BladeGirl
05-09-2003, 09:40 AM
Wondering if anyone has created an archive of articles about Tucks? There is one in Today's Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/129/sports/Scene_of_the_climb+.shtml
The link will probably only work today and tomorrow, so the article follows (hmph! A two hour hike indeed!) ;) :
TUCKERMAN RAVINE - Mark and Jeremy Gravell had climbed 500 feet up the ravine in near silence. And now, with skis shouldered and the toes of their boots clinging to precarious perches, father and son paused to discuss the next chapter in a day destined to become part of their life stories.
The discussion the other day went something like this.
Jeremy: ''Dad, you're too slow.''
Mark (struggling for breath): ''Maybe you better go (gasp) ahead. I'll catch up.''
Jeremy: ''I'm outta here.''
Mark: ''Now remember. I'm not forcing you up there. You(gasp) turn around whenever you want.''
But Jeremy was gone, set on climbing another 500 feet up and over a seemingly vertical morsel of Mount Washington called the Headwall. If all went according to plan, he would click into his bindings at the top, suck it up, and descend the Headwall, New England's steepest source of ski lore, to make a first attempt at a most peculiar rite of passage.
Some cultures turn boys into men by sending them to kill lions. New Englanders drop their children over the Headwall. Perhaps this is an oversimplification. New Englanders first have to nudge their young (and young at heart) up to a point above the steeps flat enough to put on the skis or snowboard required for the sacred rite. Just the ascent makes the knees wobble. It is somewhat like climbing a slippery ladder whose rungs occasionally give way.
Think of Tuckerman Ravine, located at the end of a two-hour hike from the Pinkham Notch parking lot, as half of a giant teacup. The base of the cup allows for a gentle and forgiving amble. By the Headwall, located just under the cup's lip (which is precisely what the most frequently skied passage is called), climbers are clawing their way on all fours.
Every spring, a short window of opportunity opens in Tuckerman's when the risk of severe avalanche abates and the lips of deep crevasses have not yet cracked their crooked smiles. While thousands of visitors trudge into the ravine on a sunny weekend day, only a few hundred skiers attempt to go ''up and over,'' an exercise that has been likened to a Yankee bar mitzvah. Creed is irrelevant; chutzpah is not. The reward is bragging rights. For example, one ski club in the nearby town of Jackson has a plaque named after one of skiing's early local pioneers. To get inscribed in brass on the Roger B. Wilson Headwall Award, members have to make the plunge.
A reasonable person might ask: Do we really care?
''Of course! It's a moral imperative hereabouts,'' stresses Nicholas Howe, 70, a Jackson resident and author of ''Not Without Peril,'' a chronicle of death in the Presidential Range over which Mount Washington stands sentry. Of the 137 fatalities on record, 29 people, or 21 percent, have died in Tuckerman Ravine, the lion's share of them in May when the weather window and crevasses open wide.
As happens with many of the Tuckerman-obsessed, Howe experienced his rite of passage as a family matter, his older brother, John, leading him over the lip in 1950 aboard wooden skis more than 7 feet long with steel edges that frequently left behind a trail of screws. Howe came over the lip on a foggy, rainy day that left him wishing his soggy Army surplus parka - proof of the exploit - would remain damp forever.
Howe still ventures into the ''no fall'' terrain (which translates to ''don't'') found in some of the chutes and gullies of Tuckerman. But he said he cringes when he sees the thousands of visitors, many inebriated, who come not to ski but to ride and shred anatomically correct blow-up dolls during sliding contests down the lower reaches of the ravine.
''They don't know what it's like to hope your parka never dries out,'' Howe said.
Indeed, it was moral imperative driving members of the Gravell family into the ravine on a sunny day dusted with new powder that left the ravine shimmering like an infrared photograph. The Gravells live in Sutton, Mass., located 10 miles southeast of Worcester. Mark, 47, is a mechanical engineer, and his sons Jeremy, 12, and Jason, 14, are students at Sutton Middle School. Mark skied the Headwall 15 years ago and, according to his sons, has never really stopped talking about it.
The boys arrived with their own agendas. Jason planned to stick to the lower pitches, while Jeremy wanted to match his father's ''ancient'' Headwall passage.
Now he was moving like a moth to flame.
For all the talk about steepness, the actual pitch on the actual Headwall - a huge snow cornice - is about 50 degrees. The disconcerting aspect for first-timers is that usually the slope is below them; here it's in front.
Other factors spice the experience. Because of the late season, most skiers arrive feeling rusty. They need to carry movement-restricting packs to equip for the colder weather above. The lousy footing on the way up fluctuates between ice and mashed potato. Everyone is in a single-track line where one slip can take out the group, and trust runs about as shallow as it does among Boston drivers on the Southeast Expressway.
Furthermore, there's the issue of small avalanches released by the descending traffic through the hourglass shared by climbers and skiers. The slides tingle over feet and hands like rumpled, undulating fog, they cover the oh-so-important next footsteps, and they are proof that in some environments, the ground literally does move.
Meanwhile, everyone is thinking: What I go up, I am going to have to come down. Skiers on their way down and frozen in fear add to the anxiety.
''Hey, not so close!'' one of several climbers inching through the Headwall hourglass yelled to a boarder who had just launched a small avalanche.
The boarder stopped at the top of the lip from fear, not courtesy.
Here the transition is noteworthy because you cannot see down. There's Wildcat across the valley, and a sliver of the Atlantic Ocean across the distant horizon. But standing on the lip, you might as well be standing on the observation deck of the John Han**** Tower, which has about the same vertical rise.
The climbers, all males, took pity on the boarder, a young, attractive woman, who was frozen in fear. One by one they tried to fill her with confidence, and eventually she trusted their promises that everything would be all right. She inched the nose of her board toward the thin air ahead. Then she fell, end over end (''endos,'' in the local parlance) through the ether until she settled some 300 feet below to the cheering crowds sitting near the floor of the ravine.
The spectators got a pretty good show, and no doubt turned their eyes back toward the heavens to see what would fall out next.
Throughout the climb, Jeremy had been remarkably quiet and focused. At the first opportunity above the lip, the youngster plunked down his orange Solomon skis, snapped into the bindings, then pushed off.
It happened that fast.
''I knew if I climbed higher or paused at all, I would get too scared,'' he explained later.
Jeremy skis for the Killington Mountain freestyle team, which has to be doing something right because the lad's cleanly carved, consistent turns brought him nonstop down the entire face of Tuckerman Ravine. At the bottom, his father and brother congratulated him. Jeremy tried to call his mother on a cellphone to share the news.
And then he shouldered his skis, hiked back over the Headwall, and descended again.
And then he did it again.
The 12-year-old would take three flawless, nonstop runs over the Headwall before his first day in Tuckerman Ravine was done. Pity the unborn destined to follow in the footsteps of Jeremy Gravell's rite of passage.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 5/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
<small>[ May 09, 2003, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: skicdave ]</small>
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/129/sports/Scene_of_the_climb+.shtml
The link will probably only work today and tomorrow, so the article follows (hmph! A two hour hike indeed!) ;) :
TUCKERMAN RAVINE - Mark and Jeremy Gravell had climbed 500 feet up the ravine in near silence. And now, with skis shouldered and the toes of their boots clinging to precarious perches, father and son paused to discuss the next chapter in a day destined to become part of their life stories.
The discussion the other day went something like this.
Jeremy: ''Dad, you're too slow.''
Mark (struggling for breath): ''Maybe you better go (gasp) ahead. I'll catch up.''
Jeremy: ''I'm outta here.''
Mark: ''Now remember. I'm not forcing you up there. You(gasp) turn around whenever you want.''
But Jeremy was gone, set on climbing another 500 feet up and over a seemingly vertical morsel of Mount Washington called the Headwall. If all went according to plan, he would click into his bindings at the top, suck it up, and descend the Headwall, New England's steepest source of ski lore, to make a first attempt at a most peculiar rite of passage.
Some cultures turn boys into men by sending them to kill lions. New Englanders drop their children over the Headwall. Perhaps this is an oversimplification. New Englanders first have to nudge their young (and young at heart) up to a point above the steeps flat enough to put on the skis or snowboard required for the sacred rite. Just the ascent makes the knees wobble. It is somewhat like climbing a slippery ladder whose rungs occasionally give way.
Think of Tuckerman Ravine, located at the end of a two-hour hike from the Pinkham Notch parking lot, as half of a giant teacup. The base of the cup allows for a gentle and forgiving amble. By the Headwall, located just under the cup's lip (which is precisely what the most frequently skied passage is called), climbers are clawing their way on all fours.
Every spring, a short window of opportunity opens in Tuckerman's when the risk of severe avalanche abates and the lips of deep crevasses have not yet cracked their crooked smiles. While thousands of visitors trudge into the ravine on a sunny weekend day, only a few hundred skiers attempt to go ''up and over,'' an exercise that has been likened to a Yankee bar mitzvah. Creed is irrelevant; chutzpah is not. The reward is bragging rights. For example, one ski club in the nearby town of Jackson has a plaque named after one of skiing's early local pioneers. To get inscribed in brass on the Roger B. Wilson Headwall Award, members have to make the plunge.
A reasonable person might ask: Do we really care?
''Of course! It's a moral imperative hereabouts,'' stresses Nicholas Howe, 70, a Jackson resident and author of ''Not Without Peril,'' a chronicle of death in the Presidential Range over which Mount Washington stands sentry. Of the 137 fatalities on record, 29 people, or 21 percent, have died in Tuckerman Ravine, the lion's share of them in May when the weather window and crevasses open wide.
As happens with many of the Tuckerman-obsessed, Howe experienced his rite of passage as a family matter, his older brother, John, leading him over the lip in 1950 aboard wooden skis more than 7 feet long with steel edges that frequently left behind a trail of screws. Howe came over the lip on a foggy, rainy day that left him wishing his soggy Army surplus parka - proof of the exploit - would remain damp forever.
Howe still ventures into the ''no fall'' terrain (which translates to ''don't'') found in some of the chutes and gullies of Tuckerman. But he said he cringes when he sees the thousands of visitors, many inebriated, who come not to ski but to ride and shred anatomically correct blow-up dolls during sliding contests down the lower reaches of the ravine.
''They don't know what it's like to hope your parka never dries out,'' Howe said.
Indeed, it was moral imperative driving members of the Gravell family into the ravine on a sunny day dusted with new powder that left the ravine shimmering like an infrared photograph. The Gravells live in Sutton, Mass., located 10 miles southeast of Worcester. Mark, 47, is a mechanical engineer, and his sons Jeremy, 12, and Jason, 14, are students at Sutton Middle School. Mark skied the Headwall 15 years ago and, according to his sons, has never really stopped talking about it.
The boys arrived with their own agendas. Jason planned to stick to the lower pitches, while Jeremy wanted to match his father's ''ancient'' Headwall passage.
Now he was moving like a moth to flame.
For all the talk about steepness, the actual pitch on the actual Headwall - a huge snow cornice - is about 50 degrees. The disconcerting aspect for first-timers is that usually the slope is below them; here it's in front.
Other factors spice the experience. Because of the late season, most skiers arrive feeling rusty. They need to carry movement-restricting packs to equip for the colder weather above. The lousy footing on the way up fluctuates between ice and mashed potato. Everyone is in a single-track line where one slip can take out the group, and trust runs about as shallow as it does among Boston drivers on the Southeast Expressway.
Furthermore, there's the issue of small avalanches released by the descending traffic through the hourglass shared by climbers and skiers. The slides tingle over feet and hands like rumpled, undulating fog, they cover the oh-so-important next footsteps, and they are proof that in some environments, the ground literally does move.
Meanwhile, everyone is thinking: What I go up, I am going to have to come down. Skiers on their way down and frozen in fear add to the anxiety.
''Hey, not so close!'' one of several climbers inching through the Headwall hourglass yelled to a boarder who had just launched a small avalanche.
The boarder stopped at the top of the lip from fear, not courtesy.
Here the transition is noteworthy because you cannot see down. There's Wildcat across the valley, and a sliver of the Atlantic Ocean across the distant horizon. But standing on the lip, you might as well be standing on the observation deck of the John Han**** Tower, which has about the same vertical rise.
The climbers, all males, took pity on the boarder, a young, attractive woman, who was frozen in fear. One by one they tried to fill her with confidence, and eventually she trusted their promises that everything would be all right. She inched the nose of her board toward the thin air ahead. Then she fell, end over end (''endos,'' in the local parlance) through the ether until she settled some 300 feet below to the cheering crowds sitting near the floor of the ravine.
The spectators got a pretty good show, and no doubt turned their eyes back toward the heavens to see what would fall out next.
Throughout the climb, Jeremy had been remarkably quiet and focused. At the first opportunity above the lip, the youngster plunked down his orange Solomon skis, snapped into the bindings, then pushed off.
It happened that fast.
''I knew if I climbed higher or paused at all, I would get too scared,'' he explained later.
Jeremy skis for the Killington Mountain freestyle team, which has to be doing something right because the lad's cleanly carved, consistent turns brought him nonstop down the entire face of Tuckerman Ravine. At the bottom, his father and brother congratulated him. Jeremy tried to call his mother on a cellphone to share the news.
And then he shouldered his skis, hiked back over the Headwall, and descended again.
And then he did it again.
The 12-year-old would take three flawless, nonstop runs over the Headwall before his first day in Tuckerman Ravine was done. Pity the unborn destined to follow in the footsteps of Jeremy Gravell's rite of passage.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 5/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
<small>[ May 09, 2003, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: skicdave ]</small>