Anyone that firmly believes a bad day of skiing is better than a good day at the office does not get out on days like this. There definitely are days on which I would much rather be working than skiing, this day was one of them. The only day of the season i can recall thinking “I should have stayed home.” [I repeated this same thought nearly a week later at Loon, NH due to similar but slightly worse conditions].
The original plan for the weekend was skiing Mad River Glen on Saturday followed by either Tuckerman Ravine or Gulf of Slides on Sunday. After the down pour at Mad River Glen yesterday, I was still optimistic that the Ravine might be an option for Sunday until Saturday night when I checked the summit temperature of Mount Washington which was reading 17 degrees!!! And that was not even the coldest part of the night. With the winds howling, temperature falling, and potential new snow overnight, it just was not going to happen. If the Sherburne had still been open top to bottom and in good condition, I might have considered it as the Sherbie is always worth a day trip by itself. But not when you can not skin and ski top to bottom.
So I checked Cannon’s web site this morning and noticed they were offering free tickets for Sunday. I already had a voucher to use, so it certainly was more a warning than an incentive! Arriving at the notch, skies were partly sunny with good weather in general. Inside the notch and at Cannon, things were dark, cloudy, very windy, and fairly cold for April. It did not look like the sun was going to make an appearance to soften up the snow.
Lifts finally started loading at 9:15am after a brief delay, yet another warning of what to expect. Trail count from the morning dropped completely out with the summit closed due to everything being a sheet of ice. I could see Profile from the Peabody Quad and the previous day’s rain had frozen solid. Trails not groomed were clearly unskiable and natural snow trails were all essentially grass with a dusting of recent snow/frost on top.
Middle Cannon, Lower Cannon, Gary’s, and Rocket were open and generally only half groomed as the rest of the trail didn’t have enough snow. Best to stay on the groomer tracks! I found a few patches of soft snow, but frozen granular and hard pack were predominant for the most part. Rocket SUCKED. Gary’s was okay. Lower Cannon was primo corn, but it was not worth dealing with Middle Cannon to get to. I took three runs and decided I had more interesting and fun things I could be doing at home… like cleaning the house and doing the dishes. For real.
On the bright side, I certainly got my monies worth! I closed out two Ski Areas in one weekend. Very sad to see the end coming soon for the lifts.