Not being religious, ascending the Single Chair at the end of the day with the sun beginning its descent directly over the top of General Stark Mountain was about the closest I will ever come to believing in a big escalator to the sky. I do know the Single Chair leads to heaven, that much is for certain. No wait, it leads to Paradise. I always get those two mixed up!
Having a Mad Card and a Work Day ticket burning a hole in my Parka, I decided it was past time to make the arduously long and taxing drive down Route 2 to Mad River Glen. I can not believe I used to drive between two to three hours without complaint! Most Vermont locals that have lived in the Northeast Kingdom all their lives probably could not identify where the towns of Warren, Waitsfield, and Fayston are located. Culturally, Eastern Vermont and Western Vermont might as well be considered too different states.
Conditions were better than I had expected. Despite the moguls being large, I honestly had expected them to be much larger. Fortunately, many excellent tree lines had choice packed powder snow with occasional and manageable standard sized moguls. I mostly stuck to the trees when ever possible and covered most of the terrain fairly well going from opening to 3 P.M.
Finally having notched my skills up to the point at which I can truly appreciate and actually ski (and ski well, even!) most of the terrain at Mad River, I love the fact that this mountain continues to kick my butt. No other mountain offers so much challenge off every lift ride and I truly appreciated that at 2 P.M. when I was coming down Lower Antelope with legs burning. Begging for more and begging for rest all at once. That is a great feeling and I almost never get that feeling any where else.
My pick of the day on the map is Gazelle Glades. Nice moderate pitch with ample space, this glade still had really nice packed powder snow and bumps were not the large hard to handle size found most every where else. The groomers, most notably Grand Canyon and even the Bird Land slopes, were skating rinks that the racers on the Practice Slope would have loved. They should have set gates on Grand Canyon instead of the practice slope. On the particularly nasty side were Lower Glade, Partridge, and some aspects of Fall Line.
Fall Line was a nice choice for a first run as a warm up for my second run of the morning down Paradise. As expected, lines for the Single began growing early, so getting two ski on lift rides up the Single early was great. Later in the afternoon, I actually was enjoying the rest that the short 10ish minute Single line provided. Bird Land Chair was not running (I saw three snow mobiles at the lift early in the morning?) so that caused some longer lines on the Double it would seem.