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Bug Attack - Great Gulf / Mt Washington Tuesday, 5/20/03 Dana, you guys saw no bugs!? Unbelievable! Cheated to top. Skied a few nice runs on lower angle stuff – 580’v per as long as you took the left dogleg for the final 150.’ Had some lunch. Changed setup and headed toward Mt C. Blah Blah Blah (translation below). And then…… Humongous Swarms of flying insects - Out of Nowhere! Thank goodness they weren’t biting. I mean, the sky did darken at a few points. You could hear their wings – millions of wings making a whispery cellophaney sound, a sort of hiss. Backing up…. What a day. 6o degrees with a light breeze, a few thin clouds. My plan was just to watch folks on the steeper stuff. It looked reasonably tough on the way up. Just the same, I carried skis and boots. Long story short, I didn’t ski. Although at several points I almost did - for example when a huge cloud of bugs had surrounded us at the top. I could have managed but it would have been hard. I can see where your fitness level needs to be very high to really enjoy steep terrain. Watching was fine. I took in plenty of info to process for future skiing. I do, however, appreciate how perfect conditions were. The angle, surface, coverage, temps, etc were awesome I could tell. So I AM kicking myself. Take a look at this photo from last year. http://www.mountwashington.org/snowcover/hi-res/05/2002_05_20.jpg So yeah, this week conditions were really good. That photo looks much scarier. It didn’t help my motivation to ski when, just before we arrived, a girl slid to between the narrows and the bend. Sounded like this was following one turn. When she finally got back to the top, she broke down crying and released a tangible amount of tension. She was fine after a few minutes. But still, folks were talking about dangers and self arrest – there was a minor mood thing there. Again, all good to take in for processing. There was some good skiing done though – many styles. Jumpers, low riders, boarders. That is one cool natural phenomenon. The way that snow just lays in there, so deep, while all around hasn’t had snow in weeks, is amazing. Making me even more ticked with myself is that it looked so good down low. That extra length and variety down low makes it a particularly appealing route. Oh well. So I sat amid waves of bugs waiting for my friend Mark to climb back up after his run. As we headed back, we hit several stretches where these inch-long winged black bugs were THICK. They made you a little tense. On and inside my sunglasses. Under the brim of my hat. It was too hot to wear long sleeves so there were at least 3 bugs on each arm at all times (Had there been bugs at lunch, I might have brought a strategic item or two). Head down. Move! Wave and flick. At the car, they were brutal. Tons were crushed by gear and by us. Some went down into the window cracks. Others became white stripes on the windshield. Plenty bought it on the road. Think cheesey horror film. We got outta there in a hurry. There were still some in the car today – 250 miles away. Yikes! After we got down below 3500’ they were gone. No sign of them down low. Apparently a one day event. You guys were there right before and right after I was. Strange. Dana, did you see any remains?? Adjusted talley: I’m not adding a day for those few runs but that did take my number of days between 1st and last days to 205 eastern ski days. I don’t know if in the future I’ll be taking advantage of the ‘full’ season but wow! That’s a pretty good long season (duh! The for-a-time somewhat southern phlatlander didn’t know). I wasn’t going to post since I whosed, but when all of you mentioned no bugs, I had to tell the story. Til Next Time Todd Holden _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SkiVt-L is brought to you by the University of Vermont. To unsubscribe, visit http://list.uvm.edu/archives/skivt-l.html