Sunday commenced Day Two of the AlpineZone Summit at Sugarloaf with partly cloudy skies that would eventually give way to completely overcast with low elevation clouds around the upper elevation. Unlike Saturday, Sunday seemed to get colder instead of warmer as the day wore on with conditions on the groomers deteriorating quickly after the fresh cord had been skied multiple times. Most folks in our group skied hard for a few hours and were on the road before noon.

The day began with the novel experience of having one full hour of first tracks prior to the General Public being allowed to board the Sugarloaf Superquad. Knowing that Sunday would feature more firm and fast groomers and wintery temperatures, I was hardly excited to wake up early for first tracks. After checking out of our condo, we did make it to the lift by 8:00 A.M. To my surprised delight, the first tracks experience was novel and delightful.

While the General Public began to queue up for their first turns, we had already lapped the Superquad railing arcs into untouched cord. I am many years removed from my racing and grooming skiing days, so I had forgotten that skiing fresh cord for a groomer lover is the equivalent of fresh untracked for a powder hound. I realized that groomer conditions would quickly worsen throughout the morning as more and more people skied the groomers. I also realized that due to the mountain’s layout, we had lapped the main routes off the main lift prior to any other skiers and would be moving onto the rest of the mountain while most other skiers were starting to scrap down trails that no longer had fresh cord.

“It is just like a powder day!” I exuberantly exclaimed while riding the Superquad. Perhaps my quote of the weekend. But within the context of being far ahead of the masses and being able to experience the best conditions faster and in higher quantity than the General Public, this was a fair comparison.

After tracking up the Superquad area and sampling the skier cross course, we sampled Gondola Line with plans to head towards Timberline for a summit run. But Timberline was closed due to wind hold so we headed towards King Pine. Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in at this point making the light extremely flat. Differentiating soft and firm snow on the trail was more difficult. And in general, everyone in the group suddenly felt the flat light and cloudiness as an oppressive force suggesting that it was time to head home early.

We made a few more runs before making our way over to Bullwinkle’s and skiing the intermediate and beginner trails on the west mountain for kicks. Despite the slow lifts, we actually found a few interesting pitches and a trail or two with some character such as Glancer. Three more runs were skied after we said just one more. But after the days of firm and fast skiing, we were tired. The weather continued to turn worse with winds taking the Spillway lift off line and snow pellets were kicking up in the air. It was past time to call it a weekend but we still skied four hours that morning due to those wonderful first tracks.

In the course of three days, I skied more groomers than I have skied in the past half dozen years combined. On Saturday, I logged more vertical in one day than I have logged in any given day during that same six year period. It was a firm and fast weekend but I tremendously enjoyed the skiing, the experience, and the company.

Unfortunately, I was not able to sample all of Sugarloaf’s fine terrain as I had expected that I might when I booked the trip. It was disappointing skiing past trails like Misery Whip, WInter’s Way, and Ripsaw without being able to ski them. The bullet proof frozen ice of the summit kept us off the snowfields excepting Nitro (which was closed Sunday) and Gondola Line.

Despite the conditions, I did get a feel for the area. And I came away disappointed with Sugarloaf’s trails as being mostly wide, lacking character, and being mostly indistinct generic boulevards. Despite having one of the biggest vertical drops in the east, it skied much smaller than I had expected it would even though most individual chairs were in the 1400-1800 vertical foot range, excluding runs from top to bottom which could be sourced with only two chair rides.

I see the potential for a lot of fun at Sugarloaf when everything is open. I will surely be back to complete my sampling of Sugarloaf’s terrain. But I won’t be back until they have everything open and are offering really good conditions.