Matt Duffy
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/2/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>Thursday evening we were drinking Sam Adams beer to the irony of playing Coolboarders 3, still glowing from a spectacular day of skiing at Jay. We tossed around ideas for the following morning, but came to no decision before falling asleep. The next morning, the most appealing option was something from Jerm’s to-do list. He knew of an old mining operation in Belvedere that he’d been itching to ski since he first saw it. Some time ago, he’d been out there hiking & scouting these big, monster, 400 foot piles in a barren, secluded wasteland of asbestos. <BR> <BR>We parked next to the road with the strange view of these jutting, white “peaks” rising above the trees. It looked like a little bit of Colorado right here in northern Vermont. Jeremy put skins on his tele skis while I strapped my alpine stuff to my back and stepped into my snowshoes. We departed from my jeep and descended the steep embankment next to the road. Jeremy did a few switchbacks on his teles through dense underbrush & saplings; I followed by leaning back on my snowshoes and straightlining. I fought for balance down through 30 feet of thick whips sticking out of the snow before coming to a stop. This brought us down to a small beaver pond, which was lurking directly below a big, steep, pristine face with untouched snow. It loomed much larger in front of us than it looked from the road. We were facing a high, expansive mound of asbestos with an old mining structure way up at the top. Wind had blown the snow around on it, leaving white fingers sprawling down between bare spines of asbestos. Directly facing the pond was a wide “bowl” that was completely virgin white, save for some sort of animal tracks leading up to the top. <BR> <BR>We took an indirect root to the top. Jerm led the way by skinning in a gradual upward spiral to the backside of the pile. I labored along and was reminded of how much lateral grip snowshoes provide. None. Across the steep face, I had to face up the hill and walk sideways like a crab. I put into motion a drill I used to drone through when I was a kid at hockey practice. I’d cross my feet over and over sideways with the teeth of my snowshoes digging in to prevent sliding down the hill. It was slow, but eventually we were high up on the backside. We rested on a flat and readied for the final 100’ or so of the climb. <BR> <BR>I booted up & Jeremy shed the skin from his skis. Then he showed me how to examine the snow to assess avalanche danger. I’d need more practice, but Jerm could determine from the different layers of snow and thin crusts underneath that the danger was moderate. Cool stuff. <BR> <BR>We headed up through an interesting, steep & narrow snow filled ravine to the top. Sometimes we’d step into thigh deep snow, sometimes onto frozen solid asbestos. We picked our way through buried old 2x4’s, rusty bent up nails and other such debris until we came to the flat catwalk that was the peak. We walked past the rickety old mining structure and out to the edge. Jeremy got there first and looked back with an excited “It looks SWEET!” The degree of pitch was somewhere in the mid to upper 30’s, a straight and wide shot directly down to the edge of the pond. There was a lip not far below the top, with the pond in the background. <BR> <BR>He said he’d watch me go first, and: “If it gives, bolt to the side as fast as you can!” The element of danger had me just that much more pumped. Time to drop over the edge! <BR> <BR>I made big turns and bottomed out a few times before reaching the lip. Couldn’t see what was over the lip ‘til I got to it, so there was this unknown anticipation. Waiting below was an exhilarating series of steep powder turns with no more bottoming out. It was very much like skiing the steep, above treeline face of a western snowfield. I made slow, savoring, wide floaty turns and out of Jeremy’s sight. He said that once my skis got below the lip, it looked like I was riding down an escalator. I turned just beyond the lip and he could see me from my knees up. I turned again and he could see from above my waist and up. Another turn and he could only see my head, then another and I was gone from his view. I waited and watched for him to come over the lip. He did, and once again, it was like watching someone ski out west. Snow rippled in his nice line of tele turns, one after another, with the background of this steep, tree-less snowfield framing him. <BR> <BR>The whole of the surroundings created a sublime piece of imagery. It was skiing where no one else skis. It was looking back up at two sets of snaking tracks on a big, wide powder hill. It was our last turns of the millenium. It was tree-less terrain below the tree line. It was natural snow on a man-made hill. <BR> <BR>I took some pictures with my cheapo camera. I’ve put a couple of them at: http://www.geocities.com/mapadu/bam.html if ya wanna hava look. They came out a little under-exposed, but if you really look at the snowfield, you can just make out some of our tracks on it (I scanned that one B&W. The other is of Jeremy and looks like it was taken at dusk, but it was early afternoon).