 Into the Abyss
New Hampshire’s Great Gulf
Story and Photo By Brian Mohr
Published in Backcountry Magazine – Feb 2006
The soothing roar of snowmelt stirs us from our dreamy sleep. The last stars are fading, the skies are clear and the “Big Mountain” is calling. It is New Hampshire’s Mount Washington that I’m referring to – home to the world’s highest recorded wind speed, ever-popular Tuckerman’s Ravine and a lifetime of skiing adventures. My sweetie pie, Emily Johnson and I are bound for the mountain’s Great Gulf, a 6000-acre glacial cirque that is crowned by a vertiginous headwall lying just north of Washington’s summit cone. Fueling up on oatmeal, fruit and chocolate, we ponder the giant mass of Appalachia towering 1400m over our heads.
We skin away from camp, confirming that a rarely skied line off the Big Mountain seems to connect – and will carry us home later in the day. After all, it is barely April. Salivating, we follow an old trail into the trees.
The snowpack is sprinkled with conifer needles – and is rock solid under our skis. With the mercury having dipped to twenty degrees back at camp, corn o’ clock is still many hours away. We relax our pace, and soak up the scents and sounds of another sunrise in the mountains. Two hours alter, we are clear above tree line and setting a course for the edge of the Great Gulf’s blood-stirring abyss.
Home to what is arguably the greatest concentration of steep, exposed and skiable terrain in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, and packing more vertical punch than nearby Tuckerman’s Ravine, the Great Gulf is not to be taken lightly. Every time we slide into the Gulf, we are pleasantly reminded of our mortality.
Many skiers who visit the Gulf after logging time in the region’s gentler ravines find themselves easily humbled here, and often, in over their heads. In the winter of 2004, a skier fell to his death in the Gulf while trying to climb out of a run that he and his partners had “successfully” skied – unprepared for the exposure that their ascent would present. Several Gulf runs cliff out with little warning, frozen ice flows abound and pockets of fracture-prone slab can linger well into springtime. Beware the magic carpet ride.
Most skiers approach the Gulf like we have, by climbing an adjacent ravine toward Washington’s summit cone, veering toward the rim of the Gulf and dropping in. We scoot over to the edge and take a peek at aptly named Pipeline Gulley. She’s still frozen, but she’s in rare form – filled in right down to the pond, 400m below. We head skier’s left to a chute that leans toward the rising sun and warm up on a beautiful run of half-frozen corn.
Following the sun’s most direct rays, we ski two more runs off the rim. Some manageable corn-snow sloughing and a few isolated pockets of wind-loaded slab – protocol for the Great Gulf – keep us on our toes. Pipeline eventually catches the sun. Skiing down, I can’t help but think about the leather-booted, wooden-planked skiers from the 1940s – backcountry extremists in their time - who pioneered these lines and left behind an adventure skiing legacy that carries on today. We safely navigate Pipeline’s ice-riddled crux, and ski out to the pond below.
In early April, the Gulf’s window of sunlight doesn’t stay open for long. Climbing the Gulf’s frozen and most north-facing gulley, we set a path for Washington’s summit. It is from there that we hope to link uninterrupted turns back to camp, 1000m below. Blessed with light winds and cloudless skies, we find our run home ripening in the mid-afternoon sun. From the summit cone, our run funnels into a well-defined gulley that pitches and remains snow-filled over what in a matter of days could easily become an unskiable, gushing cascade. We say our farewells to the Great Gulf behind us, and as we let gravity take us, I say a prayer for the man who once skied where we had today – but never made it back.
Resources:
General Info, Weather, Avalanche- www.mountwashington.org
Maps: AMC’s “Mount Washington and the heart of The Presidential Range”
Skiing/Trail Info: AMC Backcountry Skiiing Adventures by David Goodman
Guide Services/Mountaineering Instruction:
AMC Winter Adventures - www.outdoors.org
Chauvin Guides International – www.chauvinguides.com
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