Skiing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—Part I: The Participants and the Hut

     There were eight of us on this Sierra Club ski-and-snowshoe trip in the White Mountains—five participants; two assistant leaders (Tomas Dundzila and Sallie Schramm); and the leader, Jeanne Blauner.

                                                               Photo by unknown bystander
l-r: Sallie, Tomas, me, Lisa, Jeanne, Sandra, Nancy, Eugenia.

They were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York (2), and Ohio—and me, from Oregon. I was there because this year's warm, dry, ugly winter drove me all the way to New Hampshire for snow and cold.

    And, yes, I got both.

  The first of my new experiences was to put microspikes on my boots

                                                                                photo by Tomas Dundzila

and hike an easy 3.2 miles from the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Center to the top of Mt. Willard for a stunning vista.

       Me on the precipice overlooking the vista.  photo by Lisa Fleischer      

     The next day we put on skis and snowshoes for the 6 1/2-mile trip to Zealand Falls hut. I was carrying a 25-pound pack,

                                                                                        photo by Lisa Fleischer

which wasn't too bad—I had been carrying 30 pounds in training—but I was puzzled at falling (I could ski that? Why had I fallen?) until I realized that the weight of my pack had changed my center of gravity. Once I accommodated for that, the skiing was easy, up and up, with an elevation gain of 1155 feet, until we came to a very steep uphill, where we took off our skis and climbed to the hut. Tomas, who had been pulling a sled loaded with group food and gear from the parking lot, managed to pull that heavy sled all the way to the hut, helped by Nancy and others pushing from behind. 

    Built in the 1930s, Zealand Falls hut is totally charming and has a magnificent mountain-view location. But I had to laugh at the altitude—2630 feet, about the same as my own house!

                                                             photo by Eugenia Costa-Giomi
Nancy, Lisa, Sandra, Jeanne, Sallie, Tomas, me in front of the hut. 

    It's a good thing I like cold! The dorm rooms are unheated. We slept in sub-freezing temperatures, shivered into ski clothes each morning, and had breakfast in the main room, where Parker, the charming young host, had coffee ready at 6:00 every morning, though no amount of bribery or begging would induce him to build a fire in the small wood-burning stove until 4:00 in the afternoon. (It was a matter of firewood supply.) We cooked our own meals and quickly realized that if we used the oven for breakfast (to bake granola, keep pancakes warm, whatever), we were adding heat to the room. 

    We ate exceedingly well on our own resources: lasagna the first night;

The lasagna                        photo by Lisa Fleischer

Argentinian lentil stew, prepared by Eugenia, our authentic Argentinian participant, the next night; and burritos the last night, with desserts of some sort—cake, pudding, cookies, chocolates—every night. As we gathered around the table for a group talk our last night at the hut, Parker slid a panful of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies onto the table for us.

    One late afternoon we saw a pine marten just outside the hut.

                                                                                    photo by Tomas Dundzila

    All three leaders were wonderful, but Tomas was the hero, not because he was the only man on the trip but because he pulled the sled to the hut, saving us extra weight in our packs, and because, again and again, we turned to him for help. "Tomas, I can't get my snowshoes buckled; will you help me?" "Tomas, my boot sole is loose; can you fix it?" Tomas, this; Tomas, that, and the answer was always yes and the problem was always fixed. 

Next week: Part II: Skiing, Snowshoeing, and Snowstorms.

Sallie (in front), Eugenia, Nancy, Jeanne.    photo by Tomas Dundzila