ski moosilaukee carriage road

i want to bring some of my friends who are into cross country skiing, along with myself, on a ski up the mountain, as far as we feel comfortable(hopefully the top). Any one have any info on skiing up this? I hiked it recently and the trail is the bomb. bit long, but nice and wide and not bad grades. I have gone up some auto roads on skis, but not in awhile. would we need climbing skins on the steeper pitches?(not that they are that steep) or can we just muscle up? Has anyone ever brought downhill skis and took those skis down? any info appreciated. i figure Mr. MetSKI MUST have done this!

It is a very popular place to ski. A strong XC skier should be able to make it too the top without skins. Not too sure I'd want to go down it on XC skis though.

is that getting into the 'advanced' realm of x country? going downhill on that? I thought of hiking up it and taking my downhill skis down it, wondered if one would wish they had more room to turn. on cross country skis, probably would need new legs after trying to snowplow down a little ways. I'll mention this to the gang. ski up and hike down. one of the gang is an instructor at windblown, he probably would ski down, maybe i could learn something.

hikerfast said:

is that getting into the 'advanced' realm of x country? going downhill on that? I thought of hiking up it and taking my downhill skis down it, wondered if one would wish they had more room to turn. on cross country skis, probably would need new legs after trying to snowplow down a little ways. I'll mention this to the gang. ski up and hike down. one of the gang is an instructor at windblown, he probably would ski down, maybe i could learn something.

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My 2cents: I'm fairly strong XC, but, I wouldn't ski it down without skins. It might be OK with skins on the downhill. Maybe if there's a LOT of snow you'd snowplow it OK, but, really not enough room to turn. I wouldn't even consider going up it without skins on the XC skis. If you're going up to hike down, just use snowshoes, but, there are a lot of backcountry (telemark? randonee?) skiers on it.

Becca M said:

It might be OK with skins on the downhill. Maybe if there's a LOT of snow you'd snowplow it OK, but, really not enough room to turn.

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If you have short alpine skis and are good at quick linked parallel turns you will probably do o.k. skiing down the C.R. I've done it on tele gear a few times and the snow conditions dictate how much fun you will have. Soft snow = more fun. Icy conditions = grim epic a.k.a. high speed snowplow with numerous bailouts and quivering quads. With the latter kind of conditions I'd definitely recommend keeping the skins on. I did it with two other guys a couple of winters ago. I donated my skins to one of the guys who wasn't as comfortable with the conditions. The other one had skins and left them on. They both spent more time waiting for me. They could point the skis and go pretty much with the trail and never get too much speed up to miss the turns. I, on the other hand, was extricating myself from the woods on more than one occasion. Once past the bridge, strip off the skins. That was the best part of the whole run for me that one time I just described.

P.S. The guy without the skins bare booted the steeper sections of the trail. He used wax until then. The other two of us used skins all the way.

Since I'm a backcountry skier I don't think I'd ever do the C.R. in winter without at least packing the skis along.

But I too think Mr. Metsky could give the definitive advice.

I've done it a number of times. The difficulty depends on the snow conditions--the ridge is south facing, the road is shared with snowmobiles, and it can be windy. Goodman rates it as "more difficult" (ie 2 on a scale of 1 to 3).

It can be doable with BC gear in good conditions although Tele or AT gear is preferable. Metal edges are often desirable. I have done it without skins (on wooden skis...), but skins will save energy on the ascent (IMO, highly recommended). Skins can slow your descent, but they will reduce control.

You can ski the Carriage Rd from Breezy Point or using Snapper Ski Trail. Gorge Brook Tr will take you directly to the summit, but is harder. (If you want to make a loop, up GBT and down SST is easier than up SST and down GBT. There is more info in David Goodman's guidebook.)

If you just want to ski a 4K peak, Garfield is easier (but still a fast ride down...).

At least several others on this BBS have also done it--I let them "out" themselves.

Doug

I've skied it many times, on backcountry and tele gear. I really would recommend something with metal edges, because unless you can do a telemark turn you'll be snowplowing a good chunk of way down. Also, the stretch from the junction with the Glencliff trail to the summit is often wading through waist deep snow. It's not great skiing along that stretch usually.

It's 5 miles from the base of the Carriage Road to the summit, just over 4 to Glencliff Junction. Up to the just below the junction snowmobiles are allowed and are frequent. By Saturday noon the whole thing is usually tracked up, which can lead to a luge run down, but not right after a good storm. Upper sections of the CR are wide enough for easy turns. Down lower it's actually rolling terrain, so you'll be climbing periodically on the way out.

http://www.hikethewhites.com/moos9/index.html

Another vote for Metal edges and a solid quick turn. Pick a good snow day, twist one up and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVyy4ZG9e7o

Historical tid bit

From Mr. Goodman's book:

"The first organized downhill ski race in the United States took place on the Mt. Moosilauke Carriage Road in April 1927. Called the Moosilauke Down Mountain Race, it had about 15 entrants. The race started at the junction of the Carriage Rd. and the Glencliff Trail; it was won by Charles Proctor with a time of 21 minutes. Moosilauke also hosted the first invitational club ski races in 1931. In March 1933, the Carriage Road was the site of the first U.S. National Downhill Championship Race. The race was won in 8 minutes by DOC skier Henry "Bem" Woods, with classmate Harry Hillman (of Hillman's Highway fame in Tuckerman Ravine) coming in a close second.

The late Al Sise raced in that first championship. He recounted to me, "Nobody ever thought about course preparation back then. There were big drifts on the trail, and I flew off one of those and landed on something soft. It turned out to be the guy who started in front of me!" The fallen competitors promptly shared a nip from a brandy flask, and charged off down the mountain.

Sise explained that in other races "the guy who fell the least number of times -- say, less than twelve -- won on the Carriage Road races. As Alex Bright used to say, 'If you didn't fall, it was a sure sign you weren't skiing fast enough!"

By today's standards, these were true backcountry races. In the spirit of the old C.R. races you might want to visit these sites: This year's Thunderbolt Ski Race and last year's 75th anniversary race.

I did it last weekend on beefy metal-edged bc touring equipment. Maybe you could get up it on skis without skins, but that would be a pointless expenditure of many times the energy it would take if you did use them. As for going down -- agree with all previous posters, fun is dependent on conditions. We had pretty thin cover and hit lots of rocks, but the mountain has picked up a lot of snow since then.

Did it two weeks ago, there was thin cover near the top, but there's been snow since then. You'll want skins and edges. We hiked up the Gorge Brook trail to stay out of the way of people coming down the CR. There was a lot of downhill traffic around 2 pm.
Have fun