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Mount Marshall 2/03
Alistair and I met at UW and got underway at 8 :30. The trail up to Flowed lands is hard packed and barebootable. Many people had indeed used that means of conveyance which made skiing over the pock marked surface a bit tricky. When your kick zone sucks air it sucks. Skiing up the Calamity Brook trail requires excellent grip. Not very good grip, excellent grip. I had blue wax then on 2 occasions stopped and applied first red then violet. Ideally I would have used klister or base wax under the regular wax because the icy, rough trail acted as a wax remover. (Skins would likely have been a hindrance because many of the sections were flat enough to get a glide going).Alistair had waxless skis and they were no good at all. After liberal applications of red and violet his setup became so-so and he (and I to a lesser extent) alternated between skiing and bare booting. There are a few steep downhills that have ditches at the bottom. If your real good and you time it just right you can hop over these on the fly. I preferred to remove the skis for most of them.
We glided effortlessly across Flowed Lands in the sunshine and thanks to the well beaten trail and no new snow easily found the route up Herbert Brook. If the trail had been hidden by new snow a gps would make a big difference once the creek peters out. Map and compass would do the job in the right hands but would be a lot more time consuming and less certain. We bare booted for 5-10 minutes then out came the snowshoes. I was experimenting with Northern Lites, these things are so light you would want to tie them down on a windy summit. Their crampons are nothing like MSR’s or Atlas however so just to play it safe I brought my Grivels. The Lites worked really well with only a bit of slippage and then only on the steepest pitches. Going down required care in planting the crampons correctly but they worked great.
The route up Herbert Brook trail is very beautiful and of course in the winter you can often walk right in the stream bed thereby avoiding getting poked in the eye by sticks and branches. (Why do they always go for the eyes?)
In spite of mighty Iroquois and its famed tooth to the north my favourite views of off Marshall are from openings on the South side. (Adams, Calamity, Allen, Santanoni etc.) No one had broken a trail yet over to the excellent viewpoints just off the summit. Make sure you check that out if you go.
The ski down the Calamity brook trail was challenging and tiring. Don’t try it unless you have skied a lot. The conditions were very fast yesterday and the trail is steep (the speepest section is 20-25 deg) and narrow. Too narrow to turn or get a snowplow going. Plus there are rocks, ditches and logs. I’ve skied all my life and had metal edges but an old 3-pin binding boot combo with wear and tear that permits a fair bit of horizontal plane rotation and I wiped out a couple of times, (once on purpose when I got going way too fast.) and I removed my skis several times. I was wondering if with lots of snow the trail would become a deep, narrow furrow and even tougher to negotiate. Still, there were lots of long stretches where the trail was perfect and we got some stress-free fun rides. If I go back I would still use the skis but with a better wax job and better bindings.
In the plateau between Marshall and the false summit between Marshall and Iroquois there is a small opening where the snowshoe trail splits in two, take the right fork. The left fork eventually leads back to the proper trail but wastes your time in some thick bush.
Alistair and I met at UW and got underway at 8 :30. The trail up to Flowed lands is hard packed and barebootable. Many people had indeed used that means of conveyance which made skiing over the pock marked surface a bit tricky. When your kick zone sucks air it sucks. Skiing up the Calamity Brook trail requires excellent grip. Not very good grip, excellent grip. I had blue wax then on 2 occasions stopped and applied first red then violet. Ideally I would have used klister or base wax under the regular wax because the icy, rough trail acted as a wax remover. (Skins would likely have been a hindrance because many of the sections were flat enough to get a glide going).Alistair had waxless skis and they were no good at all. After liberal applications of red and violet his setup became so-so and he (and I to a lesser extent) alternated between skiing and bare booting. There are a few steep downhills that have ditches at the bottom. If your real good and you time it just right you can hop over these on the fly. I preferred to remove the skis for most of them.
We glided effortlessly across Flowed Lands in the sunshine and thanks to the well beaten trail and no new snow easily found the route up Herbert Brook. If the trail had been hidden by new snow a gps would make a big difference once the creek peters out. Map and compass would do the job in the right hands but would be a lot more time consuming and less certain. We bare booted for 5-10 minutes then out came the snowshoes. I was experimenting with Northern Lites, these things are so light you would want to tie them down on a windy summit. Their crampons are nothing like MSR’s or Atlas however so just to play it safe I brought my Grivels. The Lites worked really well with only a bit of slippage and then only on the steepest pitches. Going down required care in planting the crampons correctly but they worked great.
The route up Herbert Brook trail is very beautiful and of course in the winter you can often walk right in the stream bed thereby avoiding getting poked in the eye by sticks and branches. (Why do they always go for the eyes?)
In spite of mighty Iroquois and its famed tooth to the north my favourite views of off Marshall are from openings on the South side. (Adams, Calamity, Allen, Santanoni etc.) No one had broken a trail yet over to the excellent viewpoints just off the summit. Make sure you check that out if you go.
The ski down the Calamity brook trail was challenging and tiring. Don’t try it unless you have skied a lot. The conditions were very fast yesterday and the trail is steep (the speepest section is 20-25 deg) and narrow. Too narrow to turn or get a snowplow going. Plus there are rocks, ditches and logs. I’ve skied all my life and had metal edges but an old 3-pin binding boot combo with wear and tear that permits a fair bit of horizontal plane rotation and I wiped out a couple of times, (once on purpose when I got going way too fast.) and I removed my skis several times. I was wondering if with lots of snow the trail would become a deep, narrow furrow and even tougher to negotiate. Still, there were lots of long stretches where the trail was perfect and we got some stress-free fun rides. If I go back I would still use the skis but with a better wax job and better bindings.
In the plateau between Marshall and the false summit between Marshall and Iroquois there is a small opening where the snowshoe trail splits in two, take the right fork. The left fork eventually leads back to the proper trail but wastes your time in some thick bush.
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