Telesnowmonkey
Active member
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2020
I took up telemark skiing late last February, with no prior downhill experience, and about 5 seasons of Nordic skiing experience behind me. My friend David had told me he was going up to VT. this week with hopes of skinning up and skiing down the famous Teardrop Trail of Mt. Mansfield, if there was enough snow. I felt like I might be getting in over my head, but, then again, this is what my original intentions were when I got into telemarking last spring. I wished I had more than effectively 3 months of downhill skiing experience under my belt, but, eh, I couldn't pass up the opportunity!
Initial feelers of the locals were discouraging, as they told us snow was very scarce in the back country. David was pretty determined to go, however, and convinced me that we should at least go to the trail head for a first hand "look see" for ourselves. We could always head on to Smuggler's Notch if things looked really dismal. We arrived at Underhill SP around 11am, ready to take on the challenge of the Teardrop Trail. We parked at the lower parking area and hiked up the unplowed road to the entrance to the trail. It was pretty tracked out and the cover seemed thinner than ideal, but given the lack of snowfall this year, we've adopted an "I'll take what I can get" attitude and decided it was good enough. We skinned up our skis and began the ascent. We didn't think this through thoroughly enough, and had failed to bring a Teardrop trail map with us. I had studied the map in the Goodman back country skiing book pretty intensely on our drive up and had a pretty good image of the trails in my mind, but it wasn't a perfect memory.
And so, we took a left when we should have taken a right, and eventually found ourselves at a dead end. We spied skier tracks across a brook, though, and crossed over to see where they might have come from. It looked like up on the ridge, where we thought we might find the trail again, so we followed the tracks through often dense brush and undergrowth, between grabby saplings, and such, until we were finally up on the ridge, where, lo and behold, we came across a trail, but not the Teardrop Trail. I felt that the trail would eventually intersect with the Teardrop Trail if we took a right on it to head back in the general direction we'd come from, but David was reluctant to follow it without knowing for sure where it would lead. He felt we'd be better off if we backtracked the way we came, back to the original trail and continued to the right. And so... we did. It probably took us an hour for our little side excursion, but eventually we got back down to the main path and kept following it up. Eventually, it became evident that THIS was the Teardrop Trail, and we'd been on it all along, no turn was required. We climbed up a fairly steep length of trail, crossing over the WB/Underhill Trail. Hmm, the blazes on the trees marking the trail looked suspiciously similar to the ones we'd seen on the trail we'd found on the ridge during our bushwhacking expedition, but... maybe all the hiking trails up there are marked that way.
Finally the trail leveled out for about 50 feet, before continuing up at an even steeper grade. Already having serious doubts about my ability to ski down what we'd just skinned up, I told David this was the end of the trail for me, at least on this day.
We stopped to refuel, get our bearings, de-skin, and put on another layer before the descent back down to the car. After futzing around with gear and clothing, we finally embarked on the descent. It was actually quite a bit more manageable than I expected it to be, although I could not successfully link more than two turns at a time. That was okay, though. I was happy to not have to throw in the towel and hike down, which I had been prepared to do if my descent turned into a total train wreck.
I tried different tactics... small, explosive hop turns, which worked well enough but were tiring, and longer turns that ran out into the trees along the sides of the trail. I haven't done much glade skiing at all yet, so that was a bit hair-raising for me, but I only managed to affectionately hug a couple trees, and not slam into them. I tried to stay in the troughs that other skiers had already created,and was fairly successful with that strategy, but some of the turns were too tight for me to negotiate. There was a fair amount of side-slipping going on in those instances. Finally the trail leveled back out and it was fairly easy xc-style skiing back down to the road, with some rocks and logs obstacles to avoid, and a couple stream crossings. All things considered... not a bad way to spend a sunny, early February day!!
Initial feelers of the locals were discouraging, as they told us snow was very scarce in the back country. David was pretty determined to go, however, and convinced me that we should at least go to the trail head for a first hand "look see" for ourselves. We could always head on to Smuggler's Notch if things looked really dismal. We arrived at Underhill SP around 11am, ready to take on the challenge of the Teardrop Trail. We parked at the lower parking area and hiked up the unplowed road to the entrance to the trail. It was pretty tracked out and the cover seemed thinner than ideal, but given the lack of snowfall this year, we've adopted an "I'll take what I can get" attitude and decided it was good enough. We skinned up our skis and began the ascent. We didn't think this through thoroughly enough, and had failed to bring a Teardrop trail map with us. I had studied the map in the Goodman back country skiing book pretty intensely on our drive up and had a pretty good image of the trails in my mind, but it wasn't a perfect memory.
And so, we took a left when we should have taken a right, and eventually found ourselves at a dead end. We spied skier tracks across a brook, though, and crossed over to see where they might have come from. It looked like up on the ridge, where we thought we might find the trail again, so we followed the tracks through often dense brush and undergrowth, between grabby saplings, and such, until we were finally up on the ridge, where, lo and behold, we came across a trail, but not the Teardrop Trail. I felt that the trail would eventually intersect with the Teardrop Trail if we took a right on it to head back in the general direction we'd come from, but David was reluctant to follow it without knowing for sure where it would lead. He felt we'd be better off if we backtracked the way we came, back to the original trail and continued to the right. And so... we did. It probably took us an hour for our little side excursion, but eventually we got back down to the main path and kept following it up. Eventually, it became evident that THIS was the Teardrop Trail, and we'd been on it all along, no turn was required. We climbed up a fairly steep length of trail, crossing over the WB/Underhill Trail. Hmm, the blazes on the trees marking the trail looked suspiciously similar to the ones we'd seen on the trail we'd found on the ridge during our bushwhacking expedition, but... maybe all the hiking trails up there are marked that way.
Finally the trail leveled out for about 50 feet, before continuing up at an even steeper grade. Already having serious doubts about my ability to ski down what we'd just skinned up, I told David this was the end of the trail for me, at least on this day.
We stopped to refuel, get our bearings, de-skin, and put on another layer before the descent back down to the car. After futzing around with gear and clothing, we finally embarked on the descent. It was actually quite a bit more manageable than I expected it to be, although I could not successfully link more than two turns at a time. That was okay, though. I was happy to not have to throw in the towel and hike down, which I had been prepared to do if my descent turned into a total train wreck.
I tried different tactics... small, explosive hop turns, which worked well enough but were tiring, and longer turns that ran out into the trees along the sides of the trail. I haven't done much glade skiing at all yet, so that was a bit hair-raising for me, but I only managed to affectionately hug a couple trees, and not slam into them. I tried to stay in the troughs that other skiers had already created,and was fairly successful with that strategy, but some of the turns were too tight for me to negotiate. There was a fair amount of side-slipping going on in those instances. Finally the trail leveled back out and it was fairly easy xc-style skiing back down to the road, with some rocks and logs obstacles to avoid, and a couple stream crossings. All things considered... not a bad way to spend a sunny, early February day!!
