Angel Slides still unsafe

Backcountry skiers who think it’s now safe to ski the Angel Slides on Wright Peak should be aware that an avalanche risk may still exist.

Two skiers were caught in an avalanche on the wider of the two Angel Slides on February 27, but they escaped with minor bruises.

Last Friday, Jesse Williams of Cloudsplitter Mountain Guides dug a test pit on the narrower slide and concluded that the snow pack was unstable. As a result, Williams decided against taking skiers to the slide as part of last weekend’s Adirondack Backcountry Ski Festival.

Below is a video of the avalanche tests.

Skiing Mount Marcy: Phelps Brook section

Alan Wechsler ascends into the clouds on Marcy. Photo by Phil Brown.

Yesterday I skied Mount Marcy with Alan Wechsler, one of the contributors to the Explorer. I had skied Marcy just a few weeks ago, but I never tire of this trip.

We had great weather until we emerged above tree line. The summit was a complete whiteout, and the wind was fierce, with wind chills below zero. Descending the summit bowl, we couldn’t see the bumps in the terrain or any landmarks to gauge our position. “It’s like skiing blind,” Alan remarked.

It took us a while in this ghostly atmosphere to reconnect with the hiking trail. Once we got below the clouds, we could see again, and the skiing was terrific.

One of my favorite stretches of the Marcy trail is along Phelps Brook. By the time skiers arrive at the brook, they have descended all the steep, difficult sections. Now they can relax while cruising the 1.2 miles between the two brook crossings.

I took a video of Alan skiing this part of the trail. I was right behind him until he took a small spill toward the end. The camera was strapped to my chest.

Adirondack Backcountry Ski Festival

A backcountry skier descends a birch glade in the High Peaks. Photo by Susan Bibeau.

The Adirondack Backcountry Ski Festival is back this weekend, and though most of the guided ski trips are booked, there are a number of cool events open to the public.

For starters, you can test skis and boots at Otis Mountain, a private hill with a rope tow south of Elizabethtown, and enroll in telemark and skinning lessons, taught by Ron Konowitz, and avalanche clinics, taught by Mike Kazmierczak, a representative of Dynafit and Mammut. It’s all free.

The clinics and demonstrations are on Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. A schedule can be found on the website of the Mountaineer, the festival’s host. Otis Mountain is on Lobdell Road off Route 9N (the turn is to the east).

At 6 p.m. Saturday, Backcountry magazine will host a dinner at Keene Valley Lodge, located a few doors from the Mountaineer.  Price is $20. After dinner, starting at 7:30 p.m., Backcountry will show two ski movies at the Mountaineer: The Freeheel Life and The Fine Line. Admission is $10.

As of today (Wednesday), all of the ski trips were booked except the Karhu Traverse, an intermediate tour through Avalanche Pass that starts in Tahawus and ends at Adirondak Loj. Karhu demo skis are available for this trip.

The Mountaineer will donate proceeds from the festival to the Adirondack Ski Touring Council and the New York Ski Educational Foundation.

Call the Mountaineer (518-576-2281) or check the store’s website for more information.

Interview with avalanche survivors

In light of Saturday’s avalanche on Wright Peak, I thought it’d be instructive to post an in-depth interview with two survivors of the avalanche that occurred in the same spot in February 2000.  Four skiers were swept up in the earlier avalanche, and one died.

The interview with Ron Konowitz and his then-wife, Lauren, appeared in the Explorer in 2003. Although usually reluctant to talk about the avalanche, they agreed to the interview in part to correct the record and in part to warn others of the avalanche danger in the Adirondacks.

 What emerged was the most detailed story of the disaster ever published and a frightening account of what it’s like to be caught up (and buried, in Lauren’s case) in an avalanche.

To read the interview, click the PDF files below.

Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Skiers caught in avalanche

Two backcountry skiers were partially buried in an avalanche over the weekend on the Angel Slides on Wright Peak—the location of a fatal avalanche in February 2000.

The Angel Slides on Wright Peak.

David Winchell, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said one man was pinned against a stump and buried up to his chest. The second was carried more than six hundred feet and buried up to his chest. Both men were able to dig themselves out and leave the area.

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise identified the skiers as Ian Measeck of Glens Falls and Jamie McNeill of Vergennes, Vt.

The skiers had dug a pit to test the snow before heading up the slope about noon on Saturday. While ascending, they heard “woofing” noises in the fresh snow—a sign of an unstable snow pack—and chose to backtrack. As they turned around, however, the snow gave way and carried them both down the slope.

Visible from Marcy Dam, the Angel Slides are bedrock slabs (one wide, one narrow) that were stripped of vegetation during a 1999 rainstorm. In winter, they are often skied. In 2000, an avalanche on the wide slab swept up four skiers. One of them, twenty-seven-year-old Toma Vracarich, was killed. Saturday’s avalanche also was on the wide slab. Winchell said the entire slab–300 feet wide by 1,200 feet long–avalanched.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Adirondack Almanack on the 2000 disaster and other avalanches in the Adirondacks.

On Monday, DEC issued a news release warning that recent snowfalls have increased the avalanche danger in the Adirondacks. Click on the link below to read it.

Avalanche news release PDF

Master skier on the Marcy trail

Mark Meschinelli at Marcy Dam. Photo by Phil Brown.

Last weekend I encountered Mark Meschinelli and Dave Hough, two members of the notorious Ski to Die Club, on the trail to Mount Marcy. Back in the seventies and eighties, Mark, Dave, and their crew set a standard in boldness by tackling difficult terrain–slides, frozen brooks, glades, you name it–in the gear of the day, namely lightweight leather boots and skinny skis.

These guys still got it. After summiting, I skied down with them and took a short video of Mark making parallel turns on the ski trail below Indian Falls. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear he’s on alpine or randonee skis, but he’s actually using a telemark setup, meaning his heels are free. A friend tells me that Mark was equally adept at making parallel turns on the old cross-country gear in the heyday of the Ski to Die Club.

The clip is only about twelve seconds long. Look for Mark to enter the frame from the top. The figure is quite small at first, but you can tell he’s making graceful turns.

Incidentally, Mark also is an expert rock climber. A resident of Plattsburgh, he often can be found on routes at Poke-o-Moonshine Mountain just off the Northway. Last spring, Mark led a friend and me up Catharsis, one of the classic Poke-o routes. Look for a story on this adventure in a future issue of the Explorer.

Telemark turns on Whiteface Landing trail

Tony Goodwin

On Sunday, I skied to Whiteface Landing for the first time in a few years and was pleasantly surprised by the state of the trail. I’m not talking about the snow conditions, although they were superb. I’m referring to improvements made in recent years by Tony Goodwin and his volunteers at the Adirondack Ski Touring Council.

The council removed boulders, built bridges over streamlets, and, perhaps most important, fixed the drainage problems that sometimes left the bottom of the trail’s biggest hill bare and/or icy.

It so happens that we encountered Tony on the trail on Sunday afternoon. On the way out, we videotaped him as he descended the big hill, following him as he made graceful telemark turns in lightweight cross-country gear. I was impressed. Watch the video, and I think you’ll be too.

By the way, the three-mile trail from Route 86 to Whiteface Landing is rated as a novice tour in Tony’s book, Ski and Snowshoe Trails in the Adirondacks, but some beginners have trouble coming down this hill. If you’ve never skied to Whiteface Landing, the video will give you some idea of what to expect.

Avalanche Pass ski video

Looking toward Avalanche Pass from Marcy Dam.

The trip to Avalanche Lake from Adirondak Loj is one of the most popular ski tours in the Adirondacks, and justifiably so. You’re treated to a variety of spectacular scenery along the way, culminating in the lake itself, a frozen sliver of white immured between the cliffs of Mount Colden and Avalanche Mountain. On the return, you enjoy a half-mile descent from the pass on one of the few trails in the High Peaks designed for skiing.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video on Adirondack Almanack of my descent from Avalanche Pass. But I actually took several short videos that day, and now I’ve stitched them together to create an eight-minute movie. It features some of the highlights of the tour: Marcy Dam, the slide on Little Colden, the rock walls of the pass, the Trap Dike, and the lake itself. And, of course, the descent from the pass on my return (with the camera strapped to my chest).

I apologize for the crude production. I’m new to this happy medium.

Adirondack ski video: Descent from McKenzie Pass

McKenzie Pass. Photo by Phil Brown.

The Jackrabbit Ski Trail offers lots of great skiing over its twenty-four miles, but the best part is the six-mile stretch from Whiteface Inn Road in Lake Placid to McKenzie Pond Road outside Saranac Lake.  The highlight is a mile-and-a-half downhill run from McKenzie Pass to McKenzie Pond.

On Sunday, I did a round trip to the top of the pass from McKenzie Pond Road. It took me nearly forty-five minutes to climb the hill (after skiing two miles to its base) and just five minutes to descend. That might seem like a lousy pain-to-pleasure ratio, but the schuss makes up in exhilaration what it lacks in duration.

I made a  video of my descent with the Adirondack Explorer Chest Cam (a point-and-shoot strapped to my chest). You’ll hear me narrate as I ski (btw, the Hemingway story I refer to is titled “Cross-Country Snow”).

I wore a GPS watch that measured my progress. I averaged 14 mph and reached a top speed of about 25 mph.

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Adirondack backcountry ski video: take 2

This YouTube link takes you to my second attempt at making a short backcountry ski video. For this one, I strapped my camera–an Olympus 1030SW–to my chest and skied down a small peak outside Saranac Lake. The clip is only a few minutes long. Unfortunately, when I converted it to QuickTime for the Web it lost a lot of resolution. That’s why the titles at the start are blurry. I’m still learning. I hope to post more in the future.