The Road to PBP (and other stuff)

A few photos from my trip to Paris and Carry-Le-Rouet …

Spring corn as far as the eye can see!  Or maybe “spring mashed potatoes” is more accurate.  For the last hurrah of the snowboarding season, Marge hauled a van-load of us up to Tuckerman Ravine (thanks, Marge!).  The long weekend, along with perfect weather (50+ degrees at the summit!), plus the Tuckerman Inferno Pentathlon, meant that there were thousands of people who made the 2-3 hour trek to the bowl to heckle and ski.  Justin is a much faster hiker than I am so we had to handicap him by loading him up with all my gear.  It turns out that we’re pretty evenly paced when he’s carrying a 60 lb pack and I’m carrying an itty bitty Camelback. 

We made it up to HoJo’s in about 1.5 hours; the last 3/4 mile to the bowl was fairly slow because of the crowds. Once we got to the lunch rocks, Justin hiked straight up the Head Wall — the crevasses made me nervous so I opted for the Right Gully instead.  

Without a doubt, the craziest thing we saw all day was the guy who rode down the Head Wall on an innertube — he made it a looooong way down so he had built up a good head of steam before he wiped out and bounced the rest of the way down.  (Honorable mention to Marge’s son, Bobbie, who took the cliff drop, shed a ski and tomahawked down the face. 10 for style, Bobbie!)  

There was a bit of a traffic jam at the waterfall on the way down with so many people riding out at the end of the day.  Past the fall it cleared out and was gorgeous all the way down — good snow cover (we only had to unstrap twice to cross creeks).  All-in-all a perfect end to the season.  Time to break out the bikes!