Cannon Mountain was originally scheduled to open for the season on Friday November 25th. After receiving over a foot and a half of natural snow and having snow making temperatures for the better part of the week, Cannon Mountain decided to push their opening date forward one week and not open Thanksgiving Weekend. The mountain’s web site claimed a lack of snow making temperatures as the main culprit while also citing that the snow that fell was blown off the trails by wind. While I love Cannon Mountain and its amazing trail network both on and off the map, I have no tolerance for a management that lies to its customers. As I found out and the following trip report and pictures will attest, Cannon had no excuse for not opening this weekend in terms of weather, snow fall, or snow making temperatures.
Arriving at the Peabody Base Lodge at 9 A.M., I began suiting up when my skiing partners for the afternoon festivities arrived. We gathered together our gear and prepared for the skin up the mountain. From the base area, it was obvious the mountain had received ample amounts of snow in the amount of well over a foot.
We began our trek up Toss Up with two of us on skins and the other two utilizing slow shoes. A mostly sunny sky allowed for wonderful views of Mount Lafayette and Cannon Mountain. While I knew we would not be alone on the mountain, I was amazed at how many other groups we ran into beginning at the Toss Up/Middle Cannon intersection. No less than a half dozen groups were slowly working their way towards the summit utilizing various routes. Some clouds started rolling in as we began up Middle Cannon with more threatening clouds rolling in from the Northwest over Cannon’s Northern Shoulder.
Our progress was generally slow due to the slow shoes two members of our group were utilizing. I used the extra time waiting for them to catch up to get some footage on my digital camcorder. We paused for a snack break at the top of the Peabody Quad and noticed the cloud cover had solidified and promised no sunny relief for the remainder of the afternoon. We donned our jackets and wind breakers before proceeding to the final leg of our skin up Tramway which was uneventful. After a rest for lunch and refreshment at the summit, we began our descent as the air slowly filled with light and fluffy snow flakes.
Cannon’s east and south east facing trails seemed to have held the most snow near the summit, so we choose to track down Tramway which was divine. One foot of light powder on top of an icy/crusty base meant powder turns with no worries of base damage. I hollered and screamed with delight and glee as I bounded, bounced, and floated through the powder. We alternated on shooting some video before coming to the end of Tramway all too soon. We made our way down to the unload station of the Peabody Quad where we would determine our next route of descent.
A fellow skier tipped us off that good snow was held in the Hardscrabble drainage trails. Middle Ravine was the location of Cannon’s snow making operations which ruled out that route. Middle Cannon and Toss Up both had sled and groomer tracks making them not good options for powder. And since the other three guys had to leave after the first run, a shot down Extension into the Front Face trails was not a good option either. We opted to ski down the Links over to Lower Hardscrabble where we found copious amounts of untracked foot deep powder. Only two other tracks marred the otherwise pristine powder on Lower Hardscrabble. We skied down the steep section to the run out where I bid my partners farewell and began ascending Lower Hardscrabble in search of bigger treasures in Middle Hardscrabble. I was not to be disappointed.
My skins were soaked from melting snow which rendered the glue useless on my bases. After attempting to skin up the steep sections of Lower Hardscrabble with little success, I opted to continue the climb the old fashion way on foot. After attaching skis to my pack, I hiked up a boot ladder I found to the top of Lower Hardscrabble where I found the traverse to Middle Hardscrabble.
Middle Hardscrabble had already been well tracked, but was still an amazing site to behold. The Hardscrabble drainage had caught a lot of blowing snow which settled into the protected confines of Middle Hardscrabble. I was beside myself that I was about to ski Middle Hardscrabble in November with edge to edge coverage.
I began down Middle Hardscrabble and let out a cry of ecstasy and delight! Over a foot of powder was the norm with occasional pockets even deeper. Very few locations sported any sort of thin cover to be concerned about. Despite the many tracks already lining the trail, I easily found many untracked lines begging for my powder signature which I applied liberally to the snow cover. When I finally rounded the bend to gaze down the final steep pitch of Middle Hard, I could hardly believe my eyes how good the cover was. Normally one of the nastiest sections of the mountain, Middle Hard’s final drop was a sheer delight top to bottom with not a rock to worry about. Having skied Middle Hard many times throughout my years of skiing Cannon, I can easily say that was one of my three best runs down one of Cannon’s finest trails.
The ski out was fairly uneventful. I traversed over to the Lower Hardscrabble run out and then traversed again over to Lower Ravine where huge snow whales dominated the trail. The trail may have a four foot deep base, but it still is not enough for Cannon to open to the public. With a day of skiing like this, who needs lift tickets! I will gladly only take two runs instead of twenty when those runs are epic and completely free. Much better than doing laps on a brutally groomed Ravine trail for $25.00.
After two runs, my legs were shot so I skied out on a neighboring trail back to the Peabody Base Lodge knowing full well there would be plenty more powder to be snuffed out tomorrow.
