Jonathan summed it up nicely for the most part, however, he did forget
to mention what a whose Jim Crowley is.  A true Skivittler is willing
to ski in any condition.  If we were all like Jim Cr. the Partee
attendence would be a whopping zero.  A little niar never melted any
green plaid... until today that is.

Oh, well, it was his loss. The skiing and company was excellent.  I
hope Jim Cr.'s mid-morning drive back to Mass was pleasant, as
pleasant as say, oh, the conditions on the Rockpile today.

--Matt K.

On 5/30/05, Jonathan S. Shefftz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Part II / State II / Day II:  NH
>
> Jim C, TEO, Evan, A (The?) Mysterious Lurker, and I met up with our friend
> Otto this morning.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Rhoade tends not to be a morning
> person at this time of year, but eventually he got into the swing of things
> and was good to go.
> Surprisingly, by contrast, Jim decided that he would rather drive three
> hours to Boston (after having driven two hours from VT), because of some
> niar.  (Having already chastised him via cell phone this evening on the
> drive back, I will allow other members of our party to chastise him via e-
> mail.)
> We (i.e., the four people who are not pathetic losers) disembarked from the
> van in some mere light niar.  Temps were pleasantly cool, and the trail to
> Airplane is a low-exertion moderate downhill affair, so lightweight
> hardshells were able to keep us dry while not causing us to sweat up.
> (Just as dry, I might add, as if I were, say, driving back to Boston that
> morning.)
> Airplane had excellent cover and excellent snow quality almost all the way
> to Spaulding Lake.  A most pleasant surprise.  (Almost as pleasant a
> surprise as the reasonably decent weather we were experiencing.)  It could
> very well still offer over 1000 vertical next weekend (although I don't
> have much experience with how quickly it starts to choke off in its current
> condition).
> By the time we started climbing back up, the niar essentially ceased for
> the day.  My hardshell jacket & pants returned to my pack, and it was soft
> shells for the rest of the day.  (Basically the same outfit I would wear if
> I were driving, say, back to Boston that morning.)
> The NE Snowfield was still in for its full ~600 vert, and we could traverse
> from there to above the center of Tucks with only one very short portage.
> But overall the snowfields looked far different from last week -- I expect
> they will start to disappear very quickly now.
> Left Gully was still in very good condition from the very top.  The
> connection to the main bowl is still very broad, but the upper part could
> get kind of sketchy by next week.
> We then began the tromp down to HoJos, although I experimented by keeping
> on my recently acquired Dynafit MLT boots -- they were surprisingly good
> for the downhike (and skied quite well too with some retrofitted
> features).  I then proceeded to attempt to hitchhike back to Great Glen.
> On the drive back to Boston (specifically, the lair of Ms. TSNS), TEO gave
> me some very useful hitchiking tips -- I should have asked him beforehand
> though, since I'd never tried it before!  Eventually, I succeeded - what
> elation!  Unfortunately, I kind of bummed out the two guys in the car -
> although Otto had befriended us, he had rejected them b/c they wanted a
> ride down too.  So instead they hiked up into Tux sans ski gear (they were
> prepared for skiing, or for a hike, but not a hike for skiing), although
> one of them had then paid a random guy $20 to borrow his gear and take a
> run.
> I then drove back to Pinkham, packed up the car, etc., next Evan arrived,
> and we drove back to Great Glen, then we drove back to Pinkham (that
> stretch of Rt 16 sure is familiar now!) to greet the arrival of TEO and our
> lurker partner.  As we packed up the cars, niar started to fall again,
> clearly having held off during our ski day:  overall, excellent conditions,
> excellent cover, excellent terrain, excellent company, and just a small
> amount of niar that really didn't cause any problems.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SkiVt-L is brought to you by the University of Vermont.

To unsubscribe, visit http://list.uvm.edu/archives/skivt-l.html