Have you ever been skiing and wondered, what would this be like without chairlifts? Have you ever looked at at a ski hill and thought, what if I could ski UPhill? Have you ever reached the top of a hike and wished you didn't have to walk back down? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this trip is for you!

Join Kathy, Bones, and Paul to #earnyourturns on a classic New England ski tour. Along the way, plan to learn a bit about gear, skinning, conditions, and shredding in backcountry terrain.

Prerequisites

Some experience downhill skiing at resorts required. You should be comfortable skiing ungroomed and potentially icy snow on moderately steep terrain (think hard blue/easy black at a resort but then make it a sheet of ice in places and super bumpy in others -- ie super fun and awesome!)

No backcountry skiing experience required

Gear

MITOC has a great rental fleet of Splitboards and AT (alpine touring) boots and skis. We’ll use skis with pin bindings and frame bindings and teach you how to adjust them to your boot size. We’ll also teach best practices for applying, removing, and storing skins.

Conditions

No one is making artificial snow for these slopes, so we rely on natural snow to travel in the backcountry. Terrain can be unpredictable - we may encounter obstacles such as water, exposed rocks, and bush. We will practice skiing strategies to navigate these obstacles safely.

Route

We’ll start with our morning at the AMC Pinkham Notch Visitor Center gear room. Once we've discussed our route, we'll put on skins and ascend via the Tuckerman Ravine Trail. At ~2.5 miles, the Tuckerman Ravine Trail reaches the Hermit Lake Hut (a.k.a. HoJo's). At HoJo's we will transition to downhill mode and ski roughly 2 miles down the John Sherburne Ski Trail (a wide backcountry trail with an average slope of 15°, similar to a resort blue run).

Pre-Trip Meeting & Trip Fee

There will be a MANDATORY pre-trip meeting on Thursday (1/20) at 6 p.m. in the MITOC office to get everyone fitted with equipment. There is a flat fee of $25 for all Winter School Ski Trips.