Better Than Expected - 1/10/26

Guest Blog: Brendan Rhoads and Malcolm Ticknor

We started up from Pinkham around 10am, skinning up the TRT to Hermit Lake. The skin track was well covered and relatively grippy with some limited areas of hardpack and ice that required a bit of technical skinning. I had a brief issue with the walk mode lockout on my bindings, but it was quickly corrected with some clever thinking and a piece of genuine WMNF lumber. After putting up a relatively aggressive pace given our early season legs and cardio we took a quick rest at Hojos to grab some water and food. A thermos full of last night's hot pot broth elevated our spirits and got us ready for the hike into the ravine. 

Misguided, I kept my skis on and opted to skin up the majority of the TRT between Hojos and the ravine, Mac seemed to be having a much better time just bootpacking up, but I remained determined. Around noon we hit the floor of the bowl and right around the same time we lost the sun behind the clouds.

After a quick discussion about route finding and observing what looked like a pretty nasty crust on most of the bowl, we opted to head up Right Gully and go until it didn't make sense anymore. The bootpack was pretty easy and left us feeling hopeful about the ski down. As we got into the choke of Right, conditions changed and we found a thin crust that seemed like it would be pretty edge-able. We made it about halfway up the tighter portion of the gully itself before conditions started to give way to a crust that seemed far less edge-able and we decided to transition and start our ski down. The gully itself skied fairly well, with the crust proving to be exactly as we had predicted, but below the choke and in Chicken Rock the conditions were significantly worse and it turned into some light survival skiing. The base of the bowl was frozen over entirely.

After a brief lunch break and a bit more broth, we worked our way back down to Hojos and out on the Sherb.  The top half of the Sherb skied fast but surprisingly well with fairly reasonable snow conditions. After the first aid cache, we found significantly more ice and the skiing once again turned somewhat adventurous, but coverage remained excellent and we kept skis on all the way back to the parking lot.

All in all, a much better day than we allowed ourselves to hope for given the recent warm-up and refreeze.