'It was shocking and beautiful': Trip to Argentina, Antarctica memorable for Lunenburg's Riddle

It took Damian Riddle 24 hours of travel to get to the bottom of the world for his October ski vacation.

Riddle, an experienced backcountry skier from Lunenburg and clerk-magistrate of Ayer District Court, joined Adam Howard of Cambridge, Vermont, publisher of Backcountry Magazine and Patrick Gilroy of Idaho, on the nearly three-week expedition to the Patagonia region of southern Argentina and Antarctica. The three were college roommates at Western Colorado State University, where Riddle and Howard raced Alpine and telemark and Gilroy raced Nordic.

Their small group was part of a larger assemblage of about 100 guests and 25 guides who went to the Ushuaia, the southernmost city in Argentina – and closest city to Antarctica – and then on to Antarctica with explorer, polar guide and cinematographer Douglas Stoup and his Ice Axe Expeditions aboard a 300-foot cruise ship.

Howard was there to profile Stoup for his widely read magazine (and possibly talk about the trip on the Backcountry podcast.)

Backcountry Magazine and friends

"We tagged along as we usually do," Riddle said, referring to his and Gilroy's practice of accompanying Howard on these big expeditions.

This wasn't Riddle's first time tackling demanding backcountry terrain in forbidding terrain, nor is this the first time I've written about him, having chronicled his previous trips to Chamonix in the French Alps and Norway. Riddle is the guy who got me into alpine touring – the Alpine-Nordic hybrid that involves hiking up mountains on skis with climbing skins affixed to the bases and then removing the skins and locking down the boot heels for the descent – seven or eight years ago. He's also won the Wachusett Mountain pond skim contest three times, leading to word on the street that he's been banned from taking that coveted title ever again.

But this adventure was of a bigger order of magnitude than his previous ventures into big mountains.

"Just the sheer distance I had to travel was different and so was going to a continent with really nobody on it," Riddle said. "It hasn't been spoiled. It's just so pristine. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was shocking and beautiful."

Patagonia and Antarctica

The adventure started in the Martial mountains along the Beagle Channel strait near Ushuaia with Riddle and his group making alpine touring forays into the high alpine zones in the region surrounding the city. They included some glacier travel training on the Marshall Glacier with famed big mountain skier and writer Andrew McLean of Park City, Utah. Another big name guide on the trip was two-time former World Extreme Skiing champion Chris Davenport.

It was early spring in Patagonia and the snowpack was fairly stable.

Riddle's group used ski and boot crampons, ice axes and ropes – though they didn't really need the ropes for safety until they entered dangerous mountain zones with deadly crevasses in Antarctica.

"In Antarctica, it was crevasses everywhere. You can see some and then there's obviously the ones you can't see. So we would be touring all roped up in a harnesses and carabiners and ropes and then the guides would be leading and they'd be getting into an area that they had concerns about," Riddle said.

"Then they'd get out their probes and probe the area and anytime we would stop they would probe out the area," he added, referring to the thin and collapsible, usually about 118-inch long avalanche safety probes that backcountry skiers use.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Antarctica, with all of its ice and snow, is the world's driest continent, so the skiing can often be scratchy. But Riddle and his friends lucked out with two powder days in a row.

"People were just stoked with that. It snowed all night and the next day we had an 18-inch powder day," he said. "And it was bluebird in the morning but it ended up getting socked in in the afternoon."

Landing zones and penguins

Meanwhile, getting skiers to the often penguin-populated shore landing zone areas wasn't easy.

Expedition organizers used inflatable, small Zodiac boats to make the transfers, but finding safe landing zones was challenging.

"The guys would have to go out in the morning and scout out landing zones because there were so few and far between," Riddle said. "You get these Zodiacs off of the cruise ship and then you look up everywhere around and it's like 100 foot walls of ice."

Sometimes, it was a steep hike to ski-able terrain.

"But just skiing down to the ocean is an incredible feeling to have," Riddle said.

The skiing part of the Antarctica trip got cut short, though, by characteristically nasty weather in that part of the world where the warm water of the Atlantic Ocean and the cold water of the Antarctic Ocean collide, creating massive eddies and ocean swirls and sea heights up to 40 feet.

When the ship captain decided to get out of there, two days early, seas were up to 20 feet.

"We had three massive storm systems converging. He basically said the boat wasn't going to withstand it," Riddle said.

As it turns out, Riddle got an up-close taste of the southernmost seas in the world, diving in for a quick dip.

"It was damn cold, by the way," he said wryly.

More new stuff at Wachusett

In addition to the rebuilt Minuteman high-speed quad mid-mountain lift, our local ski hub Wachusett Mountain has made a number of other improvements this season.

The Challenger race hill has a new start shack, which should make the popular Race League competitors and youth and high school racers happy. It’s in a new location, along the woods on skier's left. That's a good thing as it opens up the slope.

The ski area also put in 6,500 feet of new snowmaking pipe and for the first time brought direct, ground-based snowguns to Norm's Way to the summit underneath the Polar Express quad. In the past that short section of terrain could get sketchy as it was served only by guns connected to distant hydrants by hoses.

In another snow quality development, Wachusett bought two new Prinoth snowcat grooming machines before the start of the season. These beasts are extremely energy efficient and brings the ski area's cat fleet to six.

Early season skiing

Wachusett opened for the season on Thanksgiving Day. That's impressively early given the freeze-thaw cycles we've had in recent days.

I hit the slopes there on Nov. 26. As always, Wachusett opens top to bottom and the long Conifer Connection was open with decent width and pretty firm snow, let's call it. As the sun bore down, though, the surface softened up. Off the Minuteman chair, Ralph's provided a nice moderate surface to work on early season technique.

It was great to be back skiing at Wachusett and seeing some old ski friends in the Coppertop Lounge. I also dropped off a pair of skis to be tuned and binding adjusted at the MTNSide Ski and Ride ski shop in the base lodge.

Be warned, the backshop was scheduling out to Dec. 10 when I was there. It's a good tuning operation, so its services are in high demand. Get there soon.

On the day after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, conditions at Dover, Vermont's Mount Snow were pretty darn good considering the up and down weather, with fairly short snowmaking windows.

Freefall on the North Face skied great with grippy hard snow and Canyon had good coverage top to bottom on the front side.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: No question trip to Argentina, Antarctica was memorable for Lunenburg's Riddle