We had a day to get some skiing in. Brian had some new skis and bindings that he got mounted up by all-around good guy Rick Wilcox at IME, who had done the job in 20 minutes flat a few nights before. We had picked them up on Day Two and had enjoyed a little bull session with the local legend ("Kids today ski so aggressively - they have no fear and they fall hard. When I ski down a hill I'm like a champagne flute!"). We needed to be back at my place in Maine for dinner, so we decided to do something relatively accessible, read: not too far off the beaten path and not too terribly long, round trip. We decided on Mt. Chocorua.

The snow was awful. A foot-and-a-half-wide trough of packed ice with immovable ice a foot-and-a-half tall on either side. Fun. We would be randonee skiing, which, as the joke goes, is French for "walking with skis on your feet." And that's what we did for just about all of it.