Skiing the Cog

[JMO]

Looks like it's a go for the Mount Washington Cog Railway to ferry skiers this winter up to the Waumbek Tank . Total vert of 1,100 feet for four groomed trails: two intermediate-level and two beginner-level that run on both sides of, and parallel to, the railway track.

Full-day $59
Single Ride $25 (round trip or one way to access ski trails)

"I've been thinking about skiing from the Cog since we purchased the railway in 1983," said Mount Washington Railway President Wayne Presby.

"We've had to overcome some technological challenges to make this a viable endeavor, but like those who came before us, we've met the challenges and are reaching our goals."

http://www.mountwashingtoncograilwayskitrains.com/

[Free Range Lobster]

Bout damn time!

woot!

One thing they haven't answered: will they allow hiking up further?

[bad_roo]

That looks like it has crazed rail slide potential.

[Free Range Lobster]

also crazed rail gap infront of train

[TeleAl]

Trains rock.
Cog Trains all the more.

[AntiSoCalSkier]

"Each ascent to Waumbek consumes one-quarter ton of soft-grade bituminous coal and 300 gallons of water. The coaches are heated and accommodate 70 passengers."

I'm guessing they aren't going to get an "A" from the environmental people.

[PhishingME]

Some locals I know did it before they opened it up, and said it was pretty shitty. I guess there was a ton of debris around, and one of em killed a ski. Sure they cleared it out below, but not above. Too bad they can't go all the way up. At any rate if let let you skin, it will be good access to the Gulf ect.

[trainnvain]

Fuck the fuckin' cog! What a load of shit.




This was my nice quiet skintrack into the sphinx. Not anymore! Assholes.

[nhtele]

I've used the Cog to access GG a coupla times and have always been struck by the amount of shit lurking beneath the snow - old RR ties, metal pipes, and the like.

[JMO]

Bump for new photo and story. Looks a tad bit crowded. And flat. And look out for that train! Yikes.



BY M.J. MCATEER
THE WASHINGTON POST

January 9, 2005

Quad chairs, T-bars and rope tows, ho hum. For the upwardly mobile skier, just so much pedestrian transport.

For a real lift, the snow bored should consider poling up to New Hampshire this winter to visit a small, new alpine area where the ride up promises to be more of an adventure than the ski down.

Since last month, skiers there can partake of a rare type of lift - riding a cog railroad to the top of a ski slope (other cog trains operate in Wengen and Zermatt in Switzerland). Nonskiers are welcome to go along for the ride too, downloading aboard the train as all but the slowest snowplowers outpace them down slopes bisected by the cog's track.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway, the world's oldest operating cog and a National Historic Landmark, is like the Little Engine That Could. It has been huffing and puffing its way to the 6,288-foot summit of the Northeast's highest peak since 1869 via a gear system that drags the train upward one tooth at a time. But until now, the steam-powered train largely had suspended commercial operations in winter because the weather atop Mount Washington is brutal - winds clocked at a planetary surface record of 231 mph and an average January temperature of 5 degrees.

Doug Waites, former sales and marketing manager of the cog railway, thinks the ski train is a novelty that will build up a real head of steam.

"People always want to ski Mount Washington," he says, "but it [skiing] has been limited to Tuckerman's Ravine." For the uninitiated, Tuckerman's, to paraphrase the New Hampshire state motto, is a lift-free-and-maybe-die kind of place. The only way to get there is on foot via a 4 1/2-mile trail to the base followed by another hour-long slog to the top of the ominously and accurately named Headwall.

The so-called slope descending from the Headwall really is a cliff, which is closed to skiing until late spring, until enough snow has accumulated to camouflage that fact. Tuckerman's has a grade of 45 degrees; by comparison, most expert ski slopes have a grade of 25 degrees. The extreme difficulty of Tuckerman's has, for 70 years, made it a must for the macho.

The slopes at the cog, however, will be no Tuckerman's. They will instead be "suitable for snow bunnies," Waites says cheerfully. "Skiers will have an opportunity to experience Mount Washington in the winter - but without the danger."

The cog is within the federally owned 800,000-acre White Mountain National Forest, but it predates the government takeover of the land and maintains ownership of 99 feet on either side of its track, which is where it has created four trails with a 1,100-foot vertical drop.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway Ski Trains, as the area will be called, will have the usual ski amenities - snow-making, grooming, instruction for skiers and snow boarders, a ski shop with rentals and a cafe.

The ski trains will run to Waumbek Tank, which at 3,800 feet is about a third of the way to the summit. In good weather, the engines will take on water at the tank before continuing the journey to the peak. The ride up will take about 15 minutes. That translates to about 76 feet per minute because the cog's method of locomotion is so painstaking.

The trains will run continuously to produce a lift capacity of 350 passengers an hour. Beginners will be able to debark at a platform partway up the slopes at Cold Spring Hill; more advanced skiers can stay aboard the heated train until Waumbek.

The novelty is quite a lure, as the train's 136-year history as a tourist attraction attests. Once that excitement wears off, the slopes are unlikely to hold the interest of advanced skiers for more than a few runs.

Not to worry. Bretton Woods, New Hampshire's largest ski area with 101 trails and 434 acres of terrain, has the same owner as the cog and is just six miles away. The plan is to offer a combination ski pass along with a free shuttle between the two areas.

If the budget will stretch, visitors might consider patronizing still another property with the same owner: the Mount Washington Hotel, between the Bretton Woods ski area and the cog railway.

The National Historic Landmark is a huge, white, rambling castle-like structure with red-roofed towers silhouetted against Mount Washington. Although landlocked, it somehow brings to mind the Titanic.

When it was built in 1902, the hotel was the first in New England to have private bathrooms in every room, and in its heyday, as many as 57 trains a day delivered guests to its door.

The hotel, now with a mouthful of a name - the Mount Washington Resort at Bretton Woods - features a 230-foot-long lobby, an indoor tiled pool and the "Cave," a Prohibition-era stone-walled speakeasy.

Activities include Nordic skiing, sleigh rides, ice skating and snow tubing. People are required to dress for dinner in the hotel's formal dining room - that means jackets and no jeans - but the payback is being serenaded by a roving orchestra as you spoon down your sorbet.

[weibo]

You have an interesting ability to time warp to the 9th of Jan for your news stories you must be like the guy from the show where he would get the paper the day before and rush to change the future.