Zeta Pass Slide & South Carter: 3/10/23

I love snowshoeing on the Carter Range in late winter, when the snow piles deep in the beautiful fir forest on these high wooded ridges. The March snowpack allows for good views when there is merely a tunnel of trees in summer. On this gorgeous sunny Friday - one of the finest days of the winter, if a tad on the warm side - I planned to ascend to Zeta Pass, between South Carter and Mt. Hight, and attempt a bushwhack to a slide on the headwall below the pass. After returning to the trail, I would head up the ridge to South Carter.

Nineteen Mile Brook Trail was pretty well packed, but I wore snowshoes from the start for stability and traction. With three feet of snow even at this low elevation, Nineteen Mile Brook was buried.

On to the Carter Dome Trail, which had a good snowshoe track. Thanks to those who broke it out!

When the snow is deep the lower part of Carter Dome Trail, as well as the Nineteen Mile Brook Trail, has a number of tedious downs-and-ups through little drainages.

Between its two tributary brook crossings the trail passes through a pretty birch area.

At the second crossing the tributary was smothered in snow.

One of several switchbacks the trail makes as it ascends along the north side of the tributary valley. The grade is steady but never steep.

 

The forest gets the Carter ridgecrest look along the final approach to Zeta Pass.

A white AT blaze is visible at the junction with the Carter-Moriah Trail, but no sign is evident - apparently it's completely buried in snow.

Near the junction I left the trail and headed east through the pass.

As expected the snow was deep, and I proceeded cautiously to avoid falling into a chest-deep spruce trap.

Some small cliffs on the north side of the pass.

This spot on the floor of the pass looked impassable. You could drop in over your head down there.

I worked around it through some thick stuff.

A big drift at the east end of the pass.

An open drainage provided a good route down from the pass.

After losing some elevation, I made a steep sidehill traverse through reasonably open woods. There's the slide!

This dogleg-shaped slide fell during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The open part is only 300 feet long but it is very steep, with a slope of about 40 degrees as measured on the NH Granit website. I emerged at the bend in the slide, where a small shelf provided a comfortable perch for a late lunch.

Looking down the slide. Below the open part the track continues another 1000 feet as a scoured gully.

The frosted mass of Mt. Hight rises close by to the south.

From my perch I enjoyed a marvelous view over the vast space of the Cypress Brook valley, one of the remote nooks of the Wild River Wilderness. At its head the valley splits into two glacial cirques with flat floors. The slide is on the headwall of the southern cirque. On the left the valley is enclosed by a long eastern arm of Middle Carter. In the distance are Caribou Mountain, East and West Royce, and Speckled Mountain.

A spacious beaver meadow complex sprawls on the floor of the southern cirque. Back in late October 1996 my good friend, the late Creston Ruiter, and I bushwhacked up the long Cypress Brook valley and visited these meadows, then cut over to the northern cirque and climbed to a small slide (now mostly overgrown) on its headwall. We then headed back out to the Wild River Trail, doing the last part of the whack by headlamp. The woods in the upper valley were thick. At 8 to 9 miles round trip it was probably the longest bushwhack I've ever done.

The view from the beaver meadow in 1996, looking up at Zeta Pass and South Carter.

Side view of the slide.

Parting shot.

Following my tracks back across the sidehill traverse.

Looking down the drainage as I ascended back to Zeta Pass.

The ridge walk from Zeta Pass to South Carter is one of my favorite stretches on the Carter Range. The open fir woods are gorgeous.

Frosted firs.

Partway up the ridge I followed a snowshoe track that diverged from the trail corridor and led up into a large blowdown area with deep firm snow and terrific views, the main feature being this look back at Mt. Hight and Carter Dome. There are several of these blowdown patches on the south side of South Carter, a legacy of the 2017 Halloween storm.

Carter Dome is an especially beautiful mountain in winter. Mts. Passaconaway and Whiteface can be seen in the distance through Carter Notch.

A zoom on its big NW slide, which apparently fell in the mid-1960s.

West to Mt. Washington.

After climbing through some dense woods, the diverging track rejoined the trail corridor, and I made the fairly steep climb to the little wooded bump that is the true summit of South Carter.

Mt. Adams.

 

On the east side of the summit the deep snowpack opened distant views.

Looking north to the ledgy SE ridge of Mt. Moriah, Shelburne Moriah, and far-off high peaks in the Rangeley, Maine area.

On the SE side of the summit a short path leads to a little clifftop where there is a view even in summer, looking across the NE shoulder of Mt. Hight to the Baldfaces.

Zoom on the snow cones of the Baldfaces. In the foreground are the vestiges of a 1927 slide on the NE shoulder of Mt. Hight.

The clifftop opens another nice view of Hight and Carter Dome.

 

Shadows falling across the trail while heading back down the ridge.

Last look at the evening sun on Mt. Hight before dropping down to Zeta Pass and enjoying an excellent snowshoe descent along the Carter Dome Trail.