Or perhaps the title should be The Perfect Weather Pattern. Seven inches since Thursday and double that since last weekend with the coldest weather since 2009 moving in for the weekend. Crowds stay home and I ski untracked all day at Saddleback: home to the best on map soft wood glade skiing in New England.

Saddleback already had some damn fine glade skiing. But the recent addition of Casablanca solidifies Saddleback’s position as the New England leader in the soft wood glade category. Casablanca is just as expansive as it looks on the map. Virtually the entire area is thinned out and skiable. But the cutting was inspired–still retaining a few uncut sections to give the glade some definition rather than just one big sprawling big box glade. Very few on map glades in New England have been so well planned and cut.

Each of Casablanca’s four sections offer up plenty of different looks. Tight trees frequently run parallel to more open lines. If you don’t like the line or the extent of the tracks in the powder, traverse and enjoy. There are several tight chutes and narrow lines interspersed within each of the four sections. I was doubtful Casablanca would ski as good as it looks on the map. Boy was I wrong.

I only allowed about a third of my day for Casablanca. The rest of Saddleback is too good to keep hammering the same area. I was surprised how much Dark Wizard has been opened up. Once the tightest on map glade that I had ever skied, Dark Wizard is now a fun romp. The new lift line trail Family Secret is quite delightful for a non-cliffy liftline trail. The headwalls were blown completely clean exposing the recently cut stumps on Black Beauty and Frostbite. But that scared off the masses and left a nice powder stash on each of these trails below the mess. I got over to Muleskinner once as well. As one of New England’s best trails, it was certainly worthy of repetition but no one can deny that its a haul to get out there.

On the other side of the Kennebago Quad, Governor was wonderfully wild with its exposed stump ridden steep entrance opening up into multiple options–tree island style. Intimidator Glades was well skied in being one of the more obvious glades on the mountain; one of the few glades to truly bump up. And a personal favorite, I wish I had time for more than two laps on Nightmare Glade. This meadow skipping glade is hard to find, low traffic, and sports sparse trees, tree islands, excellent powder snow, and a very jumpable rock. It proves that less can be more in regards to quantity of trees in a glade.

Snow quality was exceptional. Powder and packed powder with no crust or other nastiness from the last storm. Untracked powder ranged from a few inches to over half a foot deep. Untracked in the glades skied very nicely whereas untracked on the trails sported wind buff ranging from easily plowable to harsh hooky denseness. The tracked snow was an excellent soft packed powder so rarely enjoyed in New England.

All the plates I saw in the lot were from Maine. When the powder hounds go west en masse, sometimes it is best to go east. At just under three and a half hours on slightly snowy roads, Saddleback pushes my tolerance for day tripping. But it’s always worth the extra effort. Especially when everything goes according to plan.

Prior Year’s Saddleback Stoke:

• Trip Report: March 26th, 2010
• Trip Report: March 25th, 2007
• Trip Report: April 6th, 2006
• Video: April 6th, 2006

So, what are you waiting for?