Sunday, March 13, 2011

How I wasted my Spring Break

In the mid 1980s XC ski legend Audun Endestadt claimed that it would be possible to ski the 30 miles and 14,000 vertical feet to the summit of 16,000 foot Mt Sanford in under 24 hours.

This was about the same time that Chuck Comstock schemed to win the Wilderness Classic using his kite to fly off the Stairway Icefall, Jon Underwood suggested we mtn bike a wilderness route in the White Mountains, and Carl Tobin said the Iditabike ought to be extended to McGrath.

Those were heady days and we dreamed up many possibilities that only now are realized by a new generation of adventurers.

For example, Luc Mehl and John Sykes have shown that summiting Mt Sanford in a day is possible, although I think they were simply training for the upcoming Winter Wilderness Classic. Their round trip to 15,000 feet was three days, and they weren't really racing as they had time to make a video and sleep on the way up.

While Luc and John were setting out to ski Mt. Sanford rt from the road in under 72 hours, I was reliving my past (about all I can do, anymore it seems) and contributing to the cloud's collective knowledge base by posting photos for Google Earth where there are none.

4 comments:

  1. You and Dooner might need to knock some time off the Young Bucks' rock ski. What a fun tour. Thanks for posting. The closest I'll get to skiing this winter was up in Stowe, Vermont--my first trip to New England. Thought of Audun the day we skied in the sun at Von Trapp Family Lodge. Met a gal in Stowe who went to UVM with Kent Karns. Also met a mountain gal Jan Reynolds. Enough name dropping, I miss skiing with nobody.

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  2. Those young bucks might get to knocking time off of their own ski this weekend! And Lynn, you're not name dropping: you're recounting history.

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  3. Hey, how the spring crust ski RT in under 24? Might die on the way home, but...

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