One of the classic CCC ski trails, Mount Cardigan is an excellent mountain to improve your back-country skiing. We’ll start on Duke’s which is an accessible trail, reasonably wide with intermittent, manageable steeps and a beautiful snowfield at the top. Depending on time and conditions we’ll move onto Alexandria and Kimball.

Come learn! If you’re new, we’ll show you how to use alpine touring gear, use skins to slid uphill, and discover the adventure that is back-country skiing!

The current snow reports are good and the forecast is excellent. Winter is finally here!

We will meet at the AMC Lodge at the base of Mount Cardigan at 8:30am Saturday morning.

Requirements:

1. Be comfortable skiing black diamonds without any warm-up runs. Backcountry skiing has narrow turns, trees, rocks and other exposed and hidden hazards.
2. Skinning uphill is exhausting. You should be physically fit enough to winter hike at a quick pace.
3. Positive attitude: skinning can be an adventure and its takes persistence to figure out how to get up steep sections and perfecting that kick-turn.

The mandatory ​pre-trip meeting will be at 6pm on Thursday at the MITOC office. There we will discuss details of the trip, answer any questions and sort out, test, and fit gear for everyone.