With an expected “18-30 inches by Thursday morning” as forecasted by many weather prognosticators, including MRG’s own Josh Fox, this storm bonked early but still delivered a foot of fresh to Mad River Glen. While Wednesday was a spectacular day and well worth a vacation day, it was a far cry from a minimum of 18″. While I had hoped for epic, I was willing to settle for just sensational.
By the time I had bought my ticket and geared up, six dozen skiers had queued up for the Single at 8:30 A.M. I quickly did the math. Given how many chairs were on the line, I was just as well skiing right onto the double rather than waiting for the Single for first run. The line would stay strong averaging an acceptable five to ten minute wait throughout the morning but got down to three to five minutes after lunch.
Ticket window folks were warning of no refunds if the mountain went on wind hold but Mad River kept all three lifts spinning all day despite some occasionally harsh winds. The snow was a dry but dense and wind blown variety that was somewhat grabby yet fast. No dusty light powder on top either but rather solid base building stuff which the mountain needed. Occasionally, I could sink down to the rock hard frozen base when cutting a hard turn through the foot of new snow. This storm will provide a sensational base for the Friday evening event to put the fluffy white stuff on top of.
Everything skied rather well Wednesday though I am always amazed how quickly everything gets tracked out at Mad River Glen. This is why I find Jay to be more reliable for untracked powder. Mad River Glen has a continuous two thousand vertical foot drop. Once a skier gets to the end of some trees, you move onto the next vertical slot that is accessible. Thus, a mountain like MRG has a lot of vertical but you can easily access so much of the trees in one run. Whereas Jay is a horizontal mountain. Once you commit to a tree section, you are going down one specific tree line. You can traverse within that section but you can not link two thousand vertical feet worth of untracked because you are forced to pick and choose. Additionally, a much higher percentage of skiers at Mad River know where to go, which makes snuffing out untracked later in the day much harder at Mad River than Jay. That said, I was still finding untracked lines at Mad River by 2:00 P.M. but they were pretty short threads through the trees.