1. He's fully twice my size.
2. He's a sandbagging mule-man.

As James and I pondered the wisdom or lack thereof of what we were contemplating, I decided to seek professional guidance. I wrote to David Goodman, Northeast backcountry ski guru and author of the AMC guides to backcountry skiing in New York, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. I asked David what he thought about trying to ski the traverse, and briefly outlined our plans. David wrote back with the following:

"I think what you're planning is pretty ambitious for a day. You'll need to be very fast."

After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing (and forwarding the message to James - he said the quote never left his mind the whole trip) I wrote back and told David we were looking at more like three days, and though I had major reservations about trying to ski it, I wondered if he thought it made any more sense with the time we were planning to allot. David had hiked the traverse in summer, so was at least familiar with the terrain. David responded that he thought it would be very arduous, but could be very rewarding, and yes, why didn't we go ahead and carry the skis?

So for some reason, after hearing this small vote of confidence, James and I packed the planks.

I was also a little concerned about two descents on the traverse - Gothics and Basin, which are reportedly quite steep, which again only really concerned me from a speed/efficiency standpoint. I had heard from a few folks that it might be wisest to rappel these descents, just to save time and because they are evidently somewhat challenging to safely complete with heavy packs. And so we brought a rope, a few slings, pins and a screw for making v-threads. We had no idea what to expect since we'd never been on the Great Range, so it seemed prudent. We still don't know what those descents look like, but we'll get to that.

So yeah, James is a big guy. That's number one. Number two, he gave me some thick b.s. over dinner Friday night about "not being very good at endurance." James has been climbing rock for several years and has been getting into ice climbing and backcountry skiing. He's also been adventure racing lately... Hmmm... Sounds like a bit of the ol' endurance to me...