Zach skiing Huntington Ravine. Photo courtesy of Nick Weinberg

This was it! The trees suddenly stopped, giving way to open air and the valley floor thousands of feet below. After bushwhacking 100 feet down from the summit, we now saw that we would have to drop-in about 50 feet to clear a large rock band in order to access the massive rock slide. This was ridiculously bold, and would have placed a real strain on the snow pack - the stability of which was still not clear. One fall on the sheer slope could potentially send us rag dolling down the whole thing over numerous outcrops, and we’d be history. We opted to skirt to skiers right - down and around to a smaller drop -in point. Zach was first in. As his skis hit the snow, the two feet of powder on top instantly sloughed off down the slide, leaving a bare swath of rock and ice underneath. Dicey at best, but at least, as we had surmised, the conditions did not permit any large slabs to release. Tristan and I soon followed.

This story actually began years ago when I met Zach Handler during my freshman year in college in rural Minnesota. In an attempt to avert insanity during the long, cold winters at a small, high-stress academic institution in the upper Midwest, we sought alternative outlets for our pent up energy. The typical, debaucherous high jinks of college students freshly released from the care of their parents was entertaining for a time, but proved to be unsustainable if we wished to live a healthy lifestyle free of legal and disciplinary problems. Instead, we turned to skiing. For four years, a group of dedicated free-heel skiers, including Zach and myself toured the rolling hills, pastures and ravines of southern Minnesota in search of brief powder runs, steeps and drops. To add to the challenge, we stuck to Nordic gear, often short, light skate skis or conversely, long, stiff, heavily cambered 210’’ touring skis. We struggled with this gear due to its lack of ankle support and binding tension, but over time, mastered the telemark turn in a variety of snow conditions.

Post college, as Zach and I acquired increasingly modern telemark gear, our Minnesota training tours paid off, allowing us to ski steep, "big mountain" backcountry terrain with relative ease. Zach even mastered the naked telemark turn, wearing nothing, of course, except his avalanche beacon. After a season skiing together in the Mt. Baker backcountry of the North Cascades, Zach and I returned to the East Coast; he took up work in a lab in Boston in preparation for medical school, while I taught at a Vermont ski area.

During this time, we periodically met in New Hampshire to ski the steep gullies of Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range. We had both heard about an old overgrown ski run on Mt. Greylock, known as the Thunderbolt Trail, which has become very popular with backcountry skiers as of late. Like many other early New England ski trails, the Thunderbolt was cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s, and provided a stage for many early ski competitions before lifts became ubiquitous in the Northeast. While most of the other CCC trails became integrated into present day ski areas like Stowe and Cannon Mountain, the steep, winding Thunderbolt was neglected, consequently becoming a modern day East Coast backcountry classic.

After doing some Internet research, we discovered that although Greylock is neither remarkably high nor remote, at 3500' in the Taconic range in NW Massachusetts, it is the highest peak in the state. Most importantly, from aerial photographs, we noticed that its steep east slope boasts a massive rockslide, several hundred vertical feet high. Despite our initial plans to ski the Thunderbolt, Zach suggested that we ski the slide, so we soon transferred our focus to the latter in the hopes of making an obscure and technical first descent.

The word from additional sources was that this slide had never been skied, and also that it couldn't be -- it was too steep and exposed; I had my doubts. Zach, however, who has been skiing steep, unruly slides in the Adirondacks since before he learned to ignite his own bodily gasses, calmly responded to my fears, reminding me that "if its got snow on it, it can be skied." That was the encouragement I needed. I figured with cautious skiing and an adequate supply of caffeine, we could pull it off.

"Surrounded by rusting ski lifts and heaps of antiquated junk, we surmised that this must be what skiing in the former Soviet Union is like..."

And now, we were here! On a day on which we both were able to get off work, we made our tour. I headed south out of Vermont, while Zach and his brother Tristan, also a talented tele-skier and medical student, headed west on the Mass ‘pike towards the small town of Adams, Massachusetts. We rendezvous'd on Main street around mid-morning; it was late-January, and an arctic air mass, typical of that time of year, engulfed New England with sub-zero temperatures and crisp blue skies. The east face of Greylock dominated the surroundings and the steep, fluted snow slopes of the slide, looking like they’d be more at home in Alaska’s Chugach range than in western Mass, loomed glistening above us in the sharp mid-winter sunlight. Despite numerous exposed sections of cliff, heavy snowfall that winter had seemed to fill in enough of the slide to permit a ski descent; we decided to go for it.

After getting ourselves mildly lost on the circuitous backstreets of Adams, we eventually found a series of snow-covered dirt roads, which offered access to the base of the mountain. We dropped our two trucks into four-high, rallied to the end of the road, and parked. I slipped a Peter Tosh disc into the player and cranked one of our popular warm-up music choices, thus initiating our ritualistic pre-ski behavior of sampling coffee from each other’s thermoses, slapping on climbing skins, and donning kneepads and transceivers as well as other backcountry gear, as if preparing for battle. Although none of us would admit it, we were flying high about what was ahead, knowing that we lived for these types of simple escapades.

After drinking copious amounts of coffee, we began skinning and peeing our way up the trail; it helped work off that caffeine-induced anxiety. We quickly found ourselves lost again, bushwhacking through thick, thorny brush, which eventually opened up, depositing us in the middle of an abandoned ski area situated on the low-angle slopes still at the foot of Mt. Greylock. Surrounded by rusting ski lifts and heaps of antiquated junk, we surmised that this must be what skiing in the former Soviet Union is like. Despite the aesthetic deficit of our tour so far, and a clear lack of progress, we pushed on, eventually intercepting the lower section of the Thunderbolt trail. A well-defined skin track already in place made for fast moving up the meandering, unkempt trail.