This is just a quick post-
the weather has been sunny for the last week, but new snow is on the way. life in gulmarg is never boring, and there are enough characters here from all over the world to write an entire book about. I'll talk about a few soon.
i can't believe my trip is wrapping up. i leave in just over a week. a big storm is on the way and i just might look into extending my trip by a few days to have some more epic snow like this last week.
thanks for reading,
-Riley
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
2/16/10-2/20/10
Gulmarg
Due to moderate stormy conditions the upper stage of the gondola hasn’t been open for the last few days. We expected this and focused our riding elsewhere. There are a few options you can make when the alpine isn’t accessible. Due to the recent storm, there is adequate snow cover down to three little towns that surround Gulmarg. Tangmarg is the biggest town complete with bakery, restaurants, and small markets. We’ve skied here a few times. Barbereshi sits to the skier’s left (it’s a way of describing direction: it’s to the left while looking down a mountain) of Tangmarg and has possibly the most interesting terrain I’ve seen here. Though the total vertical is a bit shorter (about 800 vertical feet) it is steep, loosely-spaced forest with little valleys and bumps and snow-covered river beds that provide an exciting ride.
From the beginning, “Barbareshi Runs” as we like to call it are exciting. On the top we skin along a completely snow-covered resemblance of a roadway with a steep, chunky cliff about 40-feet tall to our left, which looks like a big wavy curtain. It was created from digging into the hillside to make the road. It is mostly covered with snow except for the occasional rock outcropping or a large tree’s roots overhanging the cliff. Although there are plenty of terrain features to satisfy the most daring, it all levels out nicely to a flat, powder plateau of a road. This can give the illusion of safety. As we were walking along to our drop in point, we come across a beautiful pillow line about four-feet wide consisting of a five, then a ten-foot air. Wes immediately veers left and starts skinning up to the take off point. Matt and Amet volunteered to shoot video and stills of the event. I was feeling some “Kodak Courage” and decided to also drop off a cliff area into a steep powder landing. It’s interesting how that works. When a camera is rolling, you tend to go a little bigger.
The skin up the steep face was a bit sketchy due to the soft snow which we kept sliding back on. At the top of the cliff, the road all of a sudden looked a lot farther down than I was expecting. The steep rollover above the cliff also completely blocked my view of where I was planning on landing. Wes dropped first, airing onto a little patch of flat snow sitting on top of a rock about five-feet down. The snow was harder than he expected and immediately his knees were slamming into his chin and he goes airborne again over the ten-foot drop, rotating slowly out of control. Luckily, the landing at the bottom is soft and he plops down in a funny way. He’s alright. It was a good crash caught on tape.
I take my best guess as to where I should jump off this white ledge. About fifteen feet from the lip I point straight down and gain speed. The road quickly comes into view below and I can see the guys starring straight up at me. I focus back to my board and see the top of a small tree sitting below the lip. I Gotta jump over it. The ground drops away and behind me as the wind begins to rush past my ears faster and faster. I remember reading a quote in a snowboarding magazine when I was in fifth grade. It read: “You may only catch air for a few seconds, but your soul could take weeks to land.”
How true.
I didn’t land it clean at all, but the light powder cushioned my backside as I landed in a big explosion of snow. The rest of the way down it’s fast and mostly steep all the way to a plowed road where you can rent a taxi back up.
There is another small village called Drang that sits on the skier’s right of Tangmarg. Matt, Amet, Alan, and I decided to do a “Drang Run” the other day. We started out by skinning up Monkey Hill and dropping straight down to the valley 400 meters below. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of lingering resentment of the place. This was, after all, the same valley that two-weeks prior we had run out of snow and had to climb down rocks and ice and I thought I was going to die. So from here we again donned our skins and started straight up the opposing hill.
No one ever goes here. No skier, that is. Halfway up the mountain we stumbled across two Kashmiri men walking the other direction, big smiles on their faces. 
It was a beautiful skin through the woods. We could hear or see no one. The trees were starting to shed a little snow from their branches and every now and then a big “whump” would grab my attention as chunks of snow would sink deep into the snow around the base of the tree, followed by a shower of super-light snow crystals.
About 800-feet up from the valley floor we start to smell smoke. There couldn’t be a hut way up here, could there? We followed our noses and ended up at tree that had fallen over, the inside of it gutted and smoldering. The heat from the burning trunk had melted snow about half the way up the trunk. The top part of the tree looked like the rest of the forest floor; a thick, fluffy layer of snow doing it’s best to obscure what kind of shape lay below.
This tree had been hit by lightning before the big storm and started burning. As the snow-load increased and the inside burned away, it fell over and continued to burn for at least six days.
We continued on a couple hundred more feet. These distances are in vertical feet, by the way, so one hundred feet up is at best a 140-foot long skin track (assuming traveling straight up a constant thirty-degree incline) but is usually closer to around 250 feet in length. It took well over an hour to summit about one-thousand vertical feet.
We emerged on top the ridge with larger open areas and a few leafless hardwoods interspersed between the pine and spruce. The pitch was a fun 25-30 degrees and rolling terrain and plenty of snow-covered stumps to catch a little bit of air on.
Soon we were back near the burning tree and a very dramatic rollover that ended up in a good 45-degree sustained tree-run that stretched out below us for a good 800 feet. Awesome run. Caught the whole thing on the GoPro. The snow got heavier and wetter as we neared the bottom and soon we crossed a large open field and hit the edges of Drang town.
Kids were sledding down little hills on small, single-track sleds and laughing contagiously. This little village has no roads in or out (at least no one to plow them clear of the snow) and instead a deeply rutted foot trail cuts its way in-between the small, organic-looking houses and their adjacent outhouses.
There was enough slope on the trail that it would carry me somewhere between a walk and jog pace. I didn’t even have to turn; the sides of the footpath did all the directing work for me. I had in one hand the GoPro video camera and in my other had was my still camera, and I was using both as I glided down “Main Street” in this little faring village. It was like being on a little roller coaster ride through some Disney Land theme park ride where you got a glimpse at some foreign landscape. It was all surreal.
I passed two small kids who took an interest in me and gave them a ride on my snowboard. One was sitting on the nose, one was sitting on the tail as we slid down the trail.
Soon I could see a bunch of kids standing in the footpath holding their hands up, signaling me to stop. “Chocolate? Chocolate!” they all shouted in at first a somewhat cute and convincing manner. I had bought all types of candy to give to these kids before I left Maui and had so far managed to keep them stashed deep down inside my snowboard bag, abstaining from eating them myself. I had done such a good job at keeping the thought of candy out of my mind that I had totally forgot to bring any with me. I felt like a jerk. I tried to break it to the Drang kids lightly, but they then started shouting, “Rupees! You give rupees! Ten rupees!”
Woah, woah, woah… these innocent little kids soon went from cute to curt. They started grabbing at my pockets and trying to work their little hands deep into them. These little guys were totally working the system. I had to practically push them away from me, and keep on checking my pockets to see if they had taken my radio or camera gear. Now I wish I had brought chocolate just to throw to the side of the path, distracting the kids, so I could just pass by.
From the bottom of Drang I crossed over a long official-looking footbridge that would have made a civil engineer wince. Although made of concrete and steel, the design was such that the cadence of my step resonated through the bridge and caused it to bob up and down a good eight inches in the middle! I laughed at this and stopped in the middle and jumped up and down, flexing the bridge well over a foot in amplitude.
The last three days have made the entire trip worth it.
A high pressure system has moved in and provided clear blue skies. The mountain has absolutely transformed. Places that were completely bare two weeks ago now have long open bowls full of powder.
Again we got up early and caught the first gondola up to the mid station and began our wait for the upper stage of the gondola to open. Ski patrol still needed to do some avalanche control work before they could open the mountain. Since it looked doubtful at best whether they’d open later that day, many people decided to take advantage of the new snow and skin out from the mid station to do a Drang run. Wes and I were still sore from the previous day and decided to stick it out. Frankly, I wasn’t willing to miss the opening of the gondola. Here was 3,000 feet of completely untouched deep powder with perfect sunshine illuminating every ridge and valley and the thought of missing the opportunity of having first tracks was just unbearable. Wes and I knew it would be a few hours at least until they opened the top if at all, so we decided to skin over to the paper trees. We crossed over a large flat area on the way to the bottom of the trees. A gently rolling white desert completely surrounded us. Our skin track, lazily zig-zagging left and right was the only distinct contrast to the white plain.
It was a peaceful skin up and I got into a good rhythm.
I kept on getting sidetracked by the beautiful landscape surrounding me and the complete silence that seemed to quiet my thoughts. Soon we made it above the treeline and the skin track got quite steep. A fall here would definitely result in a long roll down.
An hour later and I’m standing on top of about 1,000 feet of blower powder covering a steep bowl in between two stands of paper trees. The ridge top was narrow and dropped off abruptly on three sides of me. Wes dropped first and screamed down through the trees on his way to a small cliff (of course). He soon disappeared into a cloud of powder fifty-feet long that was trailing his every move. The snow was incredibly light.
Now I’m all alone. It was a strange feeling being completely alone. I couldn’t help but stop and stand still for a few minutes, soaking in the vast landscape below. No one would be dropping in on me, there was no rush. I took a couple pictures then strapped in. A few deep breaths to calm my heart rate down, and then I point the nose of my board downhill.
I haven’t felt this kind of snow before. I accelerated so quickly, yet was still in total control. I couldn’t really feel the snow underneath my board, it just seemed to float. I could see my shadow in front of me on the virgin snow. With every turn it would vanish behind the shadow of my powder cloud.
Fifty-seconds later I’m back down, standing on the flats looking up at the best run of my life. It may seem like more hassle than it’s worth- climbing up a mountain for an hour and a half for a thrill that’s less than a minute long- and sometimes it is, but it’s the entire process that I’ve learned to enjoy. The hard work I put in to earn my turns just makes the reward that much sweeter.
All of a sudden, we hear the distinct sound of a bomb going off. Ski patrol has finally gotten the explosives they need and have started their control work. The gondola just might open sometime soon.
Wes and I traverse back to the midstation. The crowd hanging around is much smaller than usual due to many people doing Drang runs and no one is really standing in line. People are mostly enjoying the sunshine down on the ground and are milling about. I head straight to the front of the line, still in awe of the incredible run I just had. A Kashmiri gondola worker approaches me and does the typical overly-friendly introduction and small talk. We’ve all grown a bit tired of these brief interactions and limp handshakes and have started pretending that we just don’t understand, like we speak Russian or something. But I could see in this guy’s eyes that he was sincere and just wanted to know who I was and where I was from. His name is Rashid and he’s been working on the gondola for twelve years. We get to talking a little about whether the gondola will open or not today and I jokingly say, “you put me on first gondola, yes?” He puts his hand out to shake on it and agrees in a very serious manner. This could have been a blood oath for all he was concerned.
People are now starting to crowd towards the loading area and the tension is getting stronger whether or not we’ll all be able to ski the perfect powder in this unbelievable weather. Rashid comes near and nods to me, signaling that I may board the first gondola.
The ride up seemed to take twice as long. Apparently there was complete pandemonium when they started loading the gondola, complete with fistfights and dirty line cutting. Four people in a gondola is a typical load and there isn’t much room to spare. A few gondolas had seven people crammed in, totally overloading the weight limit. I’m glad I was in front of all this, drooling at the hillside passing below me.
As I neared the top I couldn’t help but appreciate the mechanical engineering that transported me 3,000 feet up in a matter of minutes. It would have taken me close to three hours of lung-bursting work to get there on my own power. An hour ago I had just praised the rewards of hard work, but how quickly I forgot all about that. It seemed too good to be true- to have all this powder with none of the work.
Warm, afternoon light illuminated each ridge top and cast large shadows into the valleys. It was a blur rushing out of the gondola and getting strapped in. I didn’t take a moment to soak in the beauty this time. There were 6 more people arriving behind me every thirty-seconds and we were all hungry for the same thing.
Now I know why they say this place is like heli-skiing without the helicopter
It's been so nice to have sunny weather again, although the white valley surrounding is is blindingly bright. the internet and the phone have been hard to find lately for some reason. Right now I'm in the little Gulmarg town amidst some little shops and restaurants sitting on the snow, thinking about lunch.
More to come soon
-Riley
Gulmarg
Due to moderate stormy conditions the upper stage of the gondola hasn’t been open for the last few days. We expected this and focused our riding elsewhere. There are a few options you can make when the alpine isn’t accessible. Due to the recent storm, there is adequate snow cover down to three little towns that surround Gulmarg. Tangmarg is the biggest town complete with bakery, restaurants, and small markets. We’ve skied here a few times. Barbereshi sits to the skier’s left (it’s a way of describing direction: it’s to the left while looking down a mountain) of Tangmarg and has possibly the most interesting terrain I’ve seen here. Though the total vertical is a bit shorter (about 800 vertical feet) it is steep, loosely-spaced forest with little valleys and bumps and snow-covered river beds that provide an exciting ride.
From the beginning, “Barbareshi Runs” as we like to call it are exciting. On the top we skin along a completely snow-covered resemblance of a roadway with a steep, chunky cliff about 40-feet tall to our left, which looks like a big wavy curtain. It was created from digging into the hillside to make the road. It is mostly covered with snow except for the occasional rock outcropping or a large tree’s roots overhanging the cliff. Although there are plenty of terrain features to satisfy the most daring, it all levels out nicely to a flat, powder plateau of a road. This can give the illusion of safety. As we were walking along to our drop in point, we come across a beautiful pillow line about four-feet wide consisting of a five, then a ten-foot air. Wes immediately veers left and starts skinning up to the take off point. Matt and Amet volunteered to shoot video and stills of the event. I was feeling some “Kodak Courage” and decided to also drop off a cliff area into a steep powder landing. It’s interesting how that works. When a camera is rolling, you tend to go a little bigger.
The skin up the steep face was a bit sketchy due to the soft snow which we kept sliding back on. At the top of the cliff, the road all of a sudden looked a lot farther down than I was expecting. The steep rollover above the cliff also completely blocked my view of where I was planning on landing. Wes dropped first, airing onto a little patch of flat snow sitting on top of a rock about five-feet down. The snow was harder than he expected and immediately his knees were slamming into his chin and he goes airborne again over the ten-foot drop, rotating slowly out of control. Luckily, the landing at the bottom is soft and he plops down in a funny way. He’s alright. It was a good crash caught on tape.
I take my best guess as to where I should jump off this white ledge. About fifteen feet from the lip I point straight down and gain speed. The road quickly comes into view below and I can see the guys starring straight up at me. I focus back to my board and see the top of a small tree sitting below the lip. I Gotta jump over it. The ground drops away and behind me as the wind begins to rush past my ears faster and faster. I remember reading a quote in a snowboarding magazine when I was in fifth grade. It read: “You may only catch air for a few seconds, but your soul could take weeks to land.”
How true.
I didn’t land it clean at all, but the light powder cushioned my backside as I landed in a big explosion of snow. The rest of the way down it’s fast and mostly steep all the way to a plowed road where you can rent a taxi back up.
There is another small village called Drang that sits on the skier’s right of Tangmarg. Matt, Amet, Alan, and I decided to do a “Drang Run” the other day. We started out by skinning up Monkey Hill and dropping straight down to the valley 400 meters below. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of lingering resentment of the place. This was, after all, the same valley that two-weeks prior we had run out of snow and had to climb down rocks and ice and I thought I was going to die. So from here we again donned our skins and started straight up the opposing hill.
No one ever goes here. No skier, that is. Halfway up the mountain we stumbled across two Kashmiri men walking the other direction, big smiles on their faces. 
It was a beautiful skin through the woods. We could hear or see no one. The trees were starting to shed a little snow from their branches and every now and then a big “whump” would grab my attention as chunks of snow would sink deep into the snow around the base of the tree, followed by a shower of super-light snow crystals.
About 800-feet up from the valley floor we start to smell smoke. There couldn’t be a hut way up here, could there? We followed our noses and ended up at tree that had fallen over, the inside of it gutted and smoldering. The heat from the burning trunk had melted snow about half the way up the trunk. The top part of the tree looked like the rest of the forest floor; a thick, fluffy layer of snow doing it’s best to obscure what kind of shape lay below.
This tree had been hit by lightning before the big storm and started burning. As the snow-load increased and the inside burned away, it fell over and continued to burn for at least six days. We continued on a couple hundred more feet. These distances are in vertical feet, by the way, so one hundred feet up is at best a 140-foot long skin track (assuming traveling straight up a constant thirty-degree incline) but is usually closer to around 250 feet in length. It took well over an hour to summit about one-thousand vertical feet.
We emerged on top the ridge with larger open areas and a few leafless hardwoods interspersed between the pine and spruce. The pitch was a fun 25-30 degrees and rolling terrain and plenty of snow-covered stumps to catch a little bit of air on.
Soon we were back near the burning tree and a very dramatic rollover that ended up in a good 45-degree sustained tree-run that stretched out below us for a good 800 feet. Awesome run. Caught the whole thing on the GoPro. The snow got heavier and wetter as we neared the bottom and soon we crossed a large open field and hit the edges of Drang town. Kids were sledding down little hills on small, single-track sleds and laughing contagiously. This little village has no roads in or out (at least no one to plow them clear of the snow) and instead a deeply rutted foot trail cuts its way in-between the small, organic-looking houses and their adjacent outhouses.
There was enough slope on the trail that it would carry me somewhere between a walk and jog pace. I didn’t even have to turn; the sides of the footpath did all the directing work for me. I had in one hand the GoPro video camera and in my other had was my still camera, and I was using both as I glided down “Main Street” in this little faring village. It was like being on a little roller coaster ride through some Disney Land theme park ride where you got a glimpse at some foreign landscape. It was all surreal.
I passed two small kids who took an interest in me and gave them a ride on my snowboard. One was sitting on the nose, one was sitting on the tail as we slid down the trail.
Soon I could see a bunch of kids standing in the footpath holding their hands up, signaling me to stop. “Chocolate? Chocolate!” they all shouted in at first a somewhat cute and convincing manner. I had bought all types of candy to give to these kids before I left Maui and had so far managed to keep them stashed deep down inside my snowboard bag, abstaining from eating them myself. I had done such a good job at keeping the thought of candy out of my mind that I had totally forgot to bring any with me. I felt like a jerk. I tried to break it to the Drang kids lightly, but they then started shouting, “Rupees! You give rupees! Ten rupees!”
Woah, woah, woah… these innocent little kids soon went from cute to curt. They started grabbing at my pockets and trying to work their little hands deep into them. These little guys were totally working the system. I had to practically push them away from me, and keep on checking my pockets to see if they had taken my radio or camera gear. Now I wish I had brought chocolate just to throw to the side of the path, distracting the kids, so I could just pass by.
From the bottom of Drang I crossed over a long official-looking footbridge that would have made a civil engineer wince. Although made of concrete and steel, the design was such that the cadence of my step resonated through the bridge and caused it to bob up and down a good eight inches in the middle! I laughed at this and stopped in the middle and jumped up and down, flexing the bridge well over a foot in amplitude.
The last three days have made the entire trip worth it.
A high pressure system has moved in and provided clear blue skies. The mountain has absolutely transformed. Places that were completely bare two weeks ago now have long open bowls full of powder.
Again we got up early and caught the first gondola up to the mid station and began our wait for the upper stage of the gondola to open. Ski patrol still needed to do some avalanche control work before they could open the mountain. Since it looked doubtful at best whether they’d open later that day, many people decided to take advantage of the new snow and skin out from the mid station to do a Drang run. Wes and I were still sore from the previous day and decided to stick it out. Frankly, I wasn’t willing to miss the opening of the gondola. Here was 3,000 feet of completely untouched deep powder with perfect sunshine illuminating every ridge and valley and the thought of missing the opportunity of having first tracks was just unbearable. Wes and I knew it would be a few hours at least until they opened the top if at all, so we decided to skin over to the paper trees. We crossed over a large flat area on the way to the bottom of the trees. A gently rolling white desert completely surrounded us. Our skin track, lazily zig-zagging left and right was the only distinct contrast to the white plain.
It was a peaceful skin up and I got into a good rhythm.
I kept on getting sidetracked by the beautiful landscape surrounding me and the complete silence that seemed to quiet my thoughts. Soon we made it above the treeline and the skin track got quite steep. A fall here would definitely result in a long roll down.
An hour later and I’m standing on top of about 1,000 feet of blower powder covering a steep bowl in between two stands of paper trees. The ridge top was narrow and dropped off abruptly on three sides of me. Wes dropped first and screamed down through the trees on his way to a small cliff (of course). He soon disappeared into a cloud of powder fifty-feet long that was trailing his every move. The snow was incredibly light.
Now I’m all alone. It was a strange feeling being completely alone. I couldn’t help but stop and stand still for a few minutes, soaking in the vast landscape below. No one would be dropping in on me, there was no rush. I took a couple pictures then strapped in. A few deep breaths to calm my heart rate down, and then I point the nose of my board downhill.
I haven’t felt this kind of snow before. I accelerated so quickly, yet was still in total control. I couldn’t really feel the snow underneath my board, it just seemed to float. I could see my shadow in front of me on the virgin snow. With every turn it would vanish behind the shadow of my powder cloud.
Fifty-seconds later I’m back down, standing on the flats looking up at the best run of my life. It may seem like more hassle than it’s worth- climbing up a mountain for an hour and a half for a thrill that’s less than a minute long- and sometimes it is, but it’s the entire process that I’ve learned to enjoy. The hard work I put in to earn my turns just makes the reward that much sweeter.
All of a sudden, we hear the distinct sound of a bomb going off. Ski patrol has finally gotten the explosives they need and have started their control work. The gondola just might open sometime soon.
Wes and I traverse back to the midstation. The crowd hanging around is much smaller than usual due to many people doing Drang runs and no one is really standing in line. People are mostly enjoying the sunshine down on the ground and are milling about. I head straight to the front of the line, still in awe of the incredible run I just had. A Kashmiri gondola worker approaches me and does the typical overly-friendly introduction and small talk. We’ve all grown a bit tired of these brief interactions and limp handshakes and have started pretending that we just don’t understand, like we speak Russian or something. But I could see in this guy’s eyes that he was sincere and just wanted to know who I was and where I was from. His name is Rashid and he’s been working on the gondola for twelve years. We get to talking a little about whether the gondola will open or not today and I jokingly say, “you put me on first gondola, yes?” He puts his hand out to shake on it and agrees in a very serious manner. This could have been a blood oath for all he was concerned.
People are now starting to crowd towards the loading area and the tension is getting stronger whether or not we’ll all be able to ski the perfect powder in this unbelievable weather. Rashid comes near and nods to me, signaling that I may board the first gondola.
The ride up seemed to take twice as long. Apparently there was complete pandemonium when they started loading the gondola, complete with fistfights and dirty line cutting. Four people in a gondola is a typical load and there isn’t much room to spare. A few gondolas had seven people crammed in, totally overloading the weight limit. I’m glad I was in front of all this, drooling at the hillside passing below me.
As I neared the top I couldn’t help but appreciate the mechanical engineering that transported me 3,000 feet up in a matter of minutes. It would have taken me close to three hours of lung-bursting work to get there on my own power. An hour ago I had just praised the rewards of hard work, but how quickly I forgot all about that. It seemed too good to be true- to have all this powder with none of the work.
Warm, afternoon light illuminated each ridge top and cast large shadows into the valleys. It was a blur rushing out of the gondola and getting strapped in. I didn’t take a moment to soak in the beauty this time. There were 6 more people arriving behind me every thirty-seconds and we were all hungry for the same thing.
Now I know why they say this place is like heli-skiing without the helicopter
It's been so nice to have sunny weather again, although the white valley surrounding is is blindingly bright. the internet and the phone have been hard to find lately for some reason. Right now I'm in the little Gulmarg town amidst some little shops and restaurants sitting on the snow, thinking about lunch.
More to come soon
-Riley
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Steep and Deep
2/13/10
Gulmarg
An amazing a mount of snow has fallen over the past few days, and a lot of it made it down to lower elevations. We spent a couple of the days skiing down to Tangmarg, a small village about 700 vertical feet below Gulmarg valley. From there we’d rent a jeep to drive us back up for about two bucks per person. The snow down to Tangmarg got progressively wetter and stickier, until it was almost became more of a problem than a good thing.
The second day we skied down to Tangmarg we hit beautiful weather. Blue bird skies illuminated the huge mountain above and the brightness of the snow in the morning sunshine contrasted nicely with the dark green trees almost entirely covered in snow.
There's a bus somewhere under this snow...
Soon we dropped into the trees and I encountered snow that was deeper than anything I’ve ever seen. Although the slope was plenty steep and I was perched on my knees facing uphill, it was nearly impossible to put a hand down and push myself up to my feet. My arm would just disappear into the light snow. I ended up having to throw my upper body backwards and use the momentum to get up on my feet.
The mountains here get steeper and steeper as you lose elevation. The run down to Tangmarg soon became quite steep and I had to do jump turns in critical areas to get around trees and cliffs. Many of the massive trees had fallen down due to the amount of snow we’ve had and provided a fun surface to skid and jump over.
The whole way down I was holding a little waterproof camcorder with a wide-angle lens. I initially attached it to the nose of my snowboard, but that soon popped off, so I decided just hold the thing in my hand.
Here’s a few stills taken from the video.
I saw a funny bumper sticker in Delhi on my way up to Gulmarg. It said, “India, Never Again”. I am starting to see how that phrase makes sense and It’s difficult to swallow.
The upper stage of the gondola has been closed for the last 10 days due to the storm, avalanche control, then visibility and wind issues. Yesterday we waited all day long for it to open. It isn’t the waiting that is difficult. If we knew we had to stand in line for four hours until we could shred down 3000 vertical feet of fresh powder it would be fine. It’s the waiting in limbo that is the problem. This is just like my 3-day airport experience in Delhi. It takes a lot of patience.
When we realized the gondola would not open we decided to skin a ways up the mountain and hit some fresh stuff anyway. The sun poked out for a while and it was a nice skin up through the sparse pine trees. Two other splitboarders joined us on the way up. It was nice to finally be around a couple other riders after being the lone snowboarder amongst a group of “proper” skiers. It can get old being the brunt of every joke. It’s jokes against my sport, not me personally, so I don’t really mind much. I am first to admit: backcountry snowboarding sucks 90% of the time. It takes longer to get places, the technology is far behind ski touring, climbing up steep snow is much harder, traversing is very painful, and learning to skin feels quite foreign.
However, when everything is put back together and I am again just a snowboarder, surfing down a mountain, nothing can compare.
I’ve definitely never worked this hard for my turns before. I’ll never take a chairlift for granted again, but there is a lot to be said for hiking up for your turns. It’s less vertical feet riding, but it’s also part mountain climbing and I’ve already gotten a little taste of the satisfaction when you reach the peak. It just makes riding down that much better.
Today we again made our way to the gondola early to be the first in line. There is actually quite a bit of people here in Gulmarg. By the time the first stage gondola opened at 9:30 there was a crowd of at least a hundred people waiting. Luckily, most people need to buy tickets every day and they don’t start selling tickets until the gondola starts loading. I bought a season pass when I first got here, so that means one less line to wait in. It is no way near an economical solution, but when you get to ride the first gondola after a storm has dropped over ten feet of snow it’s priceless.
Again we had to wait at the mid station for the upper stage of the gondola to open. The wind was down considerably from yesterday but it was starting to cloud up. Patches of cloudless sky illuminated the white giant above. Huge cornices, some well over 30 feet, have formed along the top ridge and there is evidence of some avalanches.
After a few hours of standing around we were all starting to get cold and antsy. So far we had been doing to good job at claiming the front of the line, but soon Kashmiri ski guides began to inch closer and pull their 5-8 person parties with them. We’d have none of it. Things got a little pushy and we made it clear that we were going to be the first one up this mountain if the gondola would ever start loading. As the saying goes, there are no friends on a powder day. Guess that throws out being a polite stranger.
Then the impossible happened. A gondola worker just gave us a slight nod and asked for our tickets. We all screamed “SEASSON PASS!” in unison and immediately started piling into the tiny gondola. Half way up, we entered a huge cloud and were surrounded in a total white out. Not ideal, but at least the snow would be soft and smooth.
At the top of the gondola I literally ran down the steps and strapped in as quickly as possible. I soon found myself inches from a cornice above the main bowl. Whoops. I jogged left a bit and found an entry point to the bowl. Now the visibility was poor at best. Total white out. I stayed within sight distance of Alan and we carefully made our way down the ridge. Sometimes it was impossible to tell if you were actually moving at all. It was the quick rush of a rock or a feeling of dropping that confirmed that we were actually moving. And fast at that.
Eventually we made it to the bottom of the cloud layer and there before us stood an immense bowl, completely untouched. I took the GoPro out of my pocket, aimed it back at me, and dropped into probably the best run of my life. It was nearly 50 seconds of untouched powder. Steep powder. It was completely effortless. I couldn’t help but imagine the looks on the faces of the people in the gondola right above me as I slashed large carving turns down this unblemished face.
I sped along a flat section then dropped down again in between some loosely spaced trees. A small rock with the perfect pillow of powder soon emerged and I jumped right off the thing, sticking the landing. When I got back down to the gondola I felt too good to wait in line for a second run. I had reached nirvana. I wanted to end on a good note. By the time I’d get back up, the main gondola bowl would probably be tracked out, and I just wanted to sit on this good feeling so I rode down the rest of the mountain back to the hotel. When the weather clears up, there will be many backcountry opportunities to ski things far greater than the main bowl. That thought is almost impossible to imagine.
The weather forecast is calling for more snow this week. A couple feet. The temperatures will also be very cold. This is great news for it will produce a very light, fluffy snow sitting on top of 4-20 feet of creamy powder. When we finally get a few days of high pressure and bluebird days, this place will turn on and hopefully live up to its legendary fame.
Here's a GoPro video from the other day. hopefully this loads... if not, my appologies.
Gulmarg
An amazing a mount of snow has fallen over the past few days, and a lot of it made it down to lower elevations. We spent a couple of the days skiing down to Tangmarg, a small village about 700 vertical feet below Gulmarg valley. From there we’d rent a jeep to drive us back up for about two bucks per person. The snow down to Tangmarg got progressively wetter and stickier, until it was almost became more of a problem than a good thing.
The second day we skied down to Tangmarg we hit beautiful weather. Blue bird skies illuminated the huge mountain above and the brightness of the snow in the morning sunshine contrasted nicely with the dark green trees almost entirely covered in snow.
There's a bus somewhere under this snow...
Soon we dropped into the trees and I encountered snow that was deeper than anything I’ve ever seen. Although the slope was plenty steep and I was perched on my knees facing uphill, it was nearly impossible to put a hand down and push myself up to my feet. My arm would just disappear into the light snow. I ended up having to throw my upper body backwards and use the momentum to get up on my feet.
The mountains here get steeper and steeper as you lose elevation. The run down to Tangmarg soon became quite steep and I had to do jump turns in critical areas to get around trees and cliffs. Many of the massive trees had fallen down due to the amount of snow we’ve had and provided a fun surface to skid and jump over.
The whole way down I was holding a little waterproof camcorder with a wide-angle lens. I initially attached it to the nose of my snowboard, but that soon popped off, so I decided just hold the thing in my hand.
Here’s a few stills taken from the video.
I saw a funny bumper sticker in Delhi on my way up to Gulmarg. It said, “India, Never Again”. I am starting to see how that phrase makes sense and It’s difficult to swallow.
The upper stage of the gondola has been closed for the last 10 days due to the storm, avalanche control, then visibility and wind issues. Yesterday we waited all day long for it to open. It isn’t the waiting that is difficult. If we knew we had to stand in line for four hours until we could shred down 3000 vertical feet of fresh powder it would be fine. It’s the waiting in limbo that is the problem. This is just like my 3-day airport experience in Delhi. It takes a lot of patience.
When we realized the gondola would not open we decided to skin a ways up the mountain and hit some fresh stuff anyway. The sun poked out for a while and it was a nice skin up through the sparse pine trees. Two other splitboarders joined us on the way up. It was nice to finally be around a couple other riders after being the lone snowboarder amongst a group of “proper” skiers. It can get old being the brunt of every joke. It’s jokes against my sport, not me personally, so I don’t really mind much. I am first to admit: backcountry snowboarding sucks 90% of the time. It takes longer to get places, the technology is far behind ski touring, climbing up steep snow is much harder, traversing is very painful, and learning to skin feels quite foreign.
However, when everything is put back together and I am again just a snowboarder, surfing down a mountain, nothing can compare.
I’ve definitely never worked this hard for my turns before. I’ll never take a chairlift for granted again, but there is a lot to be said for hiking up for your turns. It’s less vertical feet riding, but it’s also part mountain climbing and I’ve already gotten a little taste of the satisfaction when you reach the peak. It just makes riding down that much better.
Today we again made our way to the gondola early to be the first in line. There is actually quite a bit of people here in Gulmarg. By the time the first stage gondola opened at 9:30 there was a crowd of at least a hundred people waiting. Luckily, most people need to buy tickets every day and they don’t start selling tickets until the gondola starts loading. I bought a season pass when I first got here, so that means one less line to wait in. It is no way near an economical solution, but when you get to ride the first gondola after a storm has dropped over ten feet of snow it’s priceless.
Again we had to wait at the mid station for the upper stage of the gondola to open. The wind was down considerably from yesterday but it was starting to cloud up. Patches of cloudless sky illuminated the white giant above. Huge cornices, some well over 30 feet, have formed along the top ridge and there is evidence of some avalanches.
After a few hours of standing around we were all starting to get cold and antsy. So far we had been doing to good job at claiming the front of the line, but soon Kashmiri ski guides began to inch closer and pull their 5-8 person parties with them. We’d have none of it. Things got a little pushy and we made it clear that we were going to be the first one up this mountain if the gondola would ever start loading. As the saying goes, there are no friends on a powder day. Guess that throws out being a polite stranger.
Then the impossible happened. A gondola worker just gave us a slight nod and asked for our tickets. We all screamed “SEASSON PASS!” in unison and immediately started piling into the tiny gondola. Half way up, we entered a huge cloud and were surrounded in a total white out. Not ideal, but at least the snow would be soft and smooth.
At the top of the gondola I literally ran down the steps and strapped in as quickly as possible. I soon found myself inches from a cornice above the main bowl. Whoops. I jogged left a bit and found an entry point to the bowl. Now the visibility was poor at best. Total white out. I stayed within sight distance of Alan and we carefully made our way down the ridge. Sometimes it was impossible to tell if you were actually moving at all. It was the quick rush of a rock or a feeling of dropping that confirmed that we were actually moving. And fast at that.
Eventually we made it to the bottom of the cloud layer and there before us stood an immense bowl, completely untouched. I took the GoPro out of my pocket, aimed it back at me, and dropped into probably the best run of my life. It was nearly 50 seconds of untouched powder. Steep powder. It was completely effortless. I couldn’t help but imagine the looks on the faces of the people in the gondola right above me as I slashed large carving turns down this unblemished face.
I sped along a flat section then dropped down again in between some loosely spaced trees. A small rock with the perfect pillow of powder soon emerged and I jumped right off the thing, sticking the landing. When I got back down to the gondola I felt too good to wait in line for a second run. I had reached nirvana. I wanted to end on a good note. By the time I’d get back up, the main gondola bowl would probably be tracked out, and I just wanted to sit on this good feeling so I rode down the rest of the mountain back to the hotel. When the weather clears up, there will be many backcountry opportunities to ski things far greater than the main bowl. That thought is almost impossible to imagine.
The weather forecast is calling for more snow this week. A couple feet. The temperatures will also be very cold. This is great news for it will produce a very light, fluffy snow sitting on top of 4-20 feet of creamy powder. When we finally get a few days of high pressure and bluebird days, this place will turn on and hopefully live up to its legendary fame.
Here's a GoPro video from the other day. hopefully this loads... if not, my appologies.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Pow Pow
2/9/10
Gulmarg
This place has transformed. This storm has dumped over six feet of heavy, sticky snow so far and there is still more on the way. This is great news for the snowpack for places that didn’t have any previous cover. Temperatures are expected to drop and snow is still falling. This makes for light blower powder on top with a soft, secure base. Finally some good news. The alpine terrain is still questionable and tonight is the Avy Talk. We’re all curious to see what Ski Patrol has to say about it.
Today was a great day. This morning we hiked up right behind the hotel to the stump jump. Wes hit it first. He flew off the 25-foot drop and landed smoothly. Matt went next and did the same. The pressure was on and a huge part of me really wanted to jump this thing. There is an aqueduct about four feet wide that you must clear. If not, it’s a bit of an abrupt stop.
Cold feet got the better of me and I decided instead to hit a slightly smaller stump just to the side. It was about a 15-20 foot drop to the aqueduct below. I skinned up the flawless, deep powder and got strapped into my snowboard. Cameras were rolling. Game time.
I pointed through the deep powder and aimed at the white lump about 2 feet wide. Below it was Sam, taking pictures and Alan on video. My mind went blank and all thoughts stopped as I hit the point of no return. All of a sudden I’m in the air. And I’m not going very far, just mostly down. The jump had crumbled a bit when I rolled over it and my trajectory was greatly short. The flat landing rushed up at me and I braced for impact.
I landed flat on a huge cornice hanging off the aqueduct and just stuck there. No pain, no nothing. Just funny. Then all of a sudden the cornice cracked and I slowly rolled down with it. It was quite a comical thing and everyone was doubled over with laughter. Not quite the crowd response I was looking for. I immediately throw my skins back on and climb up to the top.
Take two.
So I point it from a little higher and aim for what’s rest of the take off (about one-foot wide now). Wind began to rush past my face as my heart was pumped incredibly hard. Then I’m flying. Just hanging there for a little while. I clear the flats and land a few feet down the steep downslope.
PLOP.
It wasn’t pretty, but I got an “A” for effort. After the next storm, I’ll definitely hit the bigger jump. It’s just a better ramp and landing.
So power has been off for the last 4 days. I’m quickly writing with what little battery life I have left and hopefully will have enough to send this out.
More to come soon, there’s 3,000 vertical feet of almost bottomless powder sitting on the mountain above us and I cannot wait to make my mark on the mountain.
Gulmarg
This place has transformed. This storm has dumped over six feet of heavy, sticky snow so far and there is still more on the way. This is great news for the snowpack for places that didn’t have any previous cover. Temperatures are expected to drop and snow is still falling. This makes for light blower powder on top with a soft, secure base. Finally some good news. The alpine terrain is still questionable and tonight is the Avy Talk. We’re all curious to see what Ski Patrol has to say about it.
Today was a great day. This morning we hiked up right behind the hotel to the stump jump. Wes hit it first. He flew off the 25-foot drop and landed smoothly. Matt went next and did the same. The pressure was on and a huge part of me really wanted to jump this thing. There is an aqueduct about four feet wide that you must clear. If not, it’s a bit of an abrupt stop.
Cold feet got the better of me and I decided instead to hit a slightly smaller stump just to the side. It was about a 15-20 foot drop to the aqueduct below. I skinned up the flawless, deep powder and got strapped into my snowboard. Cameras were rolling. Game time.
I pointed through the deep powder and aimed at the white lump about 2 feet wide. Below it was Sam, taking pictures and Alan on video. My mind went blank and all thoughts stopped as I hit the point of no return. All of a sudden I’m in the air. And I’m not going very far, just mostly down. The jump had crumbled a bit when I rolled over it and my trajectory was greatly short. The flat landing rushed up at me and I braced for impact.
I landed flat on a huge cornice hanging off the aqueduct and just stuck there. No pain, no nothing. Just funny. Then all of a sudden the cornice cracked and I slowly rolled down with it. It was quite a comical thing and everyone was doubled over with laughter. Not quite the crowd response I was looking for. I immediately throw my skins back on and climb up to the top.
Take two.
So I point it from a little higher and aim for what’s rest of the take off (about one-foot wide now). Wind began to rush past my face as my heart was pumped incredibly hard. Then I’m flying. Just hanging there for a little while. I clear the flats and land a few feet down the steep downslope.
PLOP.
It wasn’t pretty, but I got an “A” for effort. After the next storm, I’ll definitely hit the bigger jump. It’s just a better ramp and landing.
So power has been off for the last 4 days. I’m quickly writing with what little battery life I have left and hopefully will have enough to send this out.
More to come soon, there’s 3,000 vertical feet of almost bottomless powder sitting on the mountain above us and I cannot wait to make my mark on the mountain.
Storm days
2/8/10
Gulmarg
It’s been snowing pretty steadily since Thursday now. We’ve accumulated well over a meter and there is more on the way. Periodically, our roof dramatically sheds huge amounts of snow, which causes the whole building to shake. Buildings that aren’t inhabited have massive round cornices forming over the eves. We’ve gotten more snow in the last week than this place has seen in the last 3 months. Both stages of the Gondola are shut down. They always close the top stage when it’s snowing or even foggy, but it’s very they close the bottom stage. So for now we’ve been entertaining ourselves on the playground right behind the hotel: Monkey Hill. Monkey Hill is about 600-feet tall and is covered in large, spread out pines. It is perfect for tree-skiing and has many little hills and ridges that are in the 35-45° range. So it’s got decent pitch. A 45° slope is actually pretty damn steep.
There are a few ways to get up this hill. The first option is to bootpack straight up. This is the quickest, yet hardest way to do it. Then there are a couple of skin tracks. The main skin track everyone takes contours around the mountain a bit then climbs up a really mellow and almost flat ridge. It takes about 20-25 minutes and is also a pretty good workout. Usually I’m quite hot when I reach the top. There is another skin track that has been set on a very aggressive slope due to the current snow conditions. The snow falling is very wet and the temperature is quite warm. This makes for pretty sticky and compactable snow. Thus, one is able to skin up unusually steep slopes. The skins have no problems holding onto a 30° slope. This skin track is my favorite because it’s pretty fast and it takes you through some interesting places as you zigzag up. The tricky part, however, is turning around on these steep switchbacks. It’s a bit of a balancing act. First, you plant your poles good and strong uphill. Then you take your uphill-side leg, turn it 90° and take a big awkward lunge into the next switchback. Replant the poles. Now you’re standing in a sort of a ballet pose with legs going each direction. Your final leg you must lift up behind you and point your toes as you swivel your ski around, careful not to burry the tip into the snow bank, all the while keeping your balance because a stumble could easily turn into a long roll down the hill in deep powder.
As you near the top of the hill, the slope flattens out a little and there are some larger clearings. The giant trees look like large columns of snow. Their branches, unable to support the tremendous weight, now slope downwards and occasionally let off a bombardment of snow that looks like a small blizzard. I had one of these fall on me the other day. It was more funny than anything else as I was soon covered in a few inches of powder, but I was lucky not to get hit by any of the heavier ice chunks that created sizeable craters in the snow around me.
It is coming to the point where you can crash as hard as you want and the snow will soften your fall. This is great news because there are many logs and stumps to jump off. There is a large stump sitting right over a near-vertical drop of about thirty-feet literally right behind the hotel. A few more feet of powder and this jump will have a great landing. Wes has been eyeing this jump daily and can hardly wait to huck himself off of it.
When it snows like this the power goes out in Gulmarg. Luckily, we have wood-burning stoves for heating. I wonder what the more expensive places advertising central heating are telling their guests.
Gulmarg
It’s been snowing pretty steadily since Thursday now. We’ve accumulated well over a meter and there is more on the way. Periodically, our roof dramatically sheds huge amounts of snow, which causes the whole building to shake. Buildings that aren’t inhabited have massive round cornices forming over the eves. We’ve gotten more snow in the last week than this place has seen in the last 3 months. Both stages of the Gondola are shut down. They always close the top stage when it’s snowing or even foggy, but it’s very they close the bottom stage. So for now we’ve been entertaining ourselves on the playground right behind the hotel: Monkey Hill. Monkey Hill is about 600-feet tall and is covered in large, spread out pines. It is perfect for tree-skiing and has many little hills and ridges that are in the 35-45° range. So it’s got decent pitch. A 45° slope is actually pretty damn steep.
There are a few ways to get up this hill. The first option is to bootpack straight up. This is the quickest, yet hardest way to do it. Then there are a couple of skin tracks. The main skin track everyone takes contours around the mountain a bit then climbs up a really mellow and almost flat ridge. It takes about 20-25 minutes and is also a pretty good workout. Usually I’m quite hot when I reach the top. There is another skin track that has been set on a very aggressive slope due to the current snow conditions. The snow falling is very wet and the temperature is quite warm. This makes for pretty sticky and compactable snow. Thus, one is able to skin up unusually steep slopes. The skins have no problems holding onto a 30° slope. This skin track is my favorite because it’s pretty fast and it takes you through some interesting places as you zigzag up. The tricky part, however, is turning around on these steep switchbacks. It’s a bit of a balancing act. First, you plant your poles good and strong uphill. Then you take your uphill-side leg, turn it 90° and take a big awkward lunge into the next switchback. Replant the poles. Now you’re standing in a sort of a ballet pose with legs going each direction. Your final leg you must lift up behind you and point your toes as you swivel your ski around, careful not to burry the tip into the snow bank, all the while keeping your balance because a stumble could easily turn into a long roll down the hill in deep powder.
As you near the top of the hill, the slope flattens out a little and there are some larger clearings. The giant trees look like large columns of snow. Their branches, unable to support the tremendous weight, now slope downwards and occasionally let off a bombardment of snow that looks like a small blizzard. I had one of these fall on me the other day. It was more funny than anything else as I was soon covered in a few inches of powder, but I was lucky not to get hit by any of the heavier ice chunks that created sizeable craters in the snow around me.
It is coming to the point where you can crash as hard as you want and the snow will soften your fall. This is great news because there are many logs and stumps to jump off. There is a large stump sitting right over a near-vertical drop of about thirty-feet literally right behind the hotel. A few more feet of powder and this jump will have a great landing. Wes has been eyeing this jump daily and can hardly wait to huck himself off of it.
When it snows like this the power goes out in Gulmarg. Luckily, we have wood-burning stoves for heating. I wonder what the more expensive places advertising central heating are telling their guests.
Friday, February 5, 2010
A new storm
2/5/10
Gulmarg
Sorry I’m posting multiple posts at a time, getting on the Internet is not the most convenient thing to do here.
Woke up today to snow falling. The forecasted storm has shown up a day early. Great news. This storm is expected to last for 3 days and dump up to a meter of new snow. Today we’re running errands. Charging every electronic we can now before the city power turns off. Scouting out and possibly building a jump this afternoon.
Around noon, Wes and I donned our skis and skinned up the hill outside our hotel. A few minutes into the excursion, we came across a long-forgot about hotel that never made it past the foundation phase. Rebar and concrete made empty block shapes with pillows of snow beginning to sit on top of everything. We found a slopped roof about thirty-feet up that was possible to jump off of when we get another 3 feet of snow.
We took our time skinning up and around the 600-foot hill. The forest was so peaceful and we were making the only tracks in the virgin snow. You could still make out fallen logs and stumps, but they were beginning to look more and more like big white blobs.
Eventually we reached the top, where I switched from skis to snowboard and descended down an awesome run with fresh powder. It wasn’t very long, maybe ten turns or so, but the snow was deep and the stoke was high.
This is just the start of a storm that is supposed to last through Sunday. This place desperately needs the snow, and soon it might all be skiiable. Inshalah
Gulmarg
Sorry I’m posting multiple posts at a time, getting on the Internet is not the most convenient thing to do here.
Woke up today to snow falling. The forecasted storm has shown up a day early. Great news. This storm is expected to last for 3 days and dump up to a meter of new snow. Today we’re running errands. Charging every electronic we can now before the city power turns off. Scouting out and possibly building a jump this afternoon.
Around noon, Wes and I donned our skis and skinned up the hill outside our hotel. A few minutes into the excursion, we came across a long-forgot about hotel that never made it past the foundation phase. Rebar and concrete made empty block shapes with pillows of snow beginning to sit on top of everything. We found a slopped roof about thirty-feet up that was possible to jump off of when we get another 3 feet of snow.
We took our time skinning up and around the 600-foot hill. The forest was so peaceful and we were making the only tracks in the virgin snow. You could still make out fallen logs and stumps, but they were beginning to look more and more like big white blobs.
Eventually we reached the top, where I switched from skis to snowboard and descended down an awesome run with fresh powder. It wasn’t very long, maybe ten turns or so, but the snow was deep and the stoke was high.
This is just the start of a storm that is supposed to last through Sunday. This place desperately needs the snow, and soon it might all be skiiable. Inshalah
It was the best day, then worst day, then the best again
2/3/10
Gulmarg
Beautiful weather today. A deep blue sky and a bright, white mountain contrasted nicely with the translucent icicles hanging onto the roof right outside my window.
I’m getting quite tired of the breakfast here. I am already a picky breakfast eater and was never that fond of eggs (unless we’re talking eggs benedict). Needless to say, eating a paper-thin pancake of an omelet that tastes like plastic is becoming harder and harder to stomach. Everyday.
But we are really only doing two meals a day and it is really important to get a good breakfast in you. So I chew through it.
It’s a good thing I got all the energy I could today.
We were at the top of the mountain by 10 A.M. and immediately started hiking another 500 feet to the very top peak, Apherwat. The air is so thin up here at 14,000 feet that it is important not to overexert yourself for it is hard to catch your break once you’ve lost it. Slow and steady win the race. Matt and Amet had a fifteen-minute head start over Wes and I and were already well ahead of us, skinning up along the overhanging cornice of some huge, steep bowls. Wes and I were bootpacking.
It takes such a long time for me to transition my splitboard into touring mode and then back again that sometimes it’s just quicker to strap the thing to my back and start hiking. I was actually feeling much better than I had expected and rarely had to take breaks. We veered left and headed out into the backcountry. The idea was to make our way over to a fairly low-angled bowl facing southeast that had pretty solid sun exposure. This would be our safest bet. It was nice just feeling on top of the world as we hiked up and up along steep ridgelines.
I got my first glimpse of the real fun stuff here at Gulmarg, and it was painful to keep walking past these steep, massive bowls filled with feet upon feet of powder, knowing that dropping into one would most likely mean suicide. This stuff will only become skiable if a massive storm rolls in and rips out the old snow layers.
Wes and I, trailing now by about twenty minutes, stopped to film on the opposing ridge while Matt and Amet dropped in to a completely untouched bowl that had fairly safe snow. They both carved long turns, carrying good speed down a 1,500 vertical foot bowl.
Wes and I were next.
We only had another steeped face to traverse then a little rock pile to walk through before we could strap in. The snow became quite hard and icy on a 30° slope and it was difficult to get a good footing. A couple of times my foot slipped and I caught myself just before what would have been a pretty long tumble down the mountain. I realize I have a bit of a fear of heights and when I encounter situations like these I must remind myself not to look down and try to focus only on things immediately around me.
We make it to the start of the hill and strap up. Wes throws a helmet camera on me for the ride down. Stoked. The snow looks pretty darn good. About 8 inches of creamy powder lay over a soft bottom with minimal rocks. It’s a wide-open bowl with minimal danger. It’s nice not having to worry so much. But my guard is still not down. My Avalung tube (avalanche snorkel I talked a bout earlier) is out and only a quick bite away- just incase I were to become stuck in a slide.
As I drop down onto the main ridge and gain speed, my board just seems to float effortlessly and create fluid turns. The slope soon becomes steeper as I enter a large rollover on a heel-side turn. I can see the shadow of my spray as I shift my weight into a huge toe-turn, dragging my hand in the snow. My turns are progressively larger and larger as I gain confidence in the snowpack and pick up more speed.
It’s like flying. And surfing. This board is amazing. It’s long, gently slopping nose has no problem staying on top of the snow, and its short tail makes for deep, powerful turns with minimal back leg burn.
A dozen turns later I’m staring back up at my tracks in awe and am completely flooded with happiness. This is why I came here. I needed this assurance.
Here's our tracks
However, the day is far from over. I have to earn these turns. Time to break the board into skis and slap the skins on the bottom and start sweating. At first things seemed fairly easy as we were taking our time skinning up mild stuff and I got into a pretty goos rhythm.
This was just downright peaceful. The vast mountain range now towering behind us had sharp, blue shadows outlined every curve and smooth surface. Just beautiful. I am fairly sure that snow-covered mountains are of a feminine quality. The air is crisp and still. The sun is heating me up quite nicely and I have stripped down to my baselayer; wrapping my jacket around my waist. When I stop to rest, nothing. Absolute dead silence.
The altitude is starting to get to my brain and I can feel my thoughts slow down. A song is stuck on repeat in my head as I zone out, gliding my right foot forward, then my right pole, left foot, left pole. My breaks become more and more frequent and I am only able to skin fifty steps before I have to stop and rest. My breath is quite hard now and my lungs are beginning to burn. There’s just not enough oxygen in the air.
Now I am only able to make twenty steps before I need to stop and breath deeply, trying hard to slow my heart rate down, but nothing seems to work too well. I feel so tired and peaceful I just want to curl up against one of the larger rocks next to me and take a nap in the inviting sun.
Now its ten steps at best until I need to rest. This isn’t good, but I’m not too worried. I am in no immediate danger and I can take all the time I want getting back to the gondola. My lips chap as I take hard breaths through my mouth. I seem to produce a large amount of thick saliva and need to keep on spitting and blowing my nose. Every now and then I get into a coughing fit and a considerable amount of fluid and phlegm come up.
This is hard work. Forty-five seconds of pleasure for three hour of pain.
By the time I reach the gondola station (13,500 feet) I am completely exhausted. That doesn’t even sum it up. I can’t stand up, can’t breath through my nose, can hardly take a break in breathing to sip some water, and forget about talking.
I stumble up the steps of the gondola station and immediately get on a gondola all to myself and collapse. As I start my decent I feel many things: triumphant for my memorable turns and then making it back up the mountain, proud of the fact that I pushed my body to the limit successfully, and sadness, surprisingly, for I’m realizing that this is really hard work and the fun is definitely not free. After a few minutes I just feel drained.
I get to the Gondola mid station and have to transfer cars. I get the typical inquiry from the gondola workers to see my ticket and I say the usual: “season pass”. However, they want me to show them. This makes me a little grouchy. I reach into my pocket only to find it completely empty. No season pass, no money, no nothing.
Oh shit.
I rush back into my gondola, but it’s not there. I turn to the Indian man and explain my situation but he is not cutting me any slack. I either have to buy a ticket or ski down. I refuse both. I have already spent a huge amount of money on this season pass and am in no mood to ski the icy, tracked out lower slope.
I have no smile now. I demand to see his manager. I really get into the Indian mentality and start yelling at this guy and getting up in his personal space. I keep demanding to speak to the boss of the boss etc. I want nothing more than to go home and sit down, but now I’m stuck in a gondola office, arguing with these Kashmiri men, and I’m drawing a crowd. I can’t understand why they won’t just let me ride down. There are no lines, and if anything it’s actually saving the gondola a bit of energy having my weight counter the cars carrying people up the mountain. Don’t worry; I didn’t use that in my argument.
Eventually I’m able to go down and I immediately walk into the mangers office. I explain my predicament to the two men sitting behind a large desk and get empty stares back from them. I realize that I’m walking a fine line in trying to be stern and assertive, yet not offensive. They say it is “an impossible situation” because it’s my fault and what were they to do about it. “Easy,” I say, “write me another season pass”. Simple stuff.
OK, first of all you must realize what these season passes are made of. It’s a hand-written piece of paper with your name on it, a cut out photo (that you must supply- luckily I made a few copies of my passport), and a scribbled signature of some guy. It definitely doesn’t look like something that would cost over $500. No receipt.
When loading the gondola in the morning and they ask to see your ticket, we just say, “season pass” and they usually let us walk through. Sometimes they ask you to show them the season pass and when you even begin to pull it out of your jacket, they wave you on without looking at it. So it’s not like there’s any scanning, or checking if the right person is using the pass. I thought about just bringing a piece of white paper with some writing on it and they’d probably not notice the difference. So you can understand my frustration that they won’t just write me another one.
Amet explained the situation quite accurately when he said, “Indians have an underdeveloped sense of consequential logic.” He did, after all, get his MBA here in India.
I ended up writing the head manager a letter and set up an appointment to see him the next morning. I drag myself back to the hotel, physically and mentally exhausted. I retell my predicament to Matt and slump down on the couch and try my best to look for some good out of this situation, but cannot help but feel cheated.
I mope around my room and start to clean some stuff up, when out of nowhere some Norwegian dude walks into my room holding my season pass…
I nearly do a backflip.
Turns out he and his girlfriend had followed our lines up and down the mountain and ran across my season pass, money, and goggle case scattered along the skin track up the mountain. I had wrapped my jacket around my waist and apparently had forgotten to zip up my chest pocket. But how did he know who I was and where I was staying? Turns out he remembered us digging the snow pit a week earlier and talking to us a bit. There are not too many Americans here in Gulmarg, and most people know the largest group is staying at the Hotel Green Heights. Gotta love the small community atmosphere here.
I’m talking them out to dinner tonight to show my gratitude.
Gulmarg
Beautiful weather today. A deep blue sky and a bright, white mountain contrasted nicely with the translucent icicles hanging onto the roof right outside my window.
I’m getting quite tired of the breakfast here. I am already a picky breakfast eater and was never that fond of eggs (unless we’re talking eggs benedict). Needless to say, eating a paper-thin pancake of an omelet that tastes like plastic is becoming harder and harder to stomach. Everyday.
But we are really only doing two meals a day and it is really important to get a good breakfast in you. So I chew through it.
It’s a good thing I got all the energy I could today.
We were at the top of the mountain by 10 A.M. and immediately started hiking another 500 feet to the very top peak, Apherwat. The air is so thin up here at 14,000 feet that it is important not to overexert yourself for it is hard to catch your break once you’ve lost it. Slow and steady win the race. Matt and Amet had a fifteen-minute head start over Wes and I and were already well ahead of us, skinning up along the overhanging cornice of some huge, steep bowls. Wes and I were bootpacking.
It takes such a long time for me to transition my splitboard into touring mode and then back again that sometimes it’s just quicker to strap the thing to my back and start hiking. I was actually feeling much better than I had expected and rarely had to take breaks. We veered left and headed out into the backcountry. The idea was to make our way over to a fairly low-angled bowl facing southeast that had pretty solid sun exposure. This would be our safest bet. It was nice just feeling on top of the world as we hiked up and up along steep ridgelines. 
I got my first glimpse of the real fun stuff here at Gulmarg, and it was painful to keep walking past these steep, massive bowls filled with feet upon feet of powder, knowing that dropping into one would most likely mean suicide. This stuff will only become skiable if a massive storm rolls in and rips out the old snow layers.
Wes and I, trailing now by about twenty minutes, stopped to film on the opposing ridge while Matt and Amet dropped in to a completely untouched bowl that had fairly safe snow. They both carved long turns, carrying good speed down a 1,500 vertical foot bowl.
Wes and I were next.
We only had another steeped face to traverse then a little rock pile to walk through before we could strap in. The snow became quite hard and icy on a 30° slope and it was difficult to get a good footing. A couple of times my foot slipped and I caught myself just before what would have been a pretty long tumble down the mountain. I realize I have a bit of a fear of heights and when I encounter situations like these I must remind myself not to look down and try to focus only on things immediately around me.
We make it to the start of the hill and strap up. Wes throws a helmet camera on me for the ride down. Stoked. The snow looks pretty darn good. About 8 inches of creamy powder lay over a soft bottom with minimal rocks. It’s a wide-open bowl with minimal danger. It’s nice not having to worry so much. But my guard is still not down. My Avalung tube (avalanche snorkel I talked a bout earlier) is out and only a quick bite away- just incase I were to become stuck in a slide.
As I drop down onto the main ridge and gain speed, my board just seems to float effortlessly and create fluid turns. The slope soon becomes steeper as I enter a large rollover on a heel-side turn. I can see the shadow of my spray as I shift my weight into a huge toe-turn, dragging my hand in the snow. My turns are progressively larger and larger as I gain confidence in the snowpack and pick up more speed.
It’s like flying. And surfing. This board is amazing. It’s long, gently slopping nose has no problem staying on top of the snow, and its short tail makes for deep, powerful turns with minimal back leg burn.
A dozen turns later I’m staring back up at my tracks in awe and am completely flooded with happiness. This is why I came here. I needed this assurance.
Here's our tracksHowever, the day is far from over. I have to earn these turns. Time to break the board into skis and slap the skins on the bottom and start sweating. At first things seemed fairly easy as we were taking our time skinning up mild stuff and I got into a pretty goos rhythm.
This was just downright peaceful. The vast mountain range now towering behind us had sharp, blue shadows outlined every curve and smooth surface. Just beautiful. I am fairly sure that snow-covered mountains are of a feminine quality. The air is crisp and still. The sun is heating me up quite nicely and I have stripped down to my baselayer; wrapping my jacket around my waist. When I stop to rest, nothing. Absolute dead silence.
The altitude is starting to get to my brain and I can feel my thoughts slow down. A song is stuck on repeat in my head as I zone out, gliding my right foot forward, then my right pole, left foot, left pole. My breaks become more and more frequent and I am only able to skin fifty steps before I have to stop and rest. My breath is quite hard now and my lungs are beginning to burn. There’s just not enough oxygen in the air.
Now I am only able to make twenty steps before I need to stop and breath deeply, trying hard to slow my heart rate down, but nothing seems to work too well. I feel so tired and peaceful I just want to curl up against one of the larger rocks next to me and take a nap in the inviting sun.
Now its ten steps at best until I need to rest. This isn’t good, but I’m not too worried. I am in no immediate danger and I can take all the time I want getting back to the gondola. My lips chap as I take hard breaths through my mouth. I seem to produce a large amount of thick saliva and need to keep on spitting and blowing my nose. Every now and then I get into a coughing fit and a considerable amount of fluid and phlegm come up.
This is hard work. Forty-five seconds of pleasure for three hour of pain.
By the time I reach the gondola station (13,500 feet) I am completely exhausted. That doesn’t even sum it up. I can’t stand up, can’t breath through my nose, can hardly take a break in breathing to sip some water, and forget about talking.
I stumble up the steps of the gondola station and immediately get on a gondola all to myself and collapse. As I start my decent I feel many things: triumphant for my memorable turns and then making it back up the mountain, proud of the fact that I pushed my body to the limit successfully, and sadness, surprisingly, for I’m realizing that this is really hard work and the fun is definitely not free. After a few minutes I just feel drained.
I get to the Gondola mid station and have to transfer cars. I get the typical inquiry from the gondola workers to see my ticket and I say the usual: “season pass”. However, they want me to show them. This makes me a little grouchy. I reach into my pocket only to find it completely empty. No season pass, no money, no nothing.
Oh shit.
I rush back into my gondola, but it’s not there. I turn to the Indian man and explain my situation but he is not cutting me any slack. I either have to buy a ticket or ski down. I refuse both. I have already spent a huge amount of money on this season pass and am in no mood to ski the icy, tracked out lower slope.
I have no smile now. I demand to see his manager. I really get into the Indian mentality and start yelling at this guy and getting up in his personal space. I keep demanding to speak to the boss of the boss etc. I want nothing more than to go home and sit down, but now I’m stuck in a gondola office, arguing with these Kashmiri men, and I’m drawing a crowd. I can’t understand why they won’t just let me ride down. There are no lines, and if anything it’s actually saving the gondola a bit of energy having my weight counter the cars carrying people up the mountain. Don’t worry; I didn’t use that in my argument.
Eventually I’m able to go down and I immediately walk into the mangers office. I explain my predicament to the two men sitting behind a large desk and get empty stares back from them. I realize that I’m walking a fine line in trying to be stern and assertive, yet not offensive. They say it is “an impossible situation” because it’s my fault and what were they to do about it. “Easy,” I say, “write me another season pass”. Simple stuff.
OK, first of all you must realize what these season passes are made of. It’s a hand-written piece of paper with your name on it, a cut out photo (that you must supply- luckily I made a few copies of my passport), and a scribbled signature of some guy. It definitely doesn’t look like something that would cost over $500. No receipt.
When loading the gondola in the morning and they ask to see your ticket, we just say, “season pass” and they usually let us walk through. Sometimes they ask you to show them the season pass and when you even begin to pull it out of your jacket, they wave you on without looking at it. So it’s not like there’s any scanning, or checking if the right person is using the pass. I thought about just bringing a piece of white paper with some writing on it and they’d probably not notice the difference. So you can understand my frustration that they won’t just write me another one.
Amet explained the situation quite accurately when he said, “Indians have an underdeveloped sense of consequential logic.” He did, after all, get his MBA here in India.
I ended up writing the head manager a letter and set up an appointment to see him the next morning. I drag myself back to the hotel, physically and mentally exhausted. I retell my predicament to Matt and slump down on the couch and try my best to look for some good out of this situation, but cannot help but feel cheated.
I mope around my room and start to clean some stuff up, when out of nowhere some Norwegian dude walks into my room holding my season pass…
I nearly do a backflip.
Turns out he and his girlfriend had followed our lines up and down the mountain and ran across my season pass, money, and goggle case scattered along the skin track up the mountain. I had wrapped my jacket around my waist and apparently had forgotten to zip up my chest pocket. But how did he know who I was and where I was staying? Turns out he remembered us digging the snow pit a week earlier and talking to us a bit. There are not too many Americans here in Gulmarg, and most people know the largest group is staying at the Hotel Green Heights. Gotta love the small community atmosphere here.
I’m talking them out to dinner tonight to show my gratitude.
"Avy Talk"
2/2/10
Gulmarg
Every Tuesday night at one of the nicer hotels there is a free safety briefing called “Avy Talk” put on by Ski Patrol. Ski patrol is made up of two experienced heli guide/ mountaineering gurus from the U.S. They are training about a dozen Kashmiri men in the hopes that they one day will be able to be proficient enough to run this place. Kinda like the U.S’ involvement in Iraq.
The place packs up as about one hundred foreigners cram into the tiny lounge to hear the latest on snow conditions and a first-hand account on the probable dangers to be found in the backcountry. Brian is the main ski patrol guy and he does the talking. His quiet but clear voice doesn’t vary much in tone and he takes on an almost frightening demeanor when he takes long pauses between sentences. The effect is quite apparent, as the whole room will remain silent while he is talking.
This is always a sobering experience.
The bottom line this evening was that super dangerous conditions exist in the backcountry due to some really unfortunate snow fall this season. A huge storm rolled in quite early on November 9th which dumped a meter or more of snow. Then there was a two-month period on no snowfall and cold, clear weather.
Now time for a little snow physics lesson-
When the air is quite cold (well below zero) there exists a temperature gradient due to the fact that snow touching ground will always be 0°C and the snow at the surface will be the same temperature of the air. This temperature difference causes moisture from the lower parts of the snowpack to evaporate. En route, the water vapor comes into contact with snow crystals higher up in the snowpack and sticks to it. This creates larger grains (often larger than 2mm) of snow that have very sharp edges on a microscopic scale. Under a low-powered magnifying glass they look like little sickle-shaped pieces of smooth ice. This is called facets and they do not bond to each other. It is impossible to make a snowball out of this kind of snow. When a skier’s weight is added to new snow that has fallen on top of facets, it is like jumping onto a rug laying on ball bearings: it’s pretty easy to move.
So basically the backcountry is dangerous. Certain slope directions and aspects are obviously more dangerous than others, but there is no totally safe place to ski. So the warning level is quite high. Brian really made everyone’s ears perk when he said ski patrol-aided rescue in the backcountry (anything out of bounds) will not happen at all and he will personally pull his people back due to such high risk of avalanches. That being said, many people had already taken risks and skied out of bounds. Three people were partially buried in avalanches today and one man broke his femur hitting a tree. No one has died yet.
This is the avalanche path inside the skiing boundary. the surface is really hard and the little chucks you see are hard as rock. Not fun to snowboard on.
This mountain is powerful, and must be respected. The slopes get steeper the farther down you go, and the drainages become narrower. There are many rocks jutting out of the surface and most major avalanches are just un-survivable, according to Brian.
There is no sugarcoating with Brian.
Gulmarg
Every Tuesday night at one of the nicer hotels there is a free safety briefing called “Avy Talk” put on by Ski Patrol. Ski patrol is made up of two experienced heli guide/ mountaineering gurus from the U.S. They are training about a dozen Kashmiri men in the hopes that they one day will be able to be proficient enough to run this place. Kinda like the U.S’ involvement in Iraq.
The place packs up as about one hundred foreigners cram into the tiny lounge to hear the latest on snow conditions and a first-hand account on the probable dangers to be found in the backcountry. Brian is the main ski patrol guy and he does the talking. His quiet but clear voice doesn’t vary much in tone and he takes on an almost frightening demeanor when he takes long pauses between sentences. The effect is quite apparent, as the whole room will remain silent while he is talking.
This is always a sobering experience.
The bottom line this evening was that super dangerous conditions exist in the backcountry due to some really unfortunate snow fall this season. A huge storm rolled in quite early on November 9th which dumped a meter or more of snow. Then there was a two-month period on no snowfall and cold, clear weather.
Now time for a little snow physics lesson-
When the air is quite cold (well below zero) there exists a temperature gradient due to the fact that snow touching ground will always be 0°C and the snow at the surface will be the same temperature of the air. This temperature difference causes moisture from the lower parts of the snowpack to evaporate. En route, the water vapor comes into contact with snow crystals higher up in the snowpack and sticks to it. This creates larger grains (often larger than 2mm) of snow that have very sharp edges on a microscopic scale. Under a low-powered magnifying glass they look like little sickle-shaped pieces of smooth ice. This is called facets and they do not bond to each other. It is impossible to make a snowball out of this kind of snow. When a skier’s weight is added to new snow that has fallen on top of facets, it is like jumping onto a rug laying on ball bearings: it’s pretty easy to move.
So basically the backcountry is dangerous. Certain slope directions and aspects are obviously more dangerous than others, but there is no totally safe place to ski. So the warning level is quite high. Brian really made everyone’s ears perk when he said ski patrol-aided rescue in the backcountry (anything out of bounds) will not happen at all and he will personally pull his people back due to such high risk of avalanches. That being said, many people had already taken risks and skied out of bounds. Three people were partially buried in avalanches today and one man broke his femur hitting a tree. No one has died yet.
This is the avalanche path inside the skiing boundary. the surface is really hard and the little chucks you see are hard as rock. Not fun to snowboard on.This mountain is powerful, and must be respected. The slopes get steeper the farther down you go, and the drainages become narrower. There are many rocks jutting out of the surface and most major avalanches are just un-survivable, according to Brian.
There is no sugarcoating with Brian.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Avalanche video
Here's a video of the avalanche yesterday taken from the site www.gulmargsnowsafety.com
check out that website for more in depth detail about the snow conditions
check out that website for more in depth detail about the snow conditions
An avalanche is nothing i want to be a part of
1/31/10
Gulmarg
Matt and I took a day trip to Srinagar the other day before the forecasted storm rolled in. According to Matt, this was the smoothest Srinagar trip he’s ever had. We shared a taxi down with James, who was on his way home. We wanted to find a certain houseboat we heard did a great job. These houseboats are more like floating motels. They are permanently moored and have no means of propulsion. Rows upon rows of these houseboats stretch for miles all floating on black, oil-slick water.
In order to get to the houseboats, we had to take a water taxi. This is basically a large canoe with a bed full of comfy pillows, positioned under a decorated roof.
It was apparent after a few minutes of rowing through the maze of floating houses that our taxi guy didn’t know where the houseboat we were looking for was. This was fine anyway because it was nice just being out on the still water, and the sun was beginning to poke through the clouds. 
We ended up talking to a different houseboat guy who invited us into his house. His living room was completely lined with intricate carpet and comfortable pillows. No furniture. We sat on the floor and drank some tea. I’m pretty sure this room was primarily used as an opium den. We talked about setting up a houseboat stay for sometime in the next month. 
After we left the lake, Matt and I picked up some alcohol and food at a westernized market. I found a whole wheel of fresh Kashmiri Gouda cheese and decided to splurge for the five dollars. I also bought red apples, apricot preserves, and toast to finish off the snack.
Driving in Srinagar is unbelievably risky. There are no rules. I’ve seen bad traffic in many places like China, Thailand, or the Philippines, but this place takes the cake. I would’ve felt better sitting in the front seat of this tiny, rice-burner if my seatbelt hadn’t been disconnected.
Right as we got back to Gulmarg, the snow started falling. Hard. This is the first snowfall Gulmarg has seen in three weeks, and it is much needed. The snow continued to fall that entire afternoon and into the night.
We awoke the next day to a blanket of white covering everything. It is amazing how quickly fresh snow can make a dirty place clean. The muddy road was now completely white. Our metal roof sheds large amounts of snow periodically and makes a deafening sound.
Since they were not going to open the upper gondola today, we decided to go up to the mid station and skin up into some trees for a few turns. As we skinned across safe, mostly flat terrain, it soon became apparent the type of danger that lie ahead. Every few steps on the fresh snow and we would collapse s weak layer of old snow underneath and loud cracks and groans would propagate sometimes 100-feet away from us. This is called “Whoomphing” and is very indicative of avalanche formation.
Then we heard the first avalanche. I didn’t seem to notice it at first because I just figured it was some jet airplane, but everyone around me froze when the loud rumble pounded the air. I couldn’t believe the immense power of this thing. It is frightening to think about what it takes to emit that loud of a noise through snow-choked air for almost a mile.
That was avalanche one of ten we heard that afternoon.
Skiing was out of the picture for today so we decided to do some snow safety exercises. First we dig a snow pit all the way down to bare ground (about 4 feet). We smoothed out one side vertically so we could see the entire snowpack. We prodded and probed the snow from top to bottom feeling for any changes in snow density. We soon found out we had the worst-case scenario. The old snow was full of facets (basically small, round ball bearing of ice) that precariously supported a sizeable amount of new, sticky snow on top. Matt very gently cut behind and on the side of the vertical wall and isolated a column of snow 1 x 3 ft on the surface. Then he very lightly rested the flat side of his shovel on the surface and placed his other hand right above the shovel. He bent his wrist and lifted his hand a couple inches up and let it drop. This was enough force to completely collapse the entire column of snow at the weak layer.
This is not good news.
The ski patrol (two American guys) says this is the worst avalanche conditions they have ever seen here, and possibly even ever. The danger is real.
The next day we got up early and waited to be first in line for the upper stage of the gondola to open after ski patrol was finished bombing for avalanches. Since we are so close to Pakistan, the ski patrol here at Gulmarg isn’t allowed to store any explosives, or set up cannons to launch explosives. So whenever there is a need to bomb the slopes, ski patrol must order some plastic explosives fro the army base and then the military must oversee the entire process. Things move slowly. It’s India, get used to it.
The weather was incredible. Clear blue sky surrounded the completely white mountain. We waited up at the mid station while ski patrol went up to check the stability of the snow and set off some avalanches. The scene at the mid station looked something like spring break at whistler. Some people were taking their shirts off and tanning in the sun, snowball fights erupted here and there, I enjoyed sitting down in a chair and letting the sun hit my face for the first time in a few weeks. After a few hours we started to get bored and antsy to carve 2,500 vertical foot lines down fresh powder. We were sticking in bounds today, trying to ski anything that wasn’t bombed would be incredibly foolish, and would most likely result in a death.
A thick cloud had obscured the view of the top of the mountain.
BOOM! Finally, we heard a bomb go off. Out of the bottom of the cloud emerged a sight I will never forget. A pulsing cloud accelerating out of control emerged below the cloud line. It was easily 100 feet tall and growing bigger. It looked like a dam had burst and white water was shooting out at an unbelievable rate. A low rumble filled the air, but it was nowhere near as loud as the ones we heard yesterday. The avalanche continued to rage down the gully of the in-bounds terrain, ripping out other smaller avalanches from either side as it approached the man made avalanche dam below. Just a few days earlier I had been in the depths of this dam, which is basically a earth wall thirty-feet tall and a few hundred feet long, running down slope and curving to the left. It is meant to divert an avalanche away from the gondola station a few hundred yards away. I remember thinking this thing could hold back any avalanche.
As the avalanche disappeared below the horizon of the dam, I thought it was all over. Wrong. The avalanche had enough momentum to climb up that vertical wall and spray plumes of snow and ice fifteen-feet into the air. It was very much like a wave slamming against and overwhelming a break wall. A man standing in front of me yelped and just ran towards the rear of the gondola building. I’m not gonna lie, I considered doing the same even though other people were laughing at this guy’s cowardly move.
This was either a class 3 or 4 avalanche, which is categorized as being powerful enough to derail a train or knock a building off its foundation. There would be no survival in something like this. You wouldn’t even feel a thing.
After the cloud settled, we could see the top of the mountain again. The main avalanche was hundreds of yards wide, traveling over entire ridges, and the crown (slab thickness) was up to ten-feet in some places. The avalanche was so big it also caused other avalanches (called sympathetic avalanches) on the adjacent hillsides.
It was definitely a scary and incredible force to witness. This makes falling on a wave at Jaws seem like nothing. At least you’d have a chance of surviving that.
Full Moon and snowscape right outside our hotel
Gulmarg
Matt and I took a day trip to Srinagar the other day before the forecasted storm rolled in. According to Matt, this was the smoothest Srinagar trip he’s ever had. We shared a taxi down with James, who was on his way home. We wanted to find a certain houseboat we heard did a great job. These houseboats are more like floating motels. They are permanently moored and have no means of propulsion. Rows upon rows of these houseboats stretch for miles all floating on black, oil-slick water.
In order to get to the houseboats, we had to take a water taxi. This is basically a large canoe with a bed full of comfy pillows, positioned under a decorated roof.
It was apparent after a few minutes of rowing through the maze of floating houses that our taxi guy didn’t know where the houseboat we were looking for was. This was fine anyway because it was nice just being out on the still water, and the sun was beginning to poke through the clouds. 
We ended up talking to a different houseboat guy who invited us into his house. His living room was completely lined with intricate carpet and comfortable pillows. No furniture. We sat on the floor and drank some tea. I’m pretty sure this room was primarily used as an opium den. We talked about setting up a houseboat stay for sometime in the next month. 
After we left the lake, Matt and I picked up some alcohol and food at a westernized market. I found a whole wheel of fresh Kashmiri Gouda cheese and decided to splurge for the five dollars. I also bought red apples, apricot preserves, and toast to finish off the snack.
Driving in Srinagar is unbelievably risky. There are no rules. I’ve seen bad traffic in many places like China, Thailand, or the Philippines, but this place takes the cake. I would’ve felt better sitting in the front seat of this tiny, rice-burner if my seatbelt hadn’t been disconnected.
Right as we got back to Gulmarg, the snow started falling. Hard. This is the first snowfall Gulmarg has seen in three weeks, and it is much needed. The snow continued to fall that entire afternoon and into the night.
We awoke the next day to a blanket of white covering everything. It is amazing how quickly fresh snow can make a dirty place clean. The muddy road was now completely white. Our metal roof sheds large amounts of snow periodically and makes a deafening sound.
Since they were not going to open the upper gondola today, we decided to go up to the mid station and skin up into some trees for a few turns. As we skinned across safe, mostly flat terrain, it soon became apparent the type of danger that lie ahead. Every few steps on the fresh snow and we would collapse s weak layer of old snow underneath and loud cracks and groans would propagate sometimes 100-feet away from us. This is called “Whoomphing” and is very indicative of avalanche formation.
Then we heard the first avalanche. I didn’t seem to notice it at first because I just figured it was some jet airplane, but everyone around me froze when the loud rumble pounded the air. I couldn’t believe the immense power of this thing. It is frightening to think about what it takes to emit that loud of a noise through snow-choked air for almost a mile.
That was avalanche one of ten we heard that afternoon.
Skiing was out of the picture for today so we decided to do some snow safety exercises. First we dig a snow pit all the way down to bare ground (about 4 feet). We smoothed out one side vertically so we could see the entire snowpack. We prodded and probed the snow from top to bottom feeling for any changes in snow density. We soon found out we had the worst-case scenario. The old snow was full of facets (basically small, round ball bearing of ice) that precariously supported a sizeable amount of new, sticky snow on top. Matt very gently cut behind and on the side of the vertical wall and isolated a column of snow 1 x 3 ft on the surface. Then he very lightly rested the flat side of his shovel on the surface and placed his other hand right above the shovel. He bent his wrist and lifted his hand a couple inches up and let it drop. This was enough force to completely collapse the entire column of snow at the weak layer.
This is not good news.
The ski patrol (two American guys) says this is the worst avalanche conditions they have ever seen here, and possibly even ever. The danger is real.
The next day we got up early and waited to be first in line for the upper stage of the gondola to open after ski patrol was finished bombing for avalanches. Since we are so close to Pakistan, the ski patrol here at Gulmarg isn’t allowed to store any explosives, or set up cannons to launch explosives. So whenever there is a need to bomb the slopes, ski patrol must order some plastic explosives fro the army base and then the military must oversee the entire process. Things move slowly. It’s India, get used to it.
The weather was incredible. Clear blue sky surrounded the completely white mountain. We waited up at the mid station while ski patrol went up to check the stability of the snow and set off some avalanches. The scene at the mid station looked something like spring break at whistler. Some people were taking their shirts off and tanning in the sun, snowball fights erupted here and there, I enjoyed sitting down in a chair and letting the sun hit my face for the first time in a few weeks. After a few hours we started to get bored and antsy to carve 2,500 vertical foot lines down fresh powder. We were sticking in bounds today, trying to ski anything that wasn’t bombed would be incredibly foolish, and would most likely result in a death.
A thick cloud had obscured the view of the top of the mountain.
BOOM! Finally, we heard a bomb go off. Out of the bottom of the cloud emerged a sight I will never forget. A pulsing cloud accelerating out of control emerged below the cloud line. It was easily 100 feet tall and growing bigger. It looked like a dam had burst and white water was shooting out at an unbelievable rate. A low rumble filled the air, but it was nowhere near as loud as the ones we heard yesterday. The avalanche continued to rage down the gully of the in-bounds terrain, ripping out other smaller avalanches from either side as it approached the man made avalanche dam below. Just a few days earlier I had been in the depths of this dam, which is basically a earth wall thirty-feet tall and a few hundred feet long, running down slope and curving to the left. It is meant to divert an avalanche away from the gondola station a few hundred yards away. I remember thinking this thing could hold back any avalanche.
As the avalanche disappeared below the horizon of the dam, I thought it was all over. Wrong. The avalanche had enough momentum to climb up that vertical wall and spray plumes of snow and ice fifteen-feet into the air. It was very much like a wave slamming against and overwhelming a break wall. A man standing in front of me yelped and just ran towards the rear of the gondola building. I’m not gonna lie, I considered doing the same even though other people were laughing at this guy’s cowardly move.
This was either a class 3 or 4 avalanche, which is categorized as being powerful enough to derail a train or knock a building off its foundation. There would be no survival in something like this. You wouldn’t even feel a thing.
After the cloud settled, we could see the top of the mountain again. The main avalanche was hundreds of yards wide, traveling over entire ridges, and the crown (slab thickness) was up to ten-feet in some places. The avalanche was so big it also caused other avalanches (called sympathetic avalanches) on the adjacent hillsides.
It was definitely a scary and incredible force to witness. This makes falling on a wave at Jaws seem like nothing. At least you’d have a chance of surviving that.
Full Moon and snowscape right outside our hotel
Life in Gulmarg
1/29/10
Gulmarg
Many of you are probably curious about the town of Gulmarg and my living conditions. Gulmarg is a cup-shaped plateau about 1 square mile in size. It sits at the base of the mountain, which towers 4,000 feet above. As the sun rises, the mountain face catches its rays and holds direct sunlight until around 3:00 pm when the sun is obscured by the main ridge. The town below is separated into three areas. My hotel is located right near the base of the gondola. There are maybe half a dozen hotel buildings somewhat nearby. “Town” is a fifteen-minute walk down the road covered in ice and crazy, honking cars that will run you off the road.
Ok, I need to vent a little about the drivers here… I’ll be walking on the side of the road with plenty of room for the car to pass. I’ll even make a very visual move to the side, as if to say to the driver, I see you coming, but I’ll keep walking. But no, the driver always insists on laying on the horn starting from a hundred yards away and continues to blast his horn (yes, his. Women don’t drive here at all) until he has passed by be. So now, when they honk I just wave really hard and jump up and down, smiling. This seems to confuse them a little. Good.
So in town there are another half-dozen seedy hotels scattered amidst some shops and restaurants that keep very loose hours. Most hotels have a restaurant underneath, and we’ve eaten at the majority of them so far. Buying alcohol here is a very interesting process. Being a predominantly Muslim nation, Kashmir looks down on alcohol like it were a deadly sin. It is rare to find places that sell alcohol, and I’ve been told they are a hot spot for terrorists to hit first. Gulmarg has had enough western influence that they have a little more encompassing views. So some man has started selling liquor out of the side of his house. The first time I went to buy some beer, it was at night. Wes and I walked behind some restaurants. The slick mud was starting to freeze and make a crust on the surface. Then we came across a three-foot wall that we had to jump off onto the ice below. There are no streetlights back here. This seemed like a place to buy a lot more than just some beer. A small, flickering light illuminates a caged window. Behind the cage there is a man standing there surrounded by various beers and spirits. The transaction takes place through a little hole cut into the cage. He made an exception for us when we ordered an entire case of beer, and opened a small door to the right so he could fit the case out.
I am staying in a very interesting place called the Hotel Green Heights. It cost about $20 a night for a room. It’s a little more than I wanted to spend so that’s why I am rooming with Sam and Alan at the moment. The staff here is always a source of amusement. Down in the restaurant-lobby-media room there is always a minimum of five workers sitting around the wood stove, sipping tea, and warming their hands. These are the higher-ups. Indians love their promotions. One of these guys, a clean-shaven man in this thirties wearing ear muffs, always stands up when we enter in case we want to order food.
Of an estimated seven or so men who work here, really only about three actually do the work. Abzel is the main go-to guy. He’s got yellow teeth sticking about of his large gums, and is always wearing a smile. He often just walks into our room and stands there for a while. At first this was a bit strange, but now we’re just used to it. Sometimes we entertain him for a while, but sometimes if we’re just chilling he’ll eventually just leave. I’m pretty sure he’s an alcoholic. Maybe it’s because he’ll point to our small booze supply with such yearning eyes, or maybe it’s the fact that he’ll finish off any old stale beer left over from the night before in a single, satisfying gulp at 9 am. Abzel has worn the same thing since I got here: jeans, a sweatshirt that looks like it is straight fro the 80’s, and a blue vest.
Jar Jar is the other main worker. He must be one level above Abzel, because he is always yelling for Abzel and barking him orders. If the bacari is getting cold, these guys will bring up more wood and stoke the fire. If the water tank is running low in the bathroom, these guys will haul a big hose in and fill it up. That’s pretty much all we need to ask them for. Both men are in their fifties and are very interesting characters. Jar Jar is no taller than 5’4”, and wears the typical knee-length robe. He’s got a long, white-grey beard and wears a much-too-small, pointed beanie cap that makes him look a bit like a garden gnome.
The hotel itself is anything but safe. I’m quite surprised this place hasn’t burned down in its thirty years of operation. Besides having a non-insulated wood stove burning in the middle of the room, which constantly spills red-hot coals onto the carpet, the electrical wiring is enough for any fire code inspector to cringe. Lately we’ve been smelling a burning plastic small at night and we are pretty sure its something electrical being overloaded.
When the electricity is down in Gulmarg, the hotel uses a diesel generator located on the first floor. Inside. No exhaust pipe running outside. When the generator is on, it smells like someone has been running a lawn mower right in the hallway. We have tried to tell them to not use the generator, we can use candles (another huge fire hazard), but they insist on the generator.
The walls and ceiling are made of three-inch wide tongue and groove wood that have been shellacked the color of maple syrup. Smoke from the bacari has stained much of the ceiling black.
The bathrooms have no running water. You just fill up a bucket and pour it in the toilet to flush. Showers consist of a bucket bath on the bathroom floor. Today I hand-washed some clothes. It’s not uncomfortable living here and I actually enjoy it most the time, but there are some who would absolutely hate this place.
Gulmarg
Many of you are probably curious about the town of Gulmarg and my living conditions. Gulmarg is a cup-shaped plateau about 1 square mile in size. It sits at the base of the mountain, which towers 4,000 feet above. As the sun rises, the mountain face catches its rays and holds direct sunlight until around 3:00 pm when the sun is obscured by the main ridge. The town below is separated into three areas. My hotel is located right near the base of the gondola. There are maybe half a dozen hotel buildings somewhat nearby. “Town” is a fifteen-minute walk down the road covered in ice and crazy, honking cars that will run you off the road.
Ok, I need to vent a little about the drivers here… I’ll be walking on the side of the road with plenty of room for the car to pass. I’ll even make a very visual move to the side, as if to say to the driver, I see you coming, but I’ll keep walking. But no, the driver always insists on laying on the horn starting from a hundred yards away and continues to blast his horn (yes, his. Women don’t drive here at all) until he has passed by be. So now, when they honk I just wave really hard and jump up and down, smiling. This seems to confuse them a little. Good.
So in town there are another half-dozen seedy hotels scattered amidst some shops and restaurants that keep very loose hours. Most hotels have a restaurant underneath, and we’ve eaten at the majority of them so far. Buying alcohol here is a very interesting process. Being a predominantly Muslim nation, Kashmir looks down on alcohol like it were a deadly sin. It is rare to find places that sell alcohol, and I’ve been told they are a hot spot for terrorists to hit first. Gulmarg has had enough western influence that they have a little more encompassing views. So some man has started selling liquor out of the side of his house. The first time I went to buy some beer, it was at night. Wes and I walked behind some restaurants. The slick mud was starting to freeze and make a crust on the surface. Then we came across a three-foot wall that we had to jump off onto the ice below. There are no streetlights back here. This seemed like a place to buy a lot more than just some beer. A small, flickering light illuminates a caged window. Behind the cage there is a man standing there surrounded by various beers and spirits. The transaction takes place through a little hole cut into the cage. He made an exception for us when we ordered an entire case of beer, and opened a small door to the right so he could fit the case out.
I am staying in a very interesting place called the Hotel Green Heights. It cost about $20 a night for a room. It’s a little more than I wanted to spend so that’s why I am rooming with Sam and Alan at the moment. The staff here is always a source of amusement. Down in the restaurant-lobby-media room there is always a minimum of five workers sitting around the wood stove, sipping tea, and warming their hands. These are the higher-ups. Indians love their promotions. One of these guys, a clean-shaven man in this thirties wearing ear muffs, always stands up when we enter in case we want to order food.
Of an estimated seven or so men who work here, really only about three actually do the work. Abzel is the main go-to guy. He’s got yellow teeth sticking about of his large gums, and is always wearing a smile. He often just walks into our room and stands there for a while. At first this was a bit strange, but now we’re just used to it. Sometimes we entertain him for a while, but sometimes if we’re just chilling he’ll eventually just leave. I’m pretty sure he’s an alcoholic. Maybe it’s because he’ll point to our small booze supply with such yearning eyes, or maybe it’s the fact that he’ll finish off any old stale beer left over from the night before in a single, satisfying gulp at 9 am. Abzel has worn the same thing since I got here: jeans, a sweatshirt that looks like it is straight fro the 80’s, and a blue vest.
Jar Jar is the other main worker. He must be one level above Abzel, because he is always yelling for Abzel and barking him orders. If the bacari is getting cold, these guys will bring up more wood and stoke the fire. If the water tank is running low in the bathroom, these guys will haul a big hose in and fill it up. That’s pretty much all we need to ask them for. Both men are in their fifties and are very interesting characters. Jar Jar is no taller than 5’4”, and wears the typical knee-length robe. He’s got a long, white-grey beard and wears a much-too-small, pointed beanie cap that makes him look a bit like a garden gnome.
The hotel itself is anything but safe. I’m quite surprised this place hasn’t burned down in its thirty years of operation. Besides having a non-insulated wood stove burning in the middle of the room, which constantly spills red-hot coals onto the carpet, the electrical wiring is enough for any fire code inspector to cringe. Lately we’ve been smelling a burning plastic small at night and we are pretty sure its something electrical being overloaded.
When the electricity is down in Gulmarg, the hotel uses a diesel generator located on the first floor. Inside. No exhaust pipe running outside. When the generator is on, it smells like someone has been running a lawn mower right in the hallway. We have tried to tell them to not use the generator, we can use candles (another huge fire hazard), but they insist on the generator.
The walls and ceiling are made of three-inch wide tongue and groove wood that have been shellacked the color of maple syrup. Smoke from the bacari has stained much of the ceiling black.
The bathrooms have no running water. You just fill up a bucket and pour it in the toilet to flush. Showers consist of a bucket bath on the bathroom floor. Today I hand-washed some clothes. It’s not uncomfortable living here and I actually enjoy it most the time, but there are some who would absolutely hate this place.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I came to India for a whole new experience... and I definitely got one
1/26/10
Gulmarg
Today we got an early start and were on top the mountain before 10 am. The group split up because people had different agendas.
Alan, Sam, and James decided to just make gondola runs while Matt, Wes, Amet and I took to the backside. A bit of new snow has fallen over the last couple days and actually has covered some of the smaller rocks dotting the main ridge. We soon came along a 700 vertical foot untouched run. I stayed on top to take pictures while the three skiers dropped. Matt went first, and laid down a sweet line, staying high on the ridge and carving around large rocks. Amet dropped lower and made a quicker decent. Wes, split the difference and just jumped over the rocks.
Then I hiked over and dropped in. This was the first run that made me glad I bought this board. It wasn’t perfect powder by any means. There was some serious crust underneath three to eight inches of powder, but it was all soft and uniform snow. By board is a directional board and much longer than what I am used to. My stance is far back on the board and is perfect for long, powerful carves down steep and deep snow. The thing rides more like a surfboard, with a lot of back foot control.
Six turns later, and I’m at the bottom looking back up at the steep ridge we now have to climb up. It’s called “boot packing”. I strap my snowboard to my backpack and get out my ski poles to help with the hike up. The slope is between 30-40 degrees and mostly bare ground with patches of crusty, sun-backed snow. This is hard work. Hard work doesn’t describe it. This is insane. I have to stop every few minutes to catch my breath and admire the immense mountain range rising up behind us. My backpack and snowboard weigh close to 30 lbs and is awkwardly top-heavy. A couple of times I stood up too tall and about lost my balance. That could easily turn into a deadly mistake, as it is nearly impossible to stop your momentum if you were to start falling. I try not to think about it.
We get to the top and it’s early afternoon. Matt takes us farther down the main ridge to some bowls that supposedly drop us off at a different village where we can rent a car to get back to Gulmarg. Apparently He’s done this run before and has been told that you can ski all the way down to Grang, where we could hire a taxi.
At first we drop into an incredible powder bowl. By far the best snow we have seen yet. It’s fresh powder about 18 inches thick. My board just floats effortlessly on top and takes on a mind of its own as it guides me through long, hand-dragging turns. Pure bliss. This is what I came here for.
The snow is very loose and sloughs quite easily. Slough is a type of avalanche that starts as the loose snow you release and accelerates down the mountain usually picking up more and more snow. It isn’t as dangerous as a full on slab avalanche and most likely will not bury you, but it can knock you over and make you loose your footing, which could be devastating if you are perched above a cliff or rocks. So we took our time, dropping one by one and always ending up in safe zones.
For some reason I started to feel tense and felt that something ominous was about to happen. I could see it in Matt and Wes. They started to act serious and Matt was getting on edge to any questions I would ask. The snow pack was quickly deteriorating and was forcing us off the ridges and into the middle of the drainage for the valley; somewhere you don’t want to be if an avalanche were to happen anywhere in the whole valley because it would get funneled and concentrated right down upon us. The snow was very chunky and hard packed with an increasing amount of rocks poking through as we decreased elevation. The valley also narrowed and soon it was only a few yards wide. There were no more options.
The first cliff I came to was not very big, maybe four feet tall, but right below it was about a fifteen-foot drop onto rocks and ice. I jumped off the first and immediately had to stop. I fell back on my wrist and was certain I had broken it, but adrenaline was pumping so I didn’t notice the pain. From here I slowly traversed using my hands along a super narrow rock ledge, trying not to look behind me. It wouldn’t be a deadly drop, but I could easily break bones and we were a long way from any kind of civilization. I make it to a tiny chute with a bunch of bushes sticking through. I do a jump turn and slide down the chute. Matt has gone ahead and I see he has stopped above what looks like another cliff. He turns back and yells, “This looks sketchy!” There are no options except to continue down. Steep cliffs rise on either side of us. I get closer and see a six-foot drop to a patch of snow/ice about the size of a large mattress, sitting above a fifteen-foot drop. The landing is actually slopped back towards the cliff as the underside has started to melt out some distance below the surface.
Matt has sidestepped up higher to a super narrow, near vertical chute littered with rocks and sticks. He is able to make it down. He said it would not be possible to do on a snowboard. Wes has decided to jump down the cliff sections. It’s called an acid drop and is basically extending one leg sideways over the cliff then jumping down and hopefully stopping where you land. He somehow makes it down unscathed. Amet has taken his skis off above me and traversed over to the side and is trying to climb down. This is no longer fun. A brisk wind carrying snow has all of a sudden decided to blow straight down the ravine. Is it a malicious wind mocking me; making me jealous at it’s ease to descend the danger below? Or, is it a helping wind; encouraging me to make it down this?
I need to make a move.
I am used to taking my board off and strapping it to my pack on relatively flat ground. Now, here I am perched on a steep, hard slope above a 25-foot drop of rock and ice, and I have to take off my pack, turn it over, take off my board, dig a toe-hold in the snow, strap my board to my pack, take out my ski poles and extend them, put my awkward pack back on, and start to follow Amet’s path and climb down. He has only made it maybe five feet down and things look pretty difficult. A thin snow layer is clinging to the near vertical slope; beneath it small, smooth rocks and grass- nothing incredibly encouraging to get a grip on. Snowboard boots are notoriously difficult to kick into snow and get a footing. Mine are no exception. My heart is racing as I turn towards the hill and try my hardest in that instant to make my world smaller, focusing on only what is near my hands and feet.
This is impossible. I am stuck. Any slip and I would quickly be bouncing down over rocks, probably flipping end-over-end, and possibly landing on the flat ground in a way to seriously hurt me or worse.
I decide that Amet’s way is not possible as his toeholds have been ripped out due to my much larger boot. I climb back up to the middle of the ravine above the icefall and can’t help but notice (due to immediate relief) my newfound confidence of standing on such a degree of slope that would have scarred me earlier that day.
I don’t know what to do. I am running through different scenarios, part of me just wants to throw by board down and jump over, just to get done with the inevitable. Maybe I won’t get too hurt. Then I realize it is a very long way to any form of civilization from here and I can’t afford to add an injured person to the group. We would have to spend the night somewhere. Or maybe a helicopter would come and rescue me. Hah! Yeah right.
I need to climb.
Literally holding onto grass poking through the ice, and using all my strength to shift my weight from one limb to another as I cling on to the tinniest of things, I slowly start to descend. Amet has made it down and tells me to move only one thing at a time. Digging a toehold gives me very little confidence because I don’t know if it will hold my entire weight until I completely step on it. I tried to pull back and keep calm and started to guide myself down. Right foot first- extend over and kick. Dig your toe in; give it a little weight to see if it’ll hold. Move your right hand, grab that bit of grass hanging down right there. Now move your left hand to where your right had was, dig your arm into that ice hole. Ok, now move your left foot to where your right just was.
A couple of times my footing broke loose and I somehow managed to catch myself, feet dangling in the air.
Half the way down I reminded myself that I needed to laugh. This is India; you must laugh when you are stuck in situations that are seemingly out of your control. It is a nervous laugh, and I notice a couple of tears roll out as I release a bit of emotion. If I die now, it’s better that I’m at least laughing than cursing.
After what seemed like an hour, my feet touch the flat bottom. I am so relieved. I am not hurt. A quick thanks to God.
But we are not out of trouble yet. There is now very difficult traversing along a steep, patchy rock pile directly above a running river. The snow is incredibly deep and sticky due to the warm temperatures. I am exhausted. My calves are on fire and I cannot catch my breath. Wes skis behind me to make sure nothing happens.
We eventually run out of snow. Now time to bootpack once again. We follow some footsteps made from some other unlucky group who had been in our same situation. We need to cross the river. 50-foot cliffs line the river in some places and the water is moving pretty good. We walk up and down and across for about an hour. We come to a place where that is pretty flat and covered in soft snow that gives way to holes below. It looks too flat to snowboard. Time to ski. Split my board in half, attach my bindings to the telemark pins on either plank, and strap in. this might be the hardest part of the day. After a little while the slope steepens and I am able to switch back to the snowboard. Now this is fun again. We ride along for some time in a single file line and eventually come across an army base. We get questioned lightly at the army base and they let us though. We ask them how far to Tangmarg (place to get a taxi), and they say about an hour.
We could walk all night and I wouldn’t care as much. We were on flat ground and there was no immediate danger of falling. The walk was actually very nice, taking us down the river valley with great views back up at the mountain we had just scampered down. We entered thick forest for a little while, and it was hard to imagine this was India and not somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. A couple of hours pass and we are nowhere near Tangmarg. We are now completely exhausted from walking and hiking, the sun has set and it is getting dark. Quickly.
I think I hear a car, but it cannot be. There is nothing near us. I hear it again- closer. Then around the next turn comes a little minivan. Matt moves to the side of the road but I stop right in the middle with my arms out. There is no way this car will leave without giving us a ride where we need. Everyone has a price. The good news for being a foreigner is that this price is relatively cheap. I ask the guys if they’ll give us a ride for 400 rupees (about $10). They agreed. All four of us pile into this little automobile. We were soon relieved as it was still over a mile to the town of Tangmarg. It is now pitch black. We find another taxi to take us up to Gulmarg and to the relief of Sam and Alan, arrive back at the hotel around 7pm. People were getting worried for us and were even thinking about heading a search party for the morning. There is literally nothing you can do on such a large mountain without daylight. We agree upon some safety considerations such as first aid, and search/rescue plans for possible situations.
Today was an experience all right, and a bit sobering too. Looking back we learned a few things and gained a greater respect for this mountain and how quickly it can swallow you if you don’t respect its danger. Last year a girl came to our same hotel and went up for a quick ride very close to our hotel. Her body was found the next spring.
I think I’ll take tomorrow off from snowboarding and explore the town. Snow is on the way.
Gulmarg
Today we got an early start and were on top the mountain before 10 am. The group split up because people had different agendas.
Alan, Sam, and James decided to just make gondola runs while Matt, Wes, Amet and I took to the backside. A bit of new snow has fallen over the last couple days and actually has covered some of the smaller rocks dotting the main ridge. We soon came along a 700 vertical foot untouched run. I stayed on top to take pictures while the three skiers dropped. Matt went first, and laid down a sweet line, staying high on the ridge and carving around large rocks. Amet dropped lower and made a quicker decent. Wes, split the difference and just jumped over the rocks.
Then I hiked over and dropped in. This was the first run that made me glad I bought this board. It wasn’t perfect powder by any means. There was some serious crust underneath three to eight inches of powder, but it was all soft and uniform snow. By board is a directional board and much longer than what I am used to. My stance is far back on the board and is perfect for long, powerful carves down steep and deep snow. The thing rides more like a surfboard, with a lot of back foot control.
Six turns later, and I’m at the bottom looking back up at the steep ridge we now have to climb up. It’s called “boot packing”. I strap my snowboard to my backpack and get out my ski poles to help with the hike up. The slope is between 30-40 degrees and mostly bare ground with patches of crusty, sun-backed snow. This is hard work. Hard work doesn’t describe it. This is insane. I have to stop every few minutes to catch my breath and admire the immense mountain range rising up behind us. My backpack and snowboard weigh close to 30 lbs and is awkwardly top-heavy. A couple of times I stood up too tall and about lost my balance. That could easily turn into a deadly mistake, as it is nearly impossible to stop your momentum if you were to start falling. I try not to think about it.
We get to the top and it’s early afternoon. Matt takes us farther down the main ridge to some bowls that supposedly drop us off at a different village where we can rent a car to get back to Gulmarg. Apparently He’s done this run before and has been told that you can ski all the way down to Grang, where we could hire a taxi.
At first we drop into an incredible powder bowl. By far the best snow we have seen yet. It’s fresh powder about 18 inches thick. My board just floats effortlessly on top and takes on a mind of its own as it guides me through long, hand-dragging turns. Pure bliss. This is what I came here for.
The snow is very loose and sloughs quite easily. Slough is a type of avalanche that starts as the loose snow you release and accelerates down the mountain usually picking up more and more snow. It isn’t as dangerous as a full on slab avalanche and most likely will not bury you, but it can knock you over and make you loose your footing, which could be devastating if you are perched above a cliff or rocks. So we took our time, dropping one by one and always ending up in safe zones.
For some reason I started to feel tense and felt that something ominous was about to happen. I could see it in Matt and Wes. They started to act serious and Matt was getting on edge to any questions I would ask. The snow pack was quickly deteriorating and was forcing us off the ridges and into the middle of the drainage for the valley; somewhere you don’t want to be if an avalanche were to happen anywhere in the whole valley because it would get funneled and concentrated right down upon us. The snow was very chunky and hard packed with an increasing amount of rocks poking through as we decreased elevation. The valley also narrowed and soon it was only a few yards wide. There were no more options.
The first cliff I came to was not very big, maybe four feet tall, but right below it was about a fifteen-foot drop onto rocks and ice. I jumped off the first and immediately had to stop. I fell back on my wrist and was certain I had broken it, but adrenaline was pumping so I didn’t notice the pain. From here I slowly traversed using my hands along a super narrow rock ledge, trying not to look behind me. It wouldn’t be a deadly drop, but I could easily break bones and we were a long way from any kind of civilization. I make it to a tiny chute with a bunch of bushes sticking through. I do a jump turn and slide down the chute. Matt has gone ahead and I see he has stopped above what looks like another cliff. He turns back and yells, “This looks sketchy!” There are no options except to continue down. Steep cliffs rise on either side of us. I get closer and see a six-foot drop to a patch of snow/ice about the size of a large mattress, sitting above a fifteen-foot drop. The landing is actually slopped back towards the cliff as the underside has started to melt out some distance below the surface.
Matt has sidestepped up higher to a super narrow, near vertical chute littered with rocks and sticks. He is able to make it down. He said it would not be possible to do on a snowboard. Wes has decided to jump down the cliff sections. It’s called an acid drop and is basically extending one leg sideways over the cliff then jumping down and hopefully stopping where you land. He somehow makes it down unscathed. Amet has taken his skis off above me and traversed over to the side and is trying to climb down. This is no longer fun. A brisk wind carrying snow has all of a sudden decided to blow straight down the ravine. Is it a malicious wind mocking me; making me jealous at it’s ease to descend the danger below? Or, is it a helping wind; encouraging me to make it down this?
I need to make a move.
I am used to taking my board off and strapping it to my pack on relatively flat ground. Now, here I am perched on a steep, hard slope above a 25-foot drop of rock and ice, and I have to take off my pack, turn it over, take off my board, dig a toe-hold in the snow, strap my board to my pack, take out my ski poles and extend them, put my awkward pack back on, and start to follow Amet’s path and climb down. He has only made it maybe five feet down and things look pretty difficult. A thin snow layer is clinging to the near vertical slope; beneath it small, smooth rocks and grass- nothing incredibly encouraging to get a grip on. Snowboard boots are notoriously difficult to kick into snow and get a footing. Mine are no exception. My heart is racing as I turn towards the hill and try my hardest in that instant to make my world smaller, focusing on only what is near my hands and feet.
This is impossible. I am stuck. Any slip and I would quickly be bouncing down over rocks, probably flipping end-over-end, and possibly landing on the flat ground in a way to seriously hurt me or worse.
I decide that Amet’s way is not possible as his toeholds have been ripped out due to my much larger boot. I climb back up to the middle of the ravine above the icefall and can’t help but notice (due to immediate relief) my newfound confidence of standing on such a degree of slope that would have scarred me earlier that day.
I don’t know what to do. I am running through different scenarios, part of me just wants to throw by board down and jump over, just to get done with the inevitable. Maybe I won’t get too hurt. Then I realize it is a very long way to any form of civilization from here and I can’t afford to add an injured person to the group. We would have to spend the night somewhere. Or maybe a helicopter would come and rescue me. Hah! Yeah right.
I need to climb.
Literally holding onto grass poking through the ice, and using all my strength to shift my weight from one limb to another as I cling on to the tinniest of things, I slowly start to descend. Amet has made it down and tells me to move only one thing at a time. Digging a toehold gives me very little confidence because I don’t know if it will hold my entire weight until I completely step on it. I tried to pull back and keep calm and started to guide myself down. Right foot first- extend over and kick. Dig your toe in; give it a little weight to see if it’ll hold. Move your right hand, grab that bit of grass hanging down right there. Now move your left hand to where your right had was, dig your arm into that ice hole. Ok, now move your left foot to where your right just was.
A couple of times my footing broke loose and I somehow managed to catch myself, feet dangling in the air.
Half the way down I reminded myself that I needed to laugh. This is India; you must laugh when you are stuck in situations that are seemingly out of your control. It is a nervous laugh, and I notice a couple of tears roll out as I release a bit of emotion. If I die now, it’s better that I’m at least laughing than cursing.
After what seemed like an hour, my feet touch the flat bottom. I am so relieved. I am not hurt. A quick thanks to God.
But we are not out of trouble yet. There is now very difficult traversing along a steep, patchy rock pile directly above a running river. The snow is incredibly deep and sticky due to the warm temperatures. I am exhausted. My calves are on fire and I cannot catch my breath. Wes skis behind me to make sure nothing happens.
We eventually run out of snow. Now time to bootpack once again. We follow some footsteps made from some other unlucky group who had been in our same situation. We need to cross the river. 50-foot cliffs line the river in some places and the water is moving pretty good. We walk up and down and across for about an hour. We come to a place where that is pretty flat and covered in soft snow that gives way to holes below. It looks too flat to snowboard. Time to ski. Split my board in half, attach my bindings to the telemark pins on either plank, and strap in. this might be the hardest part of the day. After a little while the slope steepens and I am able to switch back to the snowboard. Now this is fun again. We ride along for some time in a single file line and eventually come across an army base. We get questioned lightly at the army base and they let us though. We ask them how far to Tangmarg (place to get a taxi), and they say about an hour.
We could walk all night and I wouldn’t care as much. We were on flat ground and there was no immediate danger of falling. The walk was actually very nice, taking us down the river valley with great views back up at the mountain we had just scampered down. We entered thick forest for a little while, and it was hard to imagine this was India and not somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. A couple of hours pass and we are nowhere near Tangmarg. We are now completely exhausted from walking and hiking, the sun has set and it is getting dark. Quickly.
I think I hear a car, but it cannot be. There is nothing near us. I hear it again- closer. Then around the next turn comes a little minivan. Matt moves to the side of the road but I stop right in the middle with my arms out. There is no way this car will leave without giving us a ride where we need. Everyone has a price. The good news for being a foreigner is that this price is relatively cheap. I ask the guys if they’ll give us a ride for 400 rupees (about $10). They agreed. All four of us pile into this little automobile. We were soon relieved as it was still over a mile to the town of Tangmarg. It is now pitch black. We find another taxi to take us up to Gulmarg and to the relief of Sam and Alan, arrive back at the hotel around 7pm. People were getting worried for us and were even thinking about heading a search party for the morning. There is literally nothing you can do on such a large mountain without daylight. We agree upon some safety considerations such as first aid, and search/rescue plans for possible situations.
Today was an experience all right, and a bit sobering too. Looking back we learned a few things and gained a greater respect for this mountain and how quickly it can swallow you if you don’t respect its danger. Last year a girl came to our same hotel and went up for a quick ride very close to our hotel. Her body was found the next spring.
I think I’ll take tomorrow off from snowboarding and explore the town. Snow is on the way.
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