Yesterday I got to ski a new-to-me ravine on Mount Washington, Burt Ravine, the one just to the left of the Cog Railway when viewed from the west. We skinned up the Cog and reached the top of Airplane Gully in 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Jordan, who had climbed up from the east side of Washington via Pinnacle Gully and was meeting us on the ridge, dropped into nearby Turkey Shoot while Benny and Nick sent Airplane Gully. Conditions were stiff but edge-able wind-board. Brit and I made our way over to the top of Burt Ravine and dropped in.
I would find out later through Facebook that this was likely Marty of Alpine Endeavors, who sent me a pic of us from his vantage…
Burt skied pretty well with a variety of snow conditions as you can see in the video below. Once we got to 3,800 feet I found a skin track leaving the drainage that appeared to be heading back to the Cog. Consulting the topo made it look like it might contour back to the Cog around Waumbek Tank, and be quite a fair bit easier than the 1.2 mile low-angle thrash to pick up the Jewell Trail and exit. We decided to commit to it. It climbed about 150 feet with a few switch backs then crossed a really enticing new slide path.
The upended trees and dirt made this new path look quite fresh and the rumor is it formed during the Fall 2017 weather system that brought massive flooding to the Mount Washington Valley.
The skin track seemed to stop on the other side of the path so I continued following our contour and intersected with the Cog about 300 feet above Waumbek Tank. It only took us about 30 minutes of bushwhacking to get back out of Burt and from what I hear that is much better than trying to negotiate the lower drainage.
We exited down a still pretty firm Cog run and called it a day. Mileage was just over 5 miles in 4.5 hours with 3,264 elevation gain/loss. It looks like the Higher Summits Forecast isn’t to appealing for the next few days. Let’s hope the weekend brings some decent Spring skiing weather for the last avalanche course of the season!
See you in the mountains,
Northeast Alpine Start
Northeast Alpine Start 
[…] came across this path a couple days ago while exiting Burt Ravine and noticed it looked quite fresh but didn’t really put it together […]
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Dave, that was my skin track from 3/20. Our skin track stopped ascending on other side of the slide path because we skied down it, to Clay Brook, and took the long traverse back to the Cog. I am glad you followed our approach back to the Cog, and found the new slide. I have taken that route skinning back up to the cog a couple times in the past 20 years, but was surprised to pop-out on this new 500 foot slide. Reports you heard about trying to negotiate the lower drainage are true, it is not impossible, but it is a tough tour traversing back from Clay Brook at 3100 to the Cog; not something i would recommend if you can skin back to the Cog faster.
Thanks for sharing! -Jon
https://lftgly.com/wordpress/?p=1017
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Benny and I guessed it was probably your skin track Jon! Thanks for confirming! Hope to bump into you over there again!
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