so they wouldn’t be tempted to bring their kids and dogs and other household items up that trail. All I can say is god help them if they did.

After a hearty breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs and train fries, Joanne, Gerry and I met up with the rest of the gang at Pinkham Notch Visitor Center. Besides us, there were three software engineers from Bose – Masood, Kyle from Cleveland, and John – and John’s girlfriend Deb, who is also a trained AMC leader and has more common sense than the rest of us put together. Thank god. I mean someone had to make sure we didn’t dally at the top of the mountain and got back before sunset.

Masood, me, Joanne, Deb (in background), John, and Kyle with big stick:

They spent the night at the AMC’s Joe Dodge Lodge, where I’m fairly certain they don’t serve train fries for breakfast. Even so, everyone looked well rested and ready for a big day on the mountain. Kyle from Cleveland even brought a big walking stick with him. I was impressed. Maybe he could use it to deflect the falling rocks or fish me out of the crevasse? Kyle eventually confessed somewhere along the hard scramble up Huntington that he’d never actually hiked before. This was a revelation to me. I had no idea. At this point, big walking stick aside, I was in complete awe of Kyle who scrambled up the sheer rock face (also known as The Fan) without even the slightest sign that perhaps, maybe, he was in over his head.

Deb, hiking up The Fan:

Hiking up Huntington Ravine is as technical as it gets for any hiker, let alone a newbie. It’s like going from a bunny slope to a double black diamond in one day. Slightly unnerving, and a bit crazy, to say the least.

Was Huntington Ravine everything I dreamed (literally) it would be? Yes and no. It was looming and craggy and ominous-looking for sure...

...with a big boulder field at the bottom and lots of vertical, hand over hand climbing on the way up, but I was expecting a 5.12 route without the benefit of a harness and ropes. It wasn’t that. We did see real rock climbers to the left of the trail on what’s known as The Pinnacle. For most of us, though, the hardest part was the aforementioned Fan, which was about a hundred feet of sheer rock face, but there were enough hand and foot holds to securely make our way up, and we all felt hugely relieved when we did. The magnificent views of the ravine below and mountains in the distance made it worth all the effort.

A view of Wildcat ("a man's mountain"):

Once we reached the top (high-fives all around) we could either take the Alpine Garden trail which circumvents the summit or take Nelson Crag all the way to the top. Since the winds were a mere class 1 hurricane force (um, that’s about 70 MPH), we opted to go all the way to the top. Other than The Fan, this was the most difficult part of the hike. The wind was so strong we struggled to stay on two feet. I literally crawled my way to the summit. I was sure that everyone who saw me from the safety of their cars on the auto road was thankful they weren’t me, that crazy lady in the light blue fleece being blown around mercilessly like a plastic grocery bag in a Shaw’s parking lot. I actually contemplated hitching a ride up the last hundred yards or so to the top, but that would have been cheating (and practical), so I didn’t.

We made it, but where's Masood?

Here he is:

Once we all got to the top, we ate our carbo-loaded lunch in the building that houses a museum, a gift shop (where else would you buy your commemorative t-shirt and shot glass?), a cafeteria, the famed weather station, and a few other amenities I was glad to see (like flushing toilets and tp!). There’s also a plaque that lists all of the people who’ve died on Mount Washington for one reason or another. Quite a few of the deaths could have been avoided, I guess, if the people who met their fates on the peak had decided to stay home or go to the mall rather than attempt to climb to the summit in the middle of January. C’est la vie (or “mort”), as the French would say. By the way, there were quite a few French-speaking visitors on the summit that day. But I digress.

After snapping a few souvenir (French, again) photos of us on the summit cone and a quick visit to the “Tip Top House” (a replica of a stone hotel that operated atop Mt. Washington in the mid-1800s), we made our way back down via Tuckerman Ravine trail on the other side – a much easier, but no less spectacular, hike down than Huntington.

Coming down Tuckerman:

We took a short break at the shelter at the foot of the ravine (where you can also buy a t-shirt) and then headed out for our final, gradual descent to Pinkham Notch. Near the end, there’s a short stairway that leads to an overlook of a waterfall. If my toes weren’t painfully jammed into the front of my boots and my knees ready to buckle, I probably would’ve taken the little detour to see it. But I was in serious pain, so I limped on to the finish. We finally reached the parking lot at 5:51 PM (according to Gerry’s watch), so a 9-hour hike from beginning to end, including breaks. Not too bad. Oh, and we all survived! Yippee! I’m not sure how many of us are eager to do it again next week, but I’m sure that we’ll find new, if not so challenging, trails to conquer in the future.

Until then, happy hiking!