Tuckerman Ravine

[Shadows]

That's a good amount of people up there. Cool.

[Schif]

That's so awesome guys. Way to kick some ass

[RidgeRacer]

Awesome report. Thanks for posting.

[NMSKI]

Great report and pics!  I hope to make it up there some year to check it out.  

[momskeeztoo]

Lots of pics on IG of Tucks, looked very busy this year! 

[GSSucks]

Back at it.




Skin lap at Stratton on the way to Jackson NH, skied almost top to bottom with a little fast grass thrown in for fun. Made it to Tuckermans Saturday morning. The hike up was mud, rocks, slush and snow, we did skin a bit towards the top.


Boot pack up right, they got about 6” of snow on Thursday night and we had first tracks in right. Really heavy cream cheese snow.
Boot up left
En-root to Hillmans.


We skied down Hillmans and to rope 7, then back to hiking on the way out. In total it was 8.2 miles,4100’ of vert, 7.5 hours, 4 beers, 2 liters of water and countless snacks. All in all a great day in the mountains. I suck at taking pictures so this is the best I have. After a few more beers and snacks in the lot we were on the road to Killington for the night and gondola laps on Sunday. They reported 30ish trails and the skiing was damn fun. Great way to end April skiing.
On to May!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AtomicSkier]

Tucks has always been something I wanted to do if the opportunity came along, but never pulled the trigger.  After seeing the 50 Episode from Tucks, and this report, it quickly moved up my list.  I graciously joined the boys @Justo8484 @GSSucks this year for the adventure and it didn't disappoint.  Due to weather concerns on Saturday, Tucks was moved to Sunday, with a Stratton skin on Friday, Killington on Saturday, and then the big event on Sunday.  It proved to be an awesome decision.

We did a T2B skin lap at Stratton with great conditions as a gear test.  Did a few beacon searches, crampon tests, etc.  A skiff of fresh snow on top of corn meant you could let it run top to bottom.  Awesome snow.  Killington was skiing great on Saturday with temps in the mid 50s and 22ish trails.  @mbike-ski happened to be camping in the area that weekend so it great to see him at Killington about to enjoy his first May ski day ever.

Was pretty hard to sleep in anticipation of Tucks so we were all up pretty early, geared up, and hit the trail a little after 7:30am.  Hiked for about 1.5 miles, switched to skins for another 1+ miles up to Hojos, put the skis on the pack and finished the hike up to the bowl, where we donned helmets, crampons and ice axes for the boot up Right Gulley.  After a steep climb up, we were greeted by low winds, and great looking snow fields up to the summit.  We threw back on the skis and skinned up the summit, climbing over 4000ft from the parking lot to the summit in 4h 45m ish.  Celebratory pictures, beverages, a snack, and we plotted out descent down the snowfields with Hillman's in mind.  

 

The snowfields were very interesting snow.  Super smooth, but I'd call it slippery spring snow.  Fun route down through rocks, where we threw the skis back on the packs, and hiked to the top of Hillmans, stopping to have some charcuterski, and then gear up for the descent down Hillman's.  I dropped in first to perfect spring conditions down through the choke.  We all worked our way to the bottom, rock scrambled to the Sherbie, and then skied down to rope 7, where we put crampons on to descent the slippery Tuckerman's Ravine Trail 1.6 miles back to the car.  The weather was perfect, the snow was great, and the cherry on top was getting up to the summit.

 

No action shots from me, as I really didn't want to be pulling out my phone in some bad places.  Others do, so they may end up here.  Was a great experience and hope I can do it again some day.  Overall, it was 10.5 miles of hiking, booting, skinning, and skiing, climbing ~5000ft in 8.5 hours start to finish.  Rolled out of the visitor's center parking lot just after 5pm with 8+ hours of driving ahead of us.

[mbike-ski]

Nice! It was a beautiful day - I saw you guys from the top of skylark!

[AtomicSkier]

Few more from one of the guys ... I tried to annotate (to the best of my memory) our route down from the top (climbed/toured up right, skied down left).

 

[GSSucks]

Damn good trip, weather was perfect. My face is still sunburnt from all of the light reflection off of the snow. I have some GoPro footage that Ill try and throw together, we shall see how that works out. I think Jeff nailed the TR pretty well so I dont really have much to add. Pumped to get back up there again next year!